Sir – Is it some municipal equivalent of ‘penis envy’ that drives council leaders Bob Price and Ian Hudspeth to devise inappropriate and damaging expansion schemes, complaining about Cambridge stealing a march on poor downtrodden Oxford (City leaders ask why Cambridge is streets ahead, October 2)?

 

    It appears that these people see Oxford as an inadequate little town when it could be a burgeoning metropolis, and are happy to ruin its ambience and setting to achieve their grandiose dreams. The Green Belt is just an outdated hindrance, and who cares about the view from Port Meadow or convenient local swimming in Temple Cowley...

 

    Oxford has had a housing shortage for decades, yet these clowns want to create 9,000 jobs in their ‘Northern Gateway’, but only 600 houses. How does that solve anything when most of the high-tech jobs will be taken by incomers, who just might need somewhere to live? Oxford doesn’t ‘need’ these jobs, they are just planned to satisfy the politicians’ megalomania. Why does a massive new Westgate win over housing? Why pursue an ugly oversize scheme no one wants in Botley just because some developer wants to make a killing?

 

    And why on earth imitate Cambridge? I studied there in the mid-1960s, and going back now I hardly recognise the place, apart from the mostly preserved centre.

 

The town has infilled right up to the A14 bypass, and spread east and south, thousands of acres of green land built on in the last 50 years.   My daughter, who lives there, sighs longingly for Oxford’s far better bus service. No, don’t copy Cambridge, it’s a sprawling mess.

 

    Our insensitive ‘modernising’ leaders, Labour (city) and Tory (county) should be ashamed, and indeed be shamed. How about the Oxford Preservation Trust commissioning a series of Black Plaques, which instead of praising the person remembered, list their crimes against the city’s heritage — and don’t wait till they’re dead either!

 

Anthony Cheke, Oxford