Coppergate questions

How much retail space is there in York relative to similar towns and cities in Britain?

What is it specifically that makes York so deserving of an extra 250,000 square feet of space?

I ask as a person who has seen York's retail heart dragged in far too many directions.

This would appear to have left the traditional city with many empty retail sites.

Taking charity shops into account and then adding the recent 'explosion' of new coffee shops that have sprung up in our streets, one can only speculate as to how healthy our retail heart is?

York has been very lucky having survived both World War Two and the planning excesses and short-sightedness of the Sixties and Seventies.

It would appear that, in these enlightened times, we are going to plan to do what our predecessors did not do; destroy our almost unique architectural heritage.

K J Scott,

Stonegate, York.

... I READ about the exhibition, held in the York Story between Monday and Sunday July 3 to 16 regarding the proposed development at Clifford's Tower.

As I understood it, the council was collecting public opinions.

So I went along expecting an unbiased presentation of the development and the objections raised to it.

I watched the nine-minute video which had been advertised as being produced by an award-winning director and which we were led to believe presented the issues clearly and objectively.

In reality it turned out that the event was entirely a developer's promotion of the scheme where they were allowed to present a totally one-sided version of the effects of their proposal.

They then invited visitors to fill in an official City of York Council response form and post it into a black voting box.

I think it is outrageous of the council to endorse the official collection of public opinion from an event such as this where counter arguments were not presented alongside the developer's propaganda.

Dawn Biram,

River Street, York.