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By the same token, Sid, the notion of not creating a 'Save Our Village' bandwagon should not mean 'By all means, bulldoze our fields'. Whitfield, as you say, is no more a village than I am Twiggy, but that doesn't give the developers carte blanche to turn it into something akin to Crawley or Harlow. If anyone knows these two towns, you'll appreciate why the thought of something similar on my own doorstep fills me with horror.
I don't see that the growth of Whitfield will be mirrored by regenerating Dover. As I understand it, the plans are for shops to be built at Whitfield and for brownfield sites in Dover Town Centre to be recycled into yet more housing. Paul Watkins has said to me (almost word for word) that it is envisaged that the current town centre will 'move' to a location more towards the seafront, and I presume this to mean that it will be centred around the redeveloped Wellington Dock area. (Paul W - if my understanding of this is wrong, please say so. I'd like to be sure of the facts myself!)
The way I see it is that a new town development in Whitfield will actually mean the loss of identity of Whitfield and Dover as individual places in their own right, similar to Walmer and Deal if you will. Further, I don't actually believe the thinking behind this Grand Plan is clear - where are all the jobs for so many people going to come from? So many people cannot all commute to London despite the (welcome) arrival of the Javelin trains, they're crowded as it is; Dover is not an easy place to find work as it is; any commuter to Canterbury will tell you that the infrastructure is at capacity already, with the Old Dover Road, New Dover Road and Wincheap all jammed from the early hours; Ashford, the great white hope for employment for years, is waning since the flagship Station development was suddenly jettisoned in favour of Ebbsfleet; Thanet is an unemployment blackspot and East Kent in general is a poor place to be looking for work.
I take on board your comment about the local business dynamic needing a local workforce being there, but I remain completely unconvinced that 'the jobs will surely follow' - business demographics constantly show that Dover is an area that businesses will not come to because the catchment is half of other places such as Canterbury and Ashford because of the Channel. And with the major employers in the town like the DHB and P&O employing a fraction of the numbers they once did, the employment prospects within the town look little better than they did 20 years ago.
I believe that people will buy houses where there is work, and East Kent is pretty low down on the list, sad to say.