Thread by @danhind

Perhaps of interest to people in the North East Kent Conurbation Confusingly Known As Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs. #thanet

Thanet is obviously a place with its own needs and interests, distinct from most of Kent, though somewhat similar to Medway. It needs to be a unitary authority now, and one that trials new forms of democratic engagement. (Local government dysfunction helps the far right here.)

Thanet also needs to rethink its relationship with its rural/agricultural hinterland. At the moment much of it is an intensively farmed wasteland with a ruinous out-of-town shopping centre in the middle. It needs to be joined up to the towns, and to the visitor offer.

A landscape that could host thousands of camping holiday-makers every summer and sell them heirloom fruit and vegetables, bespoke ales and speciality honey is an inaccessible cauliflower factory that is gradually being turned into car-dependent executive estates.

Campsites, barbecue spots, nature reserves and environmentally friendly food production linked to the coast by a network of cycle lines could offer visitors a glimpse of a better way of life and form the basis for a tourist economy that delivers high wages.

This is the sort of thing that preoccupies me on my daily lockdown walks ... How people can start to imagine a future for the places where they live, and take the power needed to make it a reality.