Sir – After years of planning, Westgate risks being a 20th-century development, arriving just too late for 21st-century Oxford.

The city could end up creating more shopping space for large retailers, just as most of their sales are moving online and attitudes shift away from frequent purchases of imported and disposable goods.

It is also a model dependent on continued borrowing and cheap oil — neither of which may apply by the time Westgate is opened.

The jobs created are potentially at the expense of existing ones in Cornmarket as major retailers relocate. Oxford should look at alternatives. In London’s Shoreditch and Borough, new shopping and living areas are springing up organically. Local entrepreneurs are selling individual, often recycled products. They attract visitors because they are an alternative to our tired, identikit high streets. Redundant offices were re-modelled into retail space helped by sympathetic planning departments. Oxford’s Cowley Road gives a hint of how this might work here. Most shops are locally owned, some are pioneering cooperatives. The sales income recirculates in the area.

Similarly, the Covered Market is a major Oxford attraction — because it’s also an alternative to ‘clone town’ high streets. Achieving this needs vision and imagination, it means setting fair rent levels and perhaps offering support and mentoring so that new businesses can get started. I grew up in Nottingham, one of their small shops was taken by a local arts graduate; Paul Smith. That shop grew to become an international clothing chain employing hundreds of people in the UK. Could Oxford aspire to create something similar?

Mark Luntley, Oxford