Take a look at Lewes Road in Brighton the next time you come into the city and if you haven’t been there for a while you will be startled.

The spacious feel of this road between the Bates estate and the Vogue gyratory has all but gone. Instead there are uncompromising new blocks of offices, retail warehouses and student flats crammed into the area giving it the air of a mini Manhattan rather than Moulsecoomb.

There are jobs being provided by Brighton University, private enterprise and the city council at a rate not seen since the Sixties.

Some of us cheered when the polytechnic became a university and started rivalling Sussex a mile up the road. We asked both institutions to provide homes for students and they did.

We looked a little glum when Sussex created suburbia stretching far into the South Downs for its student homes. But at least they were bland enough to blend into the background.

Head towards the far end of Mile Oak in Portslade, and you will see some new houses high on a hill. They will be a blot on the rural landscape for years to come.

What’s more, the people unfortunate enough to live there will be assaulted day and night by the noise from the Brighton bypass.

Brighton has been a cramped city ever since it started several centuries ago as a fishing village. The tiny houses were huddled against the cliff for protection against the fierce gales.

Some of the slums erected in the 19th century were crowded too and Sun Street off Edward Street was so narrow it only received sunlight for two hours daily at best.

The square mile including Marine Parade and Elm Grove was the most crowded anywhere in the South East outside London. This area included cemeteries and I reckon the dead have more space than the living.

Councillors decided to pull down slums from the Thirties onwards. At first the replacement houses were spacious and each one came with an allotment-sized back garden so that tenants could be self-sufficient in fruit and veg.

Then in the Sixties, the first skyscrapers were built in the Albion Hill area blotting out views of the Royal Pavilion.

They were remarkably ugly but at least some areas of greenery were provided around their bases.

This was more than could be said for the monumental blocks that followed them once the skyscrapers had been judged unsuitable for children to inhabit. They were lower but bulky and forbidding. In Hove the skyscrapers built off Clarendon Road were at first intended to go all the way down to Clarendon Villas but they were so hideous that the council stopped there and then.

But now there are new skyscrapers being built. They have already appeared at the marina where they will soar far higher than the cliffs.

There are more going up inland – not just in Lewes Road but also in London Road. All these developments will provide welcome homes and jobs. But they are changing the face of Brighten and not for the better.

Why do most skyscrapers have to look so plain and gaunt? Brighton is not expecting to see an Empire State building on the seafront but surely it deserves better design than it is getting. Precious green spaces are also being lost all the time to extensions and it is astonishing how big they can be before needing planning permission.

A minor monstrosity has been erected this summer from a house near where I Iive in West Hove. It does not affect me directly apart from being an architectural aberration but it is dominating nearby houses.

All day long white vans fill the suburban streets and gardens are turned into parking lots. Traffic is increasing with some side streets busier than many main roads were 20 years ago.

The government keeps telling councils like Brighton and Hove they must meet tougher targets to build hundreds more homes.

Yet there is less land available in the city by the sea than in almost any other area outside the big conurbations. Things have reached such a state that many householders are rebuilding their homes to create more space. Surely it will not be long before the first planning applications are submitted to build vast basements below houses as is already happening in London.

Quite ordinary suburban semis in Hove are selling, often to wealthy Londoners, for more than a million pounds. This is forcing out local people. The government should restrict new housing in the city unless it is for affordable homes. This will allow Brighton and Hove to breathe again.

There is plenty of land available in much of the Midlands and the North. Let those sites take the pressure off Brighton and Hove, allowing it to breathe again.

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