ABSTRACT
In 1944 the City Engineer, F. J. Forty, had produced a reconstruction plan which was greeted on its publication with a barrage of criticism. William Graham Holford response was to apply the new techniques of city centre planning in a manner which steered a course between these different demands. While Holford was not planning for any significant increase in the concentration of commerce in the city, neither was he envisaging any significant degree of office dispersal. In line with the assumption shortly to be restated in the Central Areas Handbook, it was expected that the 1939 traffic volume would double within the twenty-five year life of the plan. To the contrary, planning is presented in both accounts as a task to be shared among many disciplines. The designer has a special contribution to make insofar as the result of planning is built form, but it is research and synthesis which sets the programme within which the designer is to work.
