What matters most at the King Alfred site is not what the development looks like as a balsa-wood model but what it will look like in five or ten years' time.

By then, would the 750 flats be generating more black bin bags than the council can organise itself to collect? Will they be heaped up on Bank Holidays, with seagulls pulling at them, while pigeons streak the buildings with mess and rats scurry about?

Will the ground floors be boarded up because they are uninhabitable or unlettable?

Will the residents in the affordable housing be able to afford their service charges and will their lifts work? Will the noise from the inevitable skateboarders be bearable?

These are not idle questions. What Frank Gehry and Brad Pitt may not realise, as they sit making models in Santa Monica, is that Brighton and Hove is a poor city with a poorly-organised council and the money and management talent is not available locally to sustain a prestige development in prime condition.

Not least, because English freehold and leasehold law makes it difficult for residents to put things right. Look how long it took to get Embassy Court restored.

-Trevor Pateman, Brighton