In this open letter to the leader of City of York Council, Green Party councillor MARK HILL sets out an alternative vision for the city than that put forward by the Without Walls initiative.

Dear Coun Steve Galloway,

I AM not the only member of York's green community to oppose A New Vision For York, your Without Walls board's first attempt at a long-term plan for the city.

The key problem is that the plan has no concept of limits. All sectors of society are encouraged to pitch in their development ideas. As a result there is a welter of activity planned, everything from significant new housing on York Central to commercial air transport at Elvington, all to provide for a dramatic increase in population.

When the development planned in the document has been finished York will become a much less pleasant place to live, simply because it will be overcrowded with buildings and people.

Obvious constraints include the quality of life of the residents, the green belt, transport bottlenecks, pressure on public services for residents, air quality, and vacant land for development.

To be realistic, the vision needs to accept these constraints and prioritise between the planned developments.

Your council and the previous one has already allowed over-development of York. The latest is the plan, applauded in Without Walls, to double the size of the university.

The existing over-development leads me to oppose the new Without Walls proposal. Your plans claim that York would make a good capital of Yorkshire if a regional assembly is agreed by referendum next year. This is not so. In the long term, many hundreds of government administrators and policy staff will come. All these people will need public and other services. Through multiplier effects, the long-term addition to our population will be many thousands.

These new arrivals will make York's already overheated housing market completely unjust. This, in turn, will raise the price of building and servicing the assembly and its work, such that it could even rival the outrageous cost of the Edinburgh parliament building.

Since gaining devolution, Edinburgh is now sucking employment from the rest of Scotland as well as up from London. The Edinburgh housing market is stratospheric while the population numbers and house prices elsewhere are stagnant or declining.

Like Scotland, the population of Yorkshire is also declining (the electoral rolls have fallen by 50,000 in only three years).

York is unusual in that it is already booming - why should we hog further development in the region? Shouldn't Without Walls be calling for redevelopment of areas vacated by this population shift, particularly in Hull and the region's inner cities?

York has to choose between the university plans, the green belt and becoming the capital of Yorkshire. Given your strong support for university expansion, the council must now refuse the idea of becoming the capital of Yorkshire if it is to save the green belt and its beauty as a small city.

For these reasons I have asked that the leader scrutiny panel of York council considers the question of the location of an assembly carefully.

Meanwhile, the Local Strategic Partnership needs to completely revise its plans. The whole tenor of your current plan is that York can have everything: university, Science City, expanding tourism, air transport, industry, and become Yorkshire's capital.

You can expect little but opposition from this part of the community.

Updated: 11:32 Thursday, August 28, 2003