Sir – In your piece (Concerns lead to changes to Westgate plans, January 30), you report that the new plans include “more window displays and entrances to the shops — creating a so-called ‘more active frontage’ according to the developer.”

Most people have no difficulty understanding what a shop front is and likewise know the other end is the back. And that is why if the shopfronts face each other in the American ‘mall’ arrangement all their backs face outwards. This is what happens in the existing Westgate Centre and is why two-thirds of its perimeter consists of blank walls. Who would want to emulate such a grim building?

Apparently the answer is, developers. The current proposal to extend Westgate is the fourth. Each developer has chosen this mall configuration and each time it has been criticised on the grounds that it presents an unattractive backside to all the surrounding public areas.

Westgate Alliance’s reaction to being asked to change this arrangement is to claim that the backs are fronts! So your reporter is quite right to say ‘so-called’ fronts, since they are, in fact, backs.

Why do developers persist with this arrangement, knowing that it has these disadvantages? What is it about this arrangement that makes them keep choosing it? There is clearly a conflict between our interests and those of the developers. The planning committee should ask them to explain the compelling case for doing it their way so that an informed choice can be made. If the developer can’t, or won’t, make such a case they should be asked to get their designers to try again with a new arrangement. There is no alternative is not acceptable.

Alan Alcock, Oxford