So now all those who felt that some aspects of the Will Alsop masterplan for the centre of Bradford were too fanciful can be reassured. It has done the job it set out to do: of stretching the public imagination, making people think "outside the box", consider concepts which might otherwise not have crossed their minds. The ideas it presented, however, were not set in stone.

Design consultant Urbed's blueprint for Bradford, commissioned by Bradford Council and Bradford Centre Regeneration and due to be launched tomorrow to further the Alsop vision, is a rather more grounded version of the masterplan. Bradford Council's executive member for the environment, Councillor Anne Hawkesworth, describes it as "translating it into level thinking for the public, developers, highways engineers and planners about how it can be achieved in practical terms."

Some of the modifications are the result of a welcome boom in demand for development land in the city centre. With more people wanting to build here, there might be less scope for open spaces than initially envisaged.

It is encouraging, and right, that the blueprint includes tough design standards for developers bidding for new projects. We are about to get a city centre which will be partly brand new, partly refurbished. We want it to be the best available. Bradford people deserve no less.

There should be no place in this city-centre of tomorrow for the second-rate. We have seen enough of that in the buildings which are now being demolished. The tight controls proposed in the new blueprint should ensure that doesn't happen again.