If, a recent letter suggests, everything about Brighton is so thoroughly bankrupt, from the built environment to the people on the street, why do eight million visitors a year insist on subjecting themselves to this squalor?

The resident population is only 250,000, so well over seven million people must be coming from somewhere else. So why do they come?

Maybe they come for the fantastic seafront, improved beyond all measure over the past five years and still improving (plans for a new wet and dry children's play area) or, perhaps, despite the alleged bad service, it's the shopping opportunities (everything from the overwhelmingly successful Churchill Square to the fabulous bohemia of the North Laine).

Maybe they come for the antiques (Brighton voted best antiques town in Britain in 1999 by the British Antiques and Collectables Association), or the theatre (£30 million refurbishment of the Dome and Corn Exchange, £2 million refurbishment of the Theatre Royal, the Brighton Festival - the largest in England) or the free entertainment (London to Brighton bike ride, Party in the Park).

Maybe they come for the cuisine (more places to eat per head of population than anywhere outside London) or the architecture (the Royal Pavilion, the world-famous Lanes, the piers and wealth of Regency architecture).

Maybe they come to attend the hundreds of conferences held in the town (one of only three locations big enough to accommodate the Labour Party Conference) or in anticipation of all the developments in the pipeline (the new central library, the station goodsyard site, the North Street quadrant).

Maybe, just maybe, they come because they aren't living in the past but are looking forward to the future and when it comes to the future they realise, despite problems still to be addressed, Brighton entered the 21st Century with a very good one.

-Tony Mernagh, Brighton Town Centre Business Forum, North Street, Brighton