Coordinates: 51°29′13″N 0°19′05″E / 51.487°N 0.318°E / 51.487; 0.318 The Thames Gateway is an area of land stretching 70 kilometres (43 mi) east from inner east London on both sides of the River Thames and the Thames Estuary. The area, which includes much brownfield land, has been designated a national priority for urban regeneration, taking advantage of the development opportunities realised by the completion of the High Speed 1 (officially known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link) rail line. It stretches from Westferry in Tower Hamlets to the Isle of Sheppey and extends across three of the regions of England. The development is delivered through regional development agencies, special purpose development corporations and local partnerships.

The Thames Gateway comprises sections of 16 different local government districts in three regions:

The area accommodates around 1.6 million people and contains some of the most deprived wards in the country, characterised by lack of access to public transport, services, employment and affordable quality housing. Its boundary was drawn to capture the riverside strip that formerly hosted many land extensive industries, serving London and the South East, whose decline has left a legacy of large scale dereliction and contaminated land, such as around Tilbury.^{[citation needed]}

James Spencer Cleverly (born 4 September 1969) is Leader of the Conservative group on the London Assembly, the Chairman of the London Waste and Recycling Board and until February 2010 was the Mayor of London's Ambassador for Youth. He was elected for the Bexley and Bromley constituency in May 2008 as a candidate of the Conservative Party. He won by a majority of 75,237, by far the largest margin in any of the fourteen constituencies.

James Cleverly was born in Lewisham Hospital, his father is British and his mother from Sierra Leone. He attended Riverston School and Colfe's School, both in Lee, South East London and after a short time in the Army gained a degree at Thames Valley University (now known as the University of West London).

Before being elected he worked in the magazine and web publishing industry, he is the author of a long standing and well known blog. He is a Major in the Territorial Army and has been awarded the Territorial Decoration for long service.^{[citation needed]}

He had previously stood unsuccessfully in a number of elections the London Borough of Lewisham, these included the borough council elections 2002, a borough council by-election in 2003, for the Lewisham East seat for the UK Parliament in the 2005 general election and as the Conservative candidate for the directly elected mayor of Lewisham in 2006.

Zaha Hadid, CBE (Arabic: زها حديد‎ Zahā Ḥadīd; born 31 October 1950) is an Iraqi-British architect and winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004.

Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

After graduating she worked with her former teachers, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, becoming a partner in 1977. It was with Koolhaas that she met the engineer Peter Rice who gave her support and encouragement early on, at a time when her work seemed difficult to build. In 1980 she established her own London-based practice. During the 1980s she also taught at the Architectural Association. She has also taught at prestigious institutions around the world; she held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, guest professorships at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, the Knowlton School of Architecture, at The Ohio State University, the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. She has been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

Caroline Louise Flint (born 20 September 1961) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Don Valley since 1997. She served as the Minister of State for Housing and Planning in 2008, and later as the Minister for Europe until her resignation in 2009, citing the leadership of Gordon Brown as a reason. In October 2010, she was elected to the Shadow Cabinet, and Ed Miliband appointed her Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. In October 2011 Miliband appointed her Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change

Flint was educated at Twickenham Girls School (the school transferred to Waldegrave School for Girls in 1977) in Clifden Road, Twickenham and Richmond Tertiary College before earning her BA (Hons) in American Literature and History combined with Film Studies from the University of East Anglia. She joined the Labour Party when she was 17. She was the Women's Officer of the National Organisation of Labour Students from 1982 to 1984.