Speakers felt that many aspects of the local economy and marketplace generally were changing for the better.

From the keynote address by Trade & Industry Minister Alec Erwin to Nail CEO Saki Macozoma's insightful discussion on the new business dynamic - not forgetting Boma international president Larry Soehren's televised account of  business conditions in the US property market - the messages were long on sound fundamentals and short on disruptive forces.

Nedbank CEO Richard Laubscher suggested that after the exuberance ("mainly unjustified") of the recent past, normality seemed to be returning to markets both local and abroad. Alastair Collins of Davis Langdon & Seah International spoke at length about private/public partnerships, while Futureworld guru Wolfgang Grulke dismantled business organisation paradigms.

Dean You Lee, seconded to Absa Corporate and Merchant Bank, delivered a compelling argument in favour of securitisation of property.

But South African developers must have been taken aback by the argument of Stephen Thorne - now director of urban design in the Department of Sustainability & Environment in Victoria, Australia - that security precautions in fact encouraged crime.

John Norquist, Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, delivered an account of individual urban planning blunders of recent times in his home city, echoing what Thorne had said. Internationally acclaimed urban designer Eric Kuhne closed off the proceedings of a most successful convention.