Once upon a time, the frontage at Churchill Square's shops was owned

by Brighton and Hove City Council - one half of a painfully obviously missing town square.

Doubling its area and wrapping shops around three sides would have been a service to both community and commerce.

What we got instead was an American-style "mall" that is hard, brassy and alien.

The frontage is no longer socially available in the open way it was. Now its continued use is a matter of conflict, as Peter Poole (Letters, February 20) stated, or fast-food consumption at one of the kiosks and caravans there.

Somehow, natural, organic, habitual patterns of use never find their way into incorporation as part of design and development. But does one associate intelligent, empathic, sympathetic and obvious action with either councils or developers?

Maybe one day. I live in hope.

-V Paynter, Clarendon Road, Hove