I thank Dr David Bratt for his fine ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled "Our amaz­ing open spaces" in Tues­day's Guardian.

The ar­ti­cle shows a rare and sen­si­tive ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the val­ue of open spaces to peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties/neigh­bour­hoods and so­ci­ety in gen­er­al and I felt it de­serves pub­lic recog­ni­tion. It does not take a leap of in­tel­lect to ex­tend Bratt's ob­ser­va­tions to their ef­fect on the man­made en­vi­ron­ment (made up large­ly of build­ings and the spaces be­tween them) to ap­pre­ci­ate their pro­found ef­fect on their oc­cu­pants and the so­ci­eties they serve.

We must there­fore recog­nise the need for well-de­signed ur­ban de­vel­op­ment made up of land­scaped open spaces and build­ings. A so­ci­ety is re­flect­ed in its ar­chi­tec­ture and open spaces. And tell me, when was the last time we built a park in this coun­try? Food for thought be­fore its too late.

Bri­an Lewis

Reg­is­tered ar­chi­tect