Planning officer Ken Fines made history in Brighton during the Seventies by helping to stop the relentless tide of tower blocks.

Now he has written his account of a key period in the city's history.

Throughout the Sixties, Brighton was a bold, brash resort. Old buildings were torn down and replaced. Historic homes in the Hanover area were replaced with blocks of flats.

The concrete wilderness of Churchill Square replaced old cobbled houses behind Western Road.

At the same time, consultants prepared a box of new roads surrounding much of the old town centre.

In 1969, Ken Fines was appointed as director of the Greater Brighton Structure Plan, which produced a new framework for the area.

Out went the new roads and in came traffic restraint. Conservation rather than demolition was the new theme for the plan.

Brighton Council accepted these proposals and there was a change of direction from the early Seventies.

Hardly a listed building has been demolished since then and the new roads were never built.

In particular, plans for an urban motorway on stilts striding from Preston Circus to a huge new car park at Bond Street were abandoned.

This enabled Mr Fines, by now planning officer in Brighton, to propose for the dowdy North Road district to become a conservation area with a new name, North Laine, derived from the old town street pattern.

The idea was widely derided, not least by me in one of the few articles I have ever written which was remembered for more than a day or two.

Even today, people in North Laine still gleefully display the piece with its headline It's Tatty Tour Time describing a trip past derelict houses and abandoned cafes.

However, Ken Fines was right and I was wrong.

Freed from the blight of road building, North Laine prospered as never before and became a thriving shopping and residential area.

With typical modesty, Mr Fines does not mention his pivotal role in setting up North Laine in his new history of Brighton and Hove.

He says: "North Laine, formerly earmarked for redevelopment as a rundown Victorian working class area, is now advertised as Brighton's bohemian quarter."

He was also in favour of the Brighton bypass to take traffic outside the town and enable much more pedestrianisation and bus priority work to be carried out in the centre.

Mr Fines praises the councils of both Brighton and Hove for their work in conservation, which improved the centres and encouraged conservation societies to look after each small area.

He relates how the post-war housing shortage was tackled with vigour and says Brighton was ahead of the game in promoting the resort for conferences.

Mr Fines says: "The hotels in Brighton and Hove played a vital role, not only in providing accommodation, but also in hosting conferences and exhibitions."

Brighton was also shrewd after the Second World War in buying the Stanmer Estate which provided a country park and a home for Sussex University.

The town reduced its reliance on tourism as its main revenue earner by building a series of industrial estates, mainly on the outskirts.

Brighton and Hove also managed to create one of the best bus networks in Britain, which is still gaining more passengers year by year.

However, Mr Fines says even with this success and the building of the bypass, Brighton and Hove now faces a real problem with the growth in car ownership.

He describes one-way schemes at pinch points in the centre as "little more than palliatives as traffic increases".

He said: "Already, a major traffic accident, roadworks, building construction, a burst main, or even one of Brighton's famous road events can bring gridlock.

"There are complaints from visitors that even on a fine summer's day it takes an interminable time to drive out of the resort.

"Radical measures to restrain traffic in the urban area seem long overdue."

Looking back he adds: "History has shown that integration and co-operation produces a better transport system, as with the horse buses, the railways, the taxis and the motor buses."

While the car came to the aid of Brighton early last century, it now produces gridlock, pollution and road rage.

Mr Fines says Brighton and Hove has the image of a dynamic city with a thriving economy and a cosmopolitan, highly tolerant character.

But this success creates its own problems with people flocking to live there, driving up house prices and rents.

He describes in detail the problems with housing and the effect rising property costs are also having on the elderly with care homes closing all the time.

He says Brighton and Hove has faced and solved crisis after crisis throughout its history.

The new crisis is one of space or rather lack of it.

He believes cyberspace and the rapid growth in computer technology may be a way of solving it.

Mr Fines' book is not just about modern times.

Most of it is an entertaining trawl through history all the way from prehistoric times to the Place To Be campaign, which successfully gained city status for Brighton and Hove.

He has a sense of history as well as a love of planning and it shows.

A History of Brighton and Hove by Ken Fines is published by Phillimore at £17.99.