It was a unique moment in time, a "coalescing of different forces and ideas," Sasaki recalled. There was pent-up demand for revitalization and new construction after World War II. The environmental movement was gaining strength. New tools, such as aerial photo interpretation, computer graphics, and computer modeling, were being developed. A focus on research and regional planning opened up new opportunities for collaboration. As Dean Sert noted at Harvard's first annual urban design conference in April 1956, the era of individual, isolated work was over. It was a new era of synthesis.