Former commission chief Tony Powell (1974 to 1985) declared in 2004 the ''physical capital of the city, built up over three decades of the NCDC, is being used up'' and ''the physical fabric of the city is deteriorating''. His views have only got stronger. ''It won't be very long before people look back and say that was Canberra's golden age,'' he said.

The commission collected information, weighed and tested it, and used it to establish the unique neighbourhood units with a primary school and a local open space network and community centres.

Development, and the commission itself, were well resourced. Canberra's population grew by 10 per cent, year after year.

Mr Powell admitted that the commission ''got a lot of credit for things that were actually started by [secretary] Trevor Gibson and the Department of the Interior in the early 50s''.

Mr Powell cites the establishment of the Australian Institute of Sport as the exemplar of the commission's abilities.

The commission took up the Whitlam government's idea and did much international research. Then, a passionate minister in the Fraser government, Bob Ellicott, made it happen.

''We persuaded Ellicott that, unless you [the Federal Government] built the facilities, the institute wasn't going to come into being ...'' Mr Powell said.

''Since the commission, that just doesn't happen any more.''

The chairman of the NCA, Michael Ball, is more optimistic, declaring that the good times have continued.

''We believe that the majority of stakeholders agree that the last two decades have been golden for Canberra,'' he told the inquiry into his organisation's future.

One of the NCDC's fundamental policies the hierarchy of centres has certainly endured, even to the point of becoming an example for the biggest Australian cities.

That hierarchy placed town centres (like Belconnen and Woden) at the top, followed by group centres (like Jamison) and then local centres, which weren't just shops, but were built around a primary school, and often came with a community hall and a health centre, and often more.

The Planning Institute of Australia's chief executive, Di Jay, said, ''There are a range of features of Canberra that were quite unique and really quite avant garde in terms of what was happening here in a planning sense.

''It probably is a reflection of the very best of planning at each point of its development.''

West Australian academic and architect Christopher Vernon knows that the breadth of the vision can expand the scope of the action.

He sat on the National Advisory Panel that looked at the completion of the Griffin Legacy for the NCA, and explains how a worldwide competition and a brilliant winning design, from Walter Burley Griffin can inspire.

''The optimism and idealism very much gets forgotten,'' he said. ''To me, Canberra remains Australia's greatest achievement in landscape architecture.''

Griffin grabbed the opportunity of designing the capital city of this brash, new democracy at the start of the 20th century, to the point of giving up his practice in Chicago to see it through.

While holding to the faith that Griffin's ideas had priority, Mr Vernon said Canberra had been improved by being ''a hybrid''.

''There are some things about Canberra that, even though it breaks all the design rules and convention and everything else, people like,'' he said.

''I think sometimes we've overlooked that because all the textbooks say that cities [should] be dense and all those traditional notions.

''Canberra's not, and people like it.''

Like the original design competition, the new Parliament House had been a circuit-breaker: a worldwide competition again, this time with 329 entrants, and another stand-out winner.

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser admitted as long ago as 1981 that the Parliament would not have moved from Camp Hill to Capital Hill but for the brilliance of the winning design from firm of architects Mitchell Giurgola and Thorp.

Mr Powell agrees, ''If it wasn't for Giurgola's scheme, it wouldn't have happened.''

After the win, Romaldo Giurgola, who will turn 88 this September, has made Canberra his home.

In a delightful account on the NCA's website, he tells of the magic of a plan and a place in which he came to play such a powerful part.

''On a bright day during the summer of 1979, Sir John Overall former head of the National Capital Development Commission walked into our office

''He proposed I be an assessor of the design competition for the 'new' Parliament House of Australia. I said, 'I am honoured by such an offer, but I would rather enter the competition.' The brief for the design of the Parliament compiled by the NCDC was possibly the best I had ever encountered in my professional career.''

The new and permanent Parliament, seven years in construction, was an economic boom for Canberra, whose planning and prosperity have always been closely linked.

The National Capital Authority has been looking to drive economic expansion via the completion of the Griffin Legacy, a three-part plan to grow ''a new city neighbourhood'' between Civic and the shore of West Basin, turn Constitution Avenue into ''a grand boulevard'' and entirely revamp City Hill and surrounds.

But that was before Rudd Government cuts forced the authority to drop its plans.

They had been grand, and will be re-ignited, in time.

There have been allegations of obstruction levelled at territory planners, administrators and politicians and of laziness and a high-handed approach against the Commonwealth overseer.

But much has been achieved, and achieved cooperatively.

The ACT's announcement last year of a new development to house 73,000 people in the Molonglo valley west of Lake Burley Griffin could not have happened without NCA agreement.

Simon Corbell was planning minister at the time of some of the bigger brawls, including those over the City Hill precinct.

Corbell has often tried to impress on ACT colleagues the need to remember the concept of the national interest in their planning policies.

There is a view extant that the NCA did not do enough ahead of last year's change of government to ensure friends at court in the new administration, leading to both the budget cuts and the inquiry. Those putting the line that the authority did not do enough ''engagement and consultation'' are careful to make an exception: the NCA's chief executive, Annabelle Pegrum, who is to leave the job early next month.

Ms Pegrum spoke forcefully to the NCA's comprehensive submission on the first day of hearings of the parliamentary committee at the Albert Hall in April. She touched on the notion of a truly integrated planning document for the territory, ending the frictions between the National Capital Plan and the Territory Plan, and their administrators, which had existed since the two entities were set up in the ACT Planning and Land Management Act at the time of self-government in 1988.