Celebrity historian Tristram Hunt has told the government and developers that the Thames Gateway must look to its history to avoid becoming another Harlow, Basildon or Bracknell “monuments to the arrogance of planners and politicians who were dismissive of human sentiment for roots and a sense of place.” Writing in The Guardian Hunt also said the area should not go the way of the Docklands and its “wealthy enclaves of penthouse flats." Hunt said: “From the Romans to Empire Windrush, from the Saxons settling at Swanscombe to the Sikhs of Gravesend, the Thames Gateway is a historical setting fundamental to the story of multi-ethnic, multi-layered Britain." He added: “Ignoring the fiscal demands of the housebuilders and barbs of the modernist elites, what is needed is an injection of local, vernacular architecture providing homes and towns with a sense of connection with the past.”