If I were her, I'd find it profoundly depressing, not to mention embarrassing. By now, downtown Kirkcaldy should be a standard-bearer for the whole New Labour project, testament to Labour's able handling of the economy and its commitment to taking people out of poverty.

It is, after all, her husband's adopted home, his very own Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency, and he is no marginalised Old Labour MP, but PM, former chancellor, finger on the power button and all that.

It's not as if he can turn around and say "It's nothing to do with me" and point the finger of blame elsewhere. Historically, Kirkcaldy was a Labour fiefdom from top to toe. By now Brown should have galvanised civic leaders into action.

But passing through Kirkcaldy last week, it reminded me of the bleakest towns in Sicily, minus the sun. Towns that have lost the war against "abusivismo", or illegal building.

Places where the mafia has siphoned off every euro cent of aid money, leaving a prevailing sense of hopelessness among the population as hopes of progressive change are repeatedly crushed. The difference in Kirkcaldy is that we aren't dealing with gangsters. Decision, after perfectly legal planning decision boils down to year after lamentable year of Labour municipalism.

The New Economics Foundation was pretty restrained, really, when it surveyed Kirkcaldy in 2005, the year that Gordon Brown became the new constituency's MP. "Walking down the high street bears little recognition of the fact that this was the birthplace of classical economist Adam Smith and the place where Gordon Brown was brought up.

Not only has Kirkcaldy recently been named one of the poorest places in Britain, but our survey of the busiest part of its high street shows that it is on its way to becoming a clone town." The NEF only hinted at the scale of the problem.

The great Scottish architect, Robert Adam, another native of the town, would be mortally affronted by Kirkcaldy's present state. Walking along the desolate high street of a balmy evening, the centre was eerily empty. The retail mix on offer may even have worsened since the NEF considered it.

A proliferation of dilapidated empty premises, shored up by charity shops, gaming parlours and shops that will, for a fee, cash your cheque, no matter how deep in debt you are. It is clogged with building society branches and estate agents but nothing so useful as a butcher or a greengrocer.

There's just enough of the older, historic buildings left to whisper what a solid, handsome architectural heritage Kirkcaldy must have had, before the civic worthies got round to tearing it down to make way for shoddy concrete follies.

Actually, you could use Kirkcaldy as a case study in how to kill off a oncethriving town centre. Number one: Identify the busiest street and pedestrianise it. In modern times, Scotland has not been blessed with the most talented architects and planners, but when are they going to realise that pedestrianisation only works on a large scale, as exemplified by cities such as Strasbourg and Verona, where well thought-out, extensive pedestrianisation is supported by good public transport and park-and-ride schemes?

Piecemeal, tokenistic pedestrianisation as we know it in small-town Scotland is a proven disaster.

Number two: Compound this error with a one-way system around the pedestrianised area so that the whole momentum of the road layout encourages people to bypass the centre, rather than spending time in it.

Number three: Say yes to every planning application for edge-of-town retail parks and supermarkets. With their bays of free parking they act as giant Hoovers sucking all the retail life out of the traditional centre, killing off independent shops. I'm talking about Kirkcaldy, but the same calamitous policies have devastated previously bustling centres such as Peterhead, Kilmarnock, Fort William and Arbroath.

There's something called the Kirkcaldy Renaissance Board, which, among other goals, is set on regenerating the waterfront area. Good luck to it, although the word "regeneration" sends a chill down the spine.

The planning crimes of today were yesteryear's ambitious regeneration proposals. And with so many corporate snouts in the trough offering to "anchor" developments whose benefits are generally over-hyped, you can't help wondering if the town, like so many throughout Scotland, is just looking up at the next impending round of planning blight.

True to its clonetown genre, Kirkcaldy now has two shopping malls straddling the high street, the ailing sort now referred to in the US as "dead malls" or "greyfields". Doubtless these featured prominently in previous regeneration plans.

It'll take a damn sight more than spindly trees in concrete planters festooned with fag-butts and naff municipal "street furniture" to reclaim Scotland's deadbeat town centres.

Scots town planning has been crap - let's admit it and charge the Scottish government with drawing up a radical new civic planning strategy that could create town centres we can feel proud of.