The letter "Save Brighton" (Letters, May 1) concerning high rent and rates driving out small businesses makes a good point. In contrast, Londoners are experiencing a revival of the capital's village heritage.

Traditional family-shop High Streets and community shopping parades are reviving, while local markets are attracting fashionable communities, drastically reducing car use across the metropolis.

This is not so in Brighton and Hove, what with its new car-preferred hypermarkets next to Brighton Station and Hove's pedestrianised George Street and the demolition of family homes for construction of high-rise tenement blocks, even on Hove's seashore.

One begins to wonder what is really going on in offices of car fume-asphyxiated town planners?

-John Stanaway, Hove