Sir – The April 10 edition of The Oxford Times raises fundamental issues concerning the future of Oxford and Oxfordshire.

The front page reports the CPRE’s fears that a Greater Oxford is inevitable, the thought-provoking editorial entitled Price to pay suggests that our local councillors have been strong-armed into endorsing policies that they are unhappy with and Mark Barrington-Ward’s letter tells us that the policy of curbing the city’s growth is now dead [Who has killed it?].

I was looking forward to seeing your readers’ responses in the April 17 edition and was disappointed to find none at all.

Oxford is in the fortunate position of having little unemployment. When there is already great difficulty in housing those who are employed, does it make sense to be creating further jobs at the expense of the environment? Do we really need, as councillor Hudspeth suggests, to compete with Shanghai and Seattle?

Perhaps the expertise of our universities could best be harnessed by their working on a new economics through which we might achieve prosperity and development without growth. ‘Sustainable growth’ is an impossibility when available space is finite.

Before accepting that these radical changes to Oxfordshire and Oxford are inevitable, we should have a proper discussion about the nature of the county and town that we would like our grandchildren to inherit.

Simon Mollison, Oxford