THE chance to mould a city of the future is being offered to York's residents.

The Without Walls partnership is urging anybody with an interest in the city to help formulate plans for how it should look in 20 years time.

It could be that you want yourself and your children to be living in a 24-hour party city, or perhaps one with outstanding modern architecture.

Or maybe you think York's future development should concentrate on tourism and emphasise its outstanding history.

Without Walls is involving more than 100 community groups to work in partnership with city residents to discover what people want.

Project director Paul Murphy said: "There are some really big questions about the future of York that nobody has come up with answers for.

"We want to ask what sort of city are we going to be living in in 20 years time, what do we want it to be like?

"York is the sort of city that many of us will grow old in, and that many of our children will stay in, and obviously we care about what sort of city it is going to be."

He said views about all sorts of development will be welcomed.

"We want to know what people think about the sort of building we should be doing. Should we be building innovative stuff like the Lowry Centre in Manchester, in developments such as that on the land behind the railway station?

"But it's very important that people realise there is much more involved in this than architecture.

"I know a lot of people think the night life in the city is not brilliant. Do we want it to be a 24-hour city with great night clubs, or should we be saying that's not really our business and we should be a quieter city?

"And there are questions like should we be looking at York becoming European City of Culture sometime in the next 20 years? How are we going to solve transport problems to stop our roads being gridlocked? There are so many questions, and we want to hear what the people in the city think."

More than 100 community groups are being invited to a conference on November 26 to begin forming ideas.

Anybody with an interest is asked to let them know what they think.

Ideas can be sent to Adam Nichols, Evening Press, 76/86 Walmgate, York, YO1 9YN, or adam.nichols@ycp.co.uk. They will be forwarded to Without Walls.

Updated: 09:40 Friday, November 15, 2002