Some people think that we could build enough new homes without bulldozing green fields. They are not skyscraper fanatics or conservationist bores. They are urbanists and architects eyeing the huge tracts of land that runs east from Canary Wharf to Margate. You could build a city the size of central London between Dartford and the River Lea, largely on former industrial land, and still have space to spare.

This area, the “Thames Gateway”, is not a blank sheet. To imply as much would outrage the 1.45 million good citizens of places such as Barking and Ebbsfleet. But it does contain some blankish spaces that might be improved, rather than marred, by development. Three thousand of its 100,000 hectares are brownfield, a fifth of all such land in the South East.

Policymakers know this. But they seem paralysed by the immensity of the task. The National Audit Office (NAO) last week issued a scathing report on what it billed as the biggest regeneration project in Western Europe. This “project”, which includes 160,000 houses, has been going for 12 years. But it has no clear overall plan, according to the NAO. There are six inward investment agencies, from “Locate in Kent” to “East of England International”, which compete with each other and confuse the hell out of would-be investors. There are 30 “coordinating bodies”, ranging from the Highways Agency to the Learning and Skills Council. Their very existence seems to have become a barrier to action.

Everyone I meet who has dealt with Thames Gateway comes away unable to speak English. You stub your tongue on an acronym in the first five minutes of any conversation. New agencies and partnerships sprout almost continuously, but there is little discernible progress bar a few bus routes. The Government’s vision for the area includes “a world-class environment” and “a well-connected network of regional cities”. Holy motherhood. In order to write its report, the NAO had to produce its own map.

“They have handed out the jigsaw pieces,” says the architect Sir Terry Farrell, “but there is no picture on the box.” Sir Terry has a powerful vision of a national park that would emphasise the beauty of parts of the Estuary, create a carbon sink of eight million trees and provide an amenity for Londoners that would raise the value of new housing. Sir Terry has long been interested in what the planners miss out. He can see that you need the upwardly mobile to regenerate places. And that you do not lure them with more cramped, soulless barracks.

Sir Terry also believes that all of the housing in the Government’s target should be built within the M25: at the left-hand side of the map, if you like, where there are better transport links and fewer flood risks. Homes further east, he thinks, could then develop naturally with the economy. He believes that Greater London could accommodate up to a million more homes if we built at the density of Kensington & Chelsea rather than Bromley. And all at the highest environmental standards.

It should not be difficult to convert such intelligent thoughts into a plan. But there is no plan. Instead, there is a complete institutional impasse. In situations like this, you either have to give up and go home, or take charge. It is in the nature of Whitehall to persist with hare-brained schemes in the face of overwhelming evidence. Unlike the Olympics, the Gateway project has no deadline. So our taxes are paying for a growing cadre of professionals to attend earnest discussions on whether to rename the Thames Gateway the “Thames Estuary Parklands”. I am not kidding.

I have dwelt in the twilight zone of regeneration partnerships myself. I spent five years in the 1990s as the chief executive of a group that was masterplanning, regenerating and helping to rebuild a small area. I know how tricky it is to assemble land. How initiative can be sapped by having to work with too many public bodies. How, as Tony Travers of the LSE puts it, so many well-meaning bodies end up like the old Russia: both too strong and too weak.

It may be that the Gateway area is simply too big for any meaningful action. But there is an opportunity to do something spectacular there, something that could become an environmental and design model for the rest of Europe and that would avoid the otherwise inevitable dribble of car-dependent ugly boxes.

There is also a necessity. If this country continues with a policy of immigration and population expansion, we will have to build more housing, hospitals and schools in the South East. This will inevitably create tensions as people fight their corner. Despite the rhetoric about localism, the political trend is the other way. Last week’s planning White Paper sought to override local opposition to big developments such as power stations and airports that were deemed to be in the national interest. Ken Livingstone is about to get more powers at the expense of the London boroughs. The reasoning is the same: big, unpopular developments require a single, central authority.

I am not much of an authoritarian. But short-term authoritarianism can sometimes work. The London Docklands Development Corporation was intensely unpopular. It took compulsory purchase powers and rode roughshod over local people. But it did create the Docklands Light Railway, and Canary Wharf, which in turn put pressure on Government to invest in the extension of the Jubilee Line. In stark contrast to the Blairite model, the Thatcherite LDDC was focused and decisive.

Sir Terry Farrell prefers a third way: the kind of commission that created the 1950s new towns. But someone needs to get a grip. Or wrap it up. The Thames Gateway doesn’t exist, so it wouldn’t be much missed. Except by those who know how brilliant it could have been.

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