Howley Terrace was a great place to visit . . . a second home for us London kids. My best friend Elaine and I were in and out of each other's houses as if we owned them, and we had Mrs Grehan at number 7 harassed for her apple tart. As a teenager I can remember sneaking out to a disco and my grandmother sticking her head out the bedroom window at midnight to roar at me when she heard me giggling with some boy on the river wall.

We took living near the town for granted. We walked everywhere, even late at night we felt safe and our parents were happy to let us wander about in a way they would have never allowed in London. During our summers here we weren't tied to lifts or curfews or warnings, we had freedom to wander the terrace because they knew our neighbours would look out for us.

There are only three of the original residents left on the terrace now, my mother and her immediate neighbours left and right. A developer has just bought two houses next door to one another which they plan to develop into an apartment block. Because of its proximity to the town centre and its riverfront location Howley Terrace is a developer's delight. It's not hard to predict that before too long this charming residential street will be taken over by fancy apartments and office suites. After all, why waste convenience and natural beauty on the lives of families when the space can be chopped up into so many more money-making units?

It makes perfect sense to lure families out to housing estates on the edge of town, where they can look into each others gardens from shiny but shoddy new houses that might outlast them but not their children. Then the prime town-centre locations can be used to make lots of money for a handful of grabby individuals. After all, that's progress isn't it? A few canny greedy people get to live in huge haciendas, the majority of families live in soulless housing estates and the centre of each town is given over to industry and business.

I hate what is happening to our town landscapes and 'progress' seems a decidedly one-sided trend that is happening at such a ferocious rate it frightens me. My mother and her neighbours have seen a lot of changes on their street. They struggle with noise from the nightclub at the end of the the road but have developed and maintained a good relationship with the management. This year they got council money for window boxes to smarten the terrace up . . . they take pride in their gardens and work hard to present a pretty, respectable front to their houses. They just want to live where they have always lived, where their parents lived, secure in the knowledge that their children will inherit these solid, cottages and might continue living there as happily as they did. Yet the residents feel as if 'progress' is pushing them out . . . and it's hard to reassure them otherwise.