MARTIN Burgess should be allowed to proceed with his redevelopment scheme for 34 Piccadilly (May 9).

The planning officers' argument that it should be refused because it might prejudice a comprehensive master plan for the whole Castle-Piccadilly site is fundamentally flawed.

This city is world famous for not having been developed to some grand overall layout.

On the contrary, this city owes its very special character to having come about by organic growth and piecemeal development where different developers at different times have put up buildings on their plots to suit their needs and tastes; and other adjoining plot owners have then come up with their own different but equally valid developments on neighbouring sites.

It is this very process which has produced the variety and interest which makes the urban character of York so special.

It is also why so many visitors flock to the city each year.

They don't come to see a large scale piece of redevelopment designed and built in a single huge exercise. They come to see the very opposite - a city which has grown steadily over time to produce a patchwork of forms in a variety of styles and materials, and which, as a result of that smaller rate of building, invariably has a human scale to it.

Not since the Romans left has there been any overall master plan in York.

We don't need comprehensive redevelopment to rigidly conform to some overall grand scheme of things which has yet to be worked out.

What we do need is that which has for centuries made York what it is - the initiative and enterprise of local people like Martin Burgess to do something positive and to do it now.

Matthew Laverack,

Chartered Architect,

Lord Mayor's Walk,

York.

Updated: 11:10 Wednesday, May 11, 2005