THE Herald has teamed up with Prospect magazine to showcase the Carbuncle awards, encouraging readers to vote for the most dismal place in Scotland. The idea is to prompt greater ambition in urban planning and design.

The shortlisted areas are Ardrossan, Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Greenock, Irvine and Granton in Edinburgh.

The Herald will publish, day-by-day, a critique of each place prepared by Prospect's advisory panel, together with a response from someone with a more positive view of the place. Today it is Irvine's turn.

What the judging panel said:

In 1964, Willie Ross became secretary of state for Scotland under Harold Wilson. From Ayrshire, he was determined that his home patch should benefit from the new town movement. A year earlier, the Scottish Office had published a white paper called Central Scotland: A Programme for Development and Growth.

This policy document was about identifying areas which should receive financial aid from the government. Irvine Town Council got the nod and Irvine new town was born.

Except it wasn't.

The plan, by Wilson and Womersley, went through a series of refinements. The first revision was published in 1971.

Although the Brig was demolished, the impressive single deck concept which was intended to replace it was curtailed.

In 30 years, Irvine's population grew by only 21,000 people, quarter of the number contained in the original proposal.

It is as if the town were riddled with guilt for the failure of this vision.

When the Scottish Maritime Museum opened in 1983, it dragged a large Linthouse engine shed from Glasgow and rebuilt it in Heritage Square.

The Big Idea opened in 2000 at a cost of GBP14m and closed three years later. The town seems to be struggling under the weight of the huge plans that the world had for it in the 1960s, unable to escape.

The defence Andrew O'Hagan:

I think they have got it wrong.

Irvine has a slightly horrible shopping mall, but then so does Edinburgh and so does Glasgow. But Irvine also has its noble harbour, a beautiful moor, the romantic splendours of Eglinton Park, the rare old wynd of the Glasgow Vennel, Seagate Castle, four or five excellent pubs and a good view of Arran.

It has also been a royal burgh for 650 years, weathering, in that time, the Jacobites and the land reformers, the press gang and the meal mob. I think it will have no problem coping with the insults of an architectural magazine.

Those of us who grew up around Irvine have reasons to hold it in high esteem. It has been a place of vivid human business, but on a fine night down at the beach park it feels to me like a place on the lip of the future. That is how it always thought of itself: it looks towards the west and saw many a ship passing that way in more prosperous days, and it should not be blamed for ever overresponding to the possibilities of a new future.

I left Irvine when I was younger, but an important part of me may never leave it. People might laugh at its buildings and its housing estates, but some of us still see them as the developers intended. The novelist in me will always be amazed by its contradictions.

Andrew O'Hagan is a novelist and journalist engaged in a project for Unicef.

How to vote

Readers can cast their vote by e-mail or text message, which will then be passed on to Prospect.

Text: Start the message by entering the keyword SCVOTE, leave a space and then key in the name of your choice and then send it to 88010. Texts cost 25p plus your mobile operator's charge. Service provided by Newsquest Media Group.

E-mail: Send name of the town to newsdesk@theherald. co. uk using Carbuncle as the subject.

Post: Send the relevant details to: The Herald/Carbuncle awards, Marketing Dept, 200 Renfield Street, Glasgow G2 3QB.

Website: Log on to www. prospectmagazine. com/ carbuncles/ follow the instructions.

All votes must be received by Thursday, October 20, 2005.