Before World War II, Coventry displayed a dialectic typical of many industrial cities all over Europe. Rapid industrial and population expansion, particularly in the inter-war period, had turned the historic town into an overcrowded and densely built-up city. While these views from different windows upon tradition, continuity and change were a typical feature of so many cities, early twentieth-century Coventry stood out as being particularly averse to the practices of political, housing and planning reform applied elsewhere in the UK. The explanation lay in the particular constellation of local politics in Coventry. Obviously, Coventry did not represent a clean slate situation but was an historic city of 300,000. Indeed, it has also been argued in later years that this was 'an exhibition of dream plans. Much of the discourse of Coventry's reconstruction and modernist vision centred, on the new form and function of the shopping precinct and the relationship between pedestrians and vehicles.