Focuses on Thamesgate, an ambitious private scheme, which aims to transform the tiny south Essex settlements of East Tilbury and Linford into a new town of 15 000 homes and 10 000 jobs by 2030. It raises the environmental dilemma of creating a carbon-neutral, genuinely sustainable community on green belt land. Describes master developer Thamesgate Regeneration Ltd's (TRL) plans to design Thamesgate to match the government Community Plan vision: investment in infrastructure improvements; building a new town centre; subsidising affordable homes; and crucially the unlocking of greenfield land, which alone would be profitable enough to secure the investment for sustainability. TRL argues that environmentalists will have to abandon blind loyalty to the green belt principle to see sustainable development created in the Thames Gateway. Provides reaction to the proposed scheme from a range of experts.