So developers, the executive director of the the Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership, and the chairman of that Partnership, Simon Fanshawe, tell us we must embrace what they call "progress" and advocate further souless architecture totally out of character with Brighton.

Not long ago the area around the Clock Tower had charm, character, and was utterly distinctive to Brighton. Now, apart from the Clock Tower itself, you could be virtually anywhere on the globe.

Preumably these developers and self-proclaimed spokespersons for Brighton and Hove would regard the loss of the Regent cinema and the building of the glass and plastic boxes of Boots and the new Quadrant buildings opposite as "progress".

Nonsense. Such structures - and Brighton has too many already, as pointed out in B Carias's letter (April 17), only represent the soulless clone-town temples to so-called "progress" which exist everywhere.

They are built in homage to cost-effectiveness and profit, with no concern for aesthetics and trying to bring beauty, grace and charm into people's lives.

These developers are interested only in profit. If the schemes planned for the King Alfred, the Brighton Centre - another glass box, clearly perfectly in keeping with what's left of the seafront's Victorian and Regency architecture - and others go ahead, they will not be revered in one or two hundred years time.

Rather, they will, in a far shorter period of time, look tacky, pretentious and utterly visionless, with nothing to say to the people of Brighton or the human heart and spirit.

There must be new buildings but where are architects with real vision? Further, I believe it is unacceptable that Simon Fanshawe insults councillors on the planning committee as "small-minded" for rejecting the proposed marina development when he is chairman (and presumably paid for being so) of a PR company which works for the firm developing the marina.

This does not suggest the level playing field that Jean Calder advocated in her recent article (The Argus, April 16). You damage a town's character when you try to turn it into a cloned monstrosity of everywhere else, and that damages people.

Oh, and to indignant architect Mr Thornton (Letters, April 17) - judging by what some architects have designed in recent years, I'd say they need to ditch their arrogance and unlearn their seven years of study. The man and woman in the street - and councillors - often have far better ideas of what good design is.

-Michael Winter, Westdene