The newly completed New England Quarter is addressing housing needs in a city where property prices have risen more than anywhere else in the last decade. But is it any good?

Historian Chris Horlock takes a walk around the development - and finds it depressingly characteristic of a Sixties revival scarring Brighton and Hove.

I'll say this very quietly. I think the latest Brighton and Hove development named the New England Quarter is pretty awful.

Am I the only one?

I hadn't been to the area since widespread demolition took place a year or so ago and the site was a mass of hoardings with cranes rising up behind them.

I was keen to see how plans for the site had actually materialised, as finished buildings that is, and how the whole area was set to become a fresh neighbourhood of the city.

Yes, the area badly needed something doing to it - much was virtually derelict.

Some clearance work was done in the Fifties with what was called the Boston Street redevelopment scheme.

A largish swathe of old streets succumbed to clearance, full of substandard housing (the powers-that-be declared many were slums), old shops, garages and small industrial buildings.

The shopping precinct facing New England Road was then built plus New England House which was not an accommodation block but units for light industry. Further work followed in the Sixties so we lost places like Providence Place and the whole area, by the Eighties, was certainly up for grabs.

Now, in early 2007, the final £200 million grand design, taking over much of the area, has reached fruition.

And passing through, I thought was this really the best the city could come up with - seriously - for such a large and important site?

Who passed the plans for these 248 townhouses and apartments? Did they know what they'd be getting?

It's one thing to see glossy designs on paper, another to take in - and live with - the buildings when they're actually up and in use.

With any development, large or small, there is always the "wait and see" factor.

I started at Cheapside and worked round, northwards, to New England Road, passing block after monotonous block of sparkling new graph-paper designed apartments.

From the first on the right, to the last near New England House, I lost touch with being in Brighton and easily thought I could be abroad.

Down-town Beirut came to mind for some reason. And I kept thinking how they might look in ten or twenty years time ; when all the wooden slats used for decorative "finish have gone grey like garden fencing does over the years.

The buildings themselves are identical to those going up here there and everywhere at the moment.

We've seen it all before. Bloated, sterile and oh-so familiar looking, lacking inventiveness and variety.

These aren't places that becomes homes. They are just box-like accommodation, built with a "pile em high and sell em cheap" mentality.

I kept wondering why weren't proper houses built on the site?

You know, two-storey, conventional houses, with garages and driveways and gardens, plus grassy, landscaped areas.

And some tress - actually a lot of trees - wouldn't go amiss.

Well we know why, don't we? Because those behind the scheme can make far more money if they build up and cram the maximum number of apartments they can in the space available.

It's the Sixties mentality all over again, just as happened in the Richmond Street, Eastern Road and Hollingdean areas (among others) some 50 years ago.

Actually it's Thirties mentality too. That's when the Milner and Kingswood flats were built between Carlton Hill and Sussex Street. History has a way of repeating itself.

But clearly, the elected council thinks this is a good scheme. They passed it.

The blocks are very similar to holiday apartments I saw in the south of France last summer, between Cannes and Nice. Barren, cheaply built accommodation for holiday-makers - just somewhere short-term to stay, to eat and sleep, and to use as a base to access other places in the area.

Certainly nothing that could be called a home.

Such is the sameness of design, if there was an earthquake in the area (God forbid) and the blocks were jostled together, it is almost as if they'd interlock and form one gigantic building.

Like one of those foam puzzle cubes, which when taken apart, are almost impossible to put together again.

The development is that angular and hard-edged.

But will this development really become a thriving community? Does any area of high or even moderately low-rise buildings evolve into a neighbourhood?

I doubt it, if nobody can really individualise properties and make them their own, the hallmark of giving a community feel to a place. Entrance doors of different styles and colours, hanging baskets, front gardens laid out to the owner's preferences with gates, varied plants and ornamentation - this development will get none of these and will be an area to hurry past, not stroll through and see what people have made of their properties.

Just as every letter we receive now is computer generated and characterless, it is the same with modern buildings.

Will we ever see a sleeping cat curled up here on a window sill? Without some human handwriting over it, from its residents, we will never know who lives in the New England Quarter.

I think the development brings up a wider issue too. The old chestnut of what to do with buildings when they're past their sell-by date, such as what was there before the New England Quarter.

So not the listed stuff (although that goes pretty readily too - look at the West Pier). I'm thinking of more modest structures.

I reckon we're treating old buildings the same as old, outdated cars now.

Get them off the road. Jack up the MOT requirement and old bangers will be a thing of the past. The dealers approve, of course.

Everyone will have to buy newer cars, so their profits will be healthy.

Could it be the same with old buildings? Get them off the road too.

With enough spin and gloss, box-like apartments can made desirable and "must-have", just like the latest cars.

Look at the New England Quarter blurb. It is hailed as a "stunning landmark scheme" with its first showhome open for inspection described as offering "a truly modern take" on Brighton life (I ve no idea what that means).

It also says "the houses are exactly the same but each looks completely different". Really?

The developers, Barratts, have apparently created "a sophisticated, modern, yet classical scheme in the second showhome with colours drawn from a palette of beiges and browns complemented by elegant, specially commissioned artworks".

By what yardstick is all this a "classical scheme" or "sophisticated"?

Perhaps they do look better from the inside.

Yes, it does provide some much needed, low-cost housing in the city and housing is always preferable to yet more offices.

But if you're buying for £150,000, conditions apply, as they say.

There is a lot of small print to read. But money is the issue, not your comfort, convenience or well-being.

But cheap homes must be a plus. As I walked, I kept trying to weigh up the pros and cons.

Others must size up this new development and say what they think.

Someone must be ecstatic about it all. Perhaps the view from the top of the tower block is stunning. It certain isn't from the bottom.

In 1972, following the huge number of Sixties redevelopments, the ever prescient poet John Betjeman asked: "Will tall, cheaply built slabs replace everything in you see Brighton?"

He was usually right on building matters. Looks like he's going to be right again.

Where is the next New England Quarter going to rise? And then the next one?

And now that house prices in Brighton and Hove have risen faster than anywhere else in the whole country - as recently reported in The Argus - I bet the powers-that-be have their eye on several suitable sites right now.

Chris Horlock is the author of Brighton - The Sixties, available in all good bookshops.