Please send letters for the website, clearly marked FORUM, to Julia Dawson at: julia.dawson@emap.com or The Architectural Review, Greater London House, Hampstead Road, London NW1 7EJ, England. DUBAI DEFENCE SIR: Surely Suffolk can’t be as dreadful as Peter Cook makes it sound? Or Dubai damned for not satisfying our appetite for architectural imagery? True, notional uniformities of artifice, abundance and youth make it hard to force those notional oppositions of machine-in-Nature, jewel-in-declining-industrial-city, or ‘spaceship’ in Oldsville that so flatter the Modernist object. This brings out the worst in us. It makes us quick to talk of architectural theme parks and dismiss the Dubai Opera House as 'another gaudy bauble in the Emirates’ pipeline', when it would be astounding anywhere and in its own right. Dubai just can’t win. Old places have cultures that ‘fold’ upon other cultures but the Dubai equivalent is ‘polyglot citizenry’. Old places have eccentrics and ‘spirited and quizzical’ minds but Dubai is populated with ‘achievers’ insensitive to Noh and watercolours. Such places collect ironies, apparently. The biggest one of all is that Dubai and those 'zany artificial palm-tree peninsulas' are the instant city realised but Cook can’t admit it. I think we should really be fostering more positive attitudes towards new cities – especially when it looks like there’s going to be comparatively fewer old ones to escape to. Or from. Yours etc Graham McKay