Message from Without Walls chairman Coun Steve Galloway, July 21, 2004.

THIS vision is about improving the day-to-day life of the people who live and work here.

For many people, York is already a great place to be. Our city's assets are so obvious they hardly need to be spelled out.

But is enough being done to make best use of them, for the benefit of all residents?

How can we make sure that residents are able to take pride in their own street, neighbourhood and city? Often our city speaks for itself through its unique historic past, but we mustn't be complacent.

We want people to have confidence in the future.

The process of creating a vision and strategy for the future of York has brought many people together from wide ranging backgrounds through the Festival of Ideas and three city conferences. We collected many, many hundreds of comments about how people would like to see York develop over the next 20 years, there were many varied views. The one thing that has united everyone is terrific passion for this fantastic city of ours.

'York - a city making history' marks the beginning of the process in setting out what we will be doing today to secure the future we all want.

We are grateful to everyone who has contributed so far and look forward to working with you all in making York a city of which we can all be proud.

Updated: 12:38 Thursday, July 22, 2004