CLIFFORD'S Tower is a magnificent building and needs all the space it can get - preferably free from cars.

It is also fortunate in being situated close to the river on one side and the Castle Museum and Law Courts square on the other.

All it really needs is space. Paris is an immensely crowded city but holds its historic quality through the intelligent deployment of wonderful, often small, public gardens comprising neat avenues of trees, gravel pathways and simple benches. This is all that is required in the case of Clifford's Tower.

Is the city council big enough to turn away from the short-term gain of cash from developers who only wish to cram every area they can get their hands on with real estate.

It is with great interest we note the continuing debate about how many shops York actually wants being carried on in your columns.

York is surrounded by shopping mall satellites, Clifton Moor, McArthur Glenn and Monk's Cross etc. There's no need for more.

A green space to walk, pause and contemplate is part of the real heritage of York and what could be more appropriate than to make Clifford's Tower one of these?

Jeffrey and Susan Stern,

Little Hall,

Heslerton, York.

...THE Castle precinct offers the prospect of a great public square, as we see in Venice or Sienna, bordered by activities that bear witness to the diversity of York's culture and learning, its vitality, economy, history and civic pride.

This is an ancient gateway to York, a meeting place for citizens and visitors alike to celebrate urban life.

And what of the hinterland - the Foss and Piccadilly and the links back to Walmgate and beyond? Here is a place for a vibrant mix of uses, to act as a catalyst for the regeneration of a distinctive new quarter for our city. The vitality of a residential community, drawn from across society and underpinning local services; a focus for creative business and arts, with live-work apartments, studio-offices and workspace to serve the new economy; cultural activities to generate jobs and prosperity; galleries, restaurants, pavement cafes and shops, a business hotel, a creche for the city workers... a place for an evening meal or an early breakfast by the river before work. Yet, Coppergate II offers nothing more than the sterile monoculture of the universal shopping-centre and the multi-storey car park. It is unthinkable that this generation's contribution to history should be represented by the outdated and impoverished thinking of remote corporate financiers whose concept is no more elevated than that of Meadowhall.

John Regan,

Blenheim Terrace,

Leeds.