ABSTRACT
The final chapter of this book will deal with three issues that have come to the top of the town and country planning agenda in the last decade of the twentieth century. By its nature the future is uncertain. It will be easy at some future date to look back and prove whether matters that concern us at the end of the twentieth century will turn out to concern us in the twenty-first. Abercrombie, in his plans for London, prepared during the Second World War, failed to foresee the considerable growth in car ownership and office employment. He assumed there would be full employment, of which there must have been little hope at the time considering the inter-war experience. He assumed that London docks would continue to be a hive of water-related activity. He also assumed that there would be strong statutory powers to control development and the location of industry. Readers may muse on the success or otherwise of this visionary for London.
