The following article by Jonathan Glancy in The Guardian gives a taster of what is to come.

If you feel strongly about Thames Gateway, visit  http://beehive.thisisessex.co.uk/thamesgateway to find out more and get advice on what you can do.


"Like that just-one-more chocolate biscuit or glass of wine, building along the Thames marshes is something we know we shouldn't do, but simply can't resist. In the next few years what is euphemistically known as the Thames Gateway, a vast stretch of land on either side of London's river from Canary Wharf to the estuary, will be blanketed in dull new dormitory housing estates. These "sustainable communities" will be shot through with a circus of gimcrack "iconic" buildings and palette-loads of public art. The present misty, mournful character of the area, a beauty that needs a lifetime to appreciate, will be gone for ever in the dimwitted rush to meet government targets for new housing in the economically superheated southeast.

"There is talk of a national park here as a palliative to the roar of new roads, the showrooms of new cars, the superstores, multiplexes and all the usual junk that, once built, will crack and sink into the uncertain foundations of these wind-whipped marshes.

"We will regret this folly, but not before a special English landscape has been turned into nothing worth having. If we have to build here - and we don't - we should be touching the ground as fleetingly and as lightly as a marsh harrier. For, above all, fish, fox, sheep, cattle, hares, damselflies and water voles aside, this is a world for birds."