Recently the T&A reported plans for two new buildings in the city, and they couldn’t be more different. One is an insolent, intrusive development, an investment from outside the area, and the other, a sensible, sustainable and economic way forward, supported by members of a local Bradford community.

At the risk of sounding like the Prince of Wales, I am certain that the 38-floor Citygate Tower at the bottom of Manchester Road would destroy the Victorian and Edwardian building context of much of the city centre to an even greater extent than similar developments in Leeds Road, and it would overwhelm and overshadow the magnificent City Hall skyline.

While it’s not as horrendous as the half-mile high, 160-floor Dubai tower, it smacks of the same excesses and certainly does not seem to address the need for all development to be sustainable and to take heed of future energy problems.

Building high with fabricated materials – cement, steel and glass – usually means an enormous amount of CO2 released by their manufacture. They are generally high-maintenance structures and usually poorly prepared for possible future power shortages, apart from being the human equivalent of battery farming.

Indeed a useful rule of thumb for the future is that no building should be higher than the stairs you can walk up comfortably.

The plans for the new two-storey Newlands Community Association building meet this and many other conditions, following the standard set by the significantly-environmentally responsible Baildon Link Centre, the Ecology Building Society headquarters in Silsden and the Accent Housing Association houses in Fairweather Green.

The 3ft-thick straw bale walls will not only provide a high level of insulation, minimising the heating required, but they will store the carbon dioxide they took out of the air as the wheat and barley grow and sequester it away for decades to come – an excellent example of carbon capture and storage.

In addition, the use of a ground-source heat pump – to give space, heating and to store grey rainwater from the roof – ensures lower energy use, and cost, as well as an end to the nonsense of putting high-quality metered drinking water down the toilet.

From the top of Bolton Road, or Wibsey Bank, I want to see City Hall, Lister’s Mill and even the Ovenden wind turbines – but not the Citygate Tower monstrosity.