Do we yet know which direction Cowley Road in Oxford is taking? Is it to become a soulless and homogenised thoroughfare of bland chain stores?

Will it eventually become characterised by the uniformity seen in high streets elsewhere?

Global chains - coffee shops, fast food outlets, mobile phone shops - are expanding aggressively into high streets on an international scale.

Is globalisation of our local thoroughfares to be one of vibrant ethnic and cultural diversity?

Or is it to be the globalisation of profit maximisation where corporate chains dominate the market place? In 2006, some 250 independent cafés closed in Paris. Compare lively family-owned shops and cafés in Belgian streets with our own. Cowley Road must be guaranteed to remain with locally-owned shops, cafés and bars.

Establishments that are rooted in and responsive to their communities must be allowed and encouraged to thrive.

Individually owned shops are more personal and different from those of the global chains.

The corporate business chains eradicate spontaneity and the friendly touch found in individually owned cafés and bars. An action plan has been launched in Paris to save independent bookshops, galleries, cinemas and cafés on the Left Bank. Paris Council buys properties to keep them out of the hands of the global chains.

We are losing the friendly 'locals' that catered for and attracted customers of all ages.

Places that provided a focal social point for all within communities are declining in numbers. They are replaced by uniform 'vertical drinking' bars - purveying alco-pops and nitro-beers for 20 or 30 somethings.

Soon, if the global chains have their way, we will see European city thoroughfares in London, Oxford, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere all looking the same - same shops, same coffees, same chickens, same burgers, a globalised world of same streets where we all eat and drink the same and wear the same clothes while we do it.

We must do all we can to retain Cowley Road with its multi-cultural and multi-ethnic diversity and personality.

We must say that there are no premises, or promises, for turbo-capitalism in Cowley Road.

Cannot Oxford City Council buy properties as they do in Paris? Is Oxford city centre's homogeneity really what is appropriate for the other side of Magdalen Bridge?

ERIC EDWARDS Craufurd Road Oxford