SUPPORTERS of the Thames Gateway call it a land of opportunity, but the development and regeneration project, which stretches along the banks from Greenwich and Newham in East London to the Kent and Essex coasts, has no shortage of detractors. Dubbed “Prescottgrad” or “the land that time forgot” by sceptics, Thames Gateway has some way to go before it can be embraced as a model of how to regenerate an urban environment.

While housing developments are well under way, critics say that insufficient supporting infrastructure — schools, hospitals and transport — could limit the region’s appeal for homeowners. There is a fear that developers are building far too many flats when demand will be for houses — preferably spacious family homes with parking spaces and gardens. And most importantly, the critics say, these and other problems will never be solved as long as Thames Gateway is left to develop piecemeal, designed by a committee of myriad different agencies.

There is now a Thames Gateway chief executive, Judith Armitt, the former CEO of Medway Council, who was appointed last month. Some experts are disappointed that a higher-profile planner was not given the top job.

There are fears, too, that Thames Gateway could turn out to be a giant white elephant. Professor Tim Dixon, of the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development at Oxford Brookes University, says that planners are failing in their key aim to create sustainable communities. “Despite the evidence of a number of successful schemes on sites in Thames Gateway, there is a danger that we are creating transient communities, where residents commute long distances to work and may end up staying in the area only for a short period.”

The problem, Professor Dixon says, is the lack of infrastructure: “Families won’t stay around if the schools and hospitals aren’t there. You will get a high turnover of people.”

This is not his sole concern about the projects, however. “There is an over-emphasis on flats at the expense of family-friendly housing,” he says. This is a view shared by David Parry, who heads a Thames Gateway development team at Cluttons, the estate agency. “There is concern over the number of apartments that are being built,” Parry says, explaining that flats are attractive to developers because they are likely to be more profitable, particularly near the river. “You can get a 10 to 20 per cent premium for properties on the waterfront, so you want as much overlooking the water as you can,” he explains. But profit is not the sole concern: it does make sense to build flats in high-rise blocks rather than houses in areas that may be prone to flooding. Parry adds that there is a conflict between the demands of planners, who want to reduce the amount of car parks required in Thames Gateway, and the fact that many families have two cars.

Peter Murray, director of Turning the Tide: Regenerating London’s Thames Gateway, an exhibition at New London Architecture, believes that the area needs a lot of apartments — the key is where they are situated. Unless there is a “dense core” of flats in the part of Thames Gateway closest to London, he says that “there is a danger that we will end up with a great sprawl of suburban houses all the way to Southend”.

What is needed to ensure the right mix of different types of housing, Murray says, is some sort of overall strategy. “There is a lack of coherent physical planning,” he says. “The political agenda has more to do with non- physical issues, such as employment, sustainability and economic regeneration, but what is needed is a more strategic view, such as Terry Farrell’s proposal of a national park.”

Terry Farrell is an architect and urban designer who has a strategic vision for the entire Gateway region, which would concentrate 90 per cent of the planned development within the M25, allowing for a much lower density of housing in the rest of the region. Farrell argues that other English cities, such as Manchester and Sheffield, have wilderness on their doorstep and visible from the city, whereas London’s nearest national park is the Norfolk Broads, 120 miles away.

Farrell’s vision is just one idea, but this is precisely what the region needs. “This is the kind of project that requires the passion of an individual to lead the way,” Murray says. “At the moment we find ourselves in the strange situation where the whole area is being regenerated but it is hard to see the area as a whole, simply because there are so many different organisations involved. ”

Without someone to pull together the various projects in the region, some experts fear the developments could be short-lived. Parry says: “We need to look to the future. We don’t want to build soulless estates, and most of all we don’t want to build something that is going to be pulled down in 50 years’ time.”

BUSY BODIES

Overall responsibility for Thames Gateway lies with the Department for Communities and Local Government. However, many other bodies are involved in the project. These include: 17 local authorities, two county councils, three regional assemblies, three regional development agencies, the Housing Corporation, Transport for London, English Heritage, English Nature, the Olympic Delivery Authority, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, and the R SPB.

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