We live in the charming lace network of streets of Osney and the neighbouring North Hinksey across the willows and millennial old flood meadows which ‘planners’ wish to separate with a 60 metre wide channel, spanned at Willow Walk by a vast bridge. The scheme, which involves the felling of thousands of trees, recalls the worst of the ‘function over form’ mindset of brutalist modern architecture, in an unproven effort to address floods which may not even work.