It is a mistake to assume, as some have done, that Litchfield's plan imposed a prescriptive western urban model onto a pristine indigenous city (see e.g, Bello, Cunningham and Li 1998 : 97), First, the 'automobile city' was already emerging with the tacit support of government, industry and the urban middle classes, Second, there was no legal framework or political will to impose comprehensively the planning ideals of the Americans. By the 1990s land use maps would play a broad role in contests over land prices(a Bangkok Master Plan was finally adopted in 1992), but gener ally the commitment to comprehensive planning was a symbolic exercise. Increasing numbers of western-educated Thai planning professionals and national technocrats cherished the dream of a manageable and comprehensible metropolitan space. But as Nims had feared, master plans were to function mainly to"decorate the wall' (Nims 1963: 105). For the next three decades planners would be kept busy monitoring and mapping the dynamic spaces of the metropolis on paper: their functions were restricted to painting the colours' (rabai si) of the land uses they could not control The power to shape the city lay elsewhere.