Ballard was fascinated by dreams of ultra high density, by "edge cities" or endlessly sprawling suburbs, by freeways. He had an eye for understanding how places really worked, and he looked at the places in between, where the notion of tradition is absurd. He explored business parks, airports and malls, the backlands and the badlands of the modern world. He managed to touch the imagination of architects as diverse as Nigel Coates and Rem Koolhaas, who shared his interest in dystopia. He ushered architects who saw themselves as modernists out of the innocence of hi-tech – as personified by Dan Dare – into a much stranger but more poetic vision of the future.