There is a painted line on the pavement outside the last bakery on Harbour Road. It is yellow, a hand wide, and it marks the edge of the city as exactly as a wall once did. Beyond it the same road runs on between the same hedges, but nothing may be built there, and for ten years nothing has been.

The decision was taken at a council meeting that lasted until two in the morning. The minutes record eleven votes to nine and, in the margin, the single word adjourned.

Inside the line

What happens to a town that cannot spread? The planners expected three things, and wrote them down:

• empty upper floors would fill before new blocks were needed;
• the price of a garden would rise faster than the price of a flat;
• the bus would begin, at last, to pay for itself.

We did not stop the city growing. We only told it which way to grow: inwards, and up one floor.

The upper floors

Two of the three came true within five years. Above the shops on Harbour Road the curtains are back, and the bakery sells out by nine.

A note on the figures

Population counts are taken from the municipal register each January and exclude the two villages added to the district in 2011.