After soaring so high and plunging so low, Kent was far from alone in pondering how to solve the social and economic crisis facing the nation’s once all-singing, all-dancing seaside towns.

Yet, in the space of just 20 years, we have seen the most remarkable transformation evolve before our eyes.

Towns whose decline appeared irreversible - the likes of Margate and Folkestone - are, today, among the most vibrant, exciting and colourful seaside resorts in the country.

Whitstable, from nowhere, has emerged as a day-trippers paradise; Ramsgate has been revived, Broadstairs buoyed. Deal and Sandwich reinvigorated. Even Dungeness has been given a new lease of life.

So just how did they come back from the brink?

The answer is not straightforward; there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The way Margate got back on its feet is very different to that of Folkestone - while Whitstable took a completely different approach.

Yet there is one aspect, often overlooked, which has played a recurring role in determining the success, or otherwise, of our coastal towns - transport.

From the paddle steamers which first ignited the tourism potential in so many of our seaside towns, to the coming of the railways, our coastal resorts have capitalised hugely from the way in which tourists can access them.

But what solid transport links have given, they have also taken away. The boom in cheap flights to foreign resorts shattered the economics of our towns when they started taking to the skies in the 1960s.

However, the high-speed rail links Kent has ushered in during the 21st century have changed trends once again.

Not only does HS1 offer faster, easier options for tourism, but it also opens up the county as a place to live while still providing the links back to London for work.

Yes, once again, Kent’s coastal towns’ prosperity owes much to the London crowd.

“You do need that influx of people from London,” says Dr Lavinia Brydon, senior lecturer in the arts at the University of Kent, who has studied the cultural impact on seaside regeneration. “They bring an economic wealth and a boost in audience for these towns.”

As we’ve charted in this series of features, our proximity to London has always been key to our coastal prosperity.

It has - for better or for worse for some - opened up the property markets of our coastal towns to those who traditionally have lived and worked in the capital. After all, a high-speed service can take you from London to Folkestone now in less than an hour; that’s less than trawling on a Tube from one side of London to its economic heartland. And with that ease of access, the financially beneficial tourism vein has been reopened.

“Transport links are so important,” adds Dr Brydon. “If there are no longer passenger boats or whatever, a high-speed train helps with that day trip or broader tourism. It's really basic but utterly fundamental.”

It’s not just the high-speed rail either. The dualling of such key routes as the Thanet Way in the 1990s made a difference too for towns on the north Kent coast, traditionally poorly served by road links.

But before we look at Folkestone and Margate - large towns which had grown fat on the domestic tourism explosion and then became skeletal as a consequence of its implosion - let’s turn our eyes to Whitstable.

It had never really been a big tourist town. Instead, it remained reliant on its fishing industry - one which, it should be noted, by the latter stages of the 20th century, was on its knees. The town was, rather than a destination, a cheaper housing option than neighbouring Canterbury - a popular place for cheap, tatty, student accommodation.

But when the Royal Natives Stores morphed from tearoom into fish restaurant, its owners decided the best way to pull in the punters was to get some of the broadsheets on side. Reviewers were invited in and what they found sparked more column inches than an extravagantly funded advertising campaign could buy.

The trickle of visitors - mostly from London - increased and, as word got around, turned into a flood. Seeing the direction of travel, other restaurants looked to cash in. It took a mere handful of years, but the town - courtesy of a food and drink offering set against a backdrop of a pretty, unspoilt, stretch of coastline - was booming. And it wasn’t just London folk. Suddenly people in Kent woke up to what had been on its doorstep.

Those from the capital realised two things. Firstly, transport links meant they could be there within 90 minutes and, secondly, that property prices were temptingly low.

The outcome? Visitors kept coming, the town’s food and drink offering kept expanding and the desire for a home in the town saw property prices rocket. More on that shortly.

But for Folkestone and Margate, however, such a simple method was not really viable. They were just too big, the economic need too enormous to be buoyed by a restaurant or two. So both benefitted from good old-fashioned cold, hard cash. But in two very different ways.

Sir Roger De Haan has never been short of a bob or two. The son of Saga founder Sidney De Haan, the company has long been one of Folkestone’s biggest employers, adapting to changing holiday preferences and riding such a successful commercial wave that, when De Haan junior decided to sell up in 2004, he shook hands on a deal worth a staggering £1.35 billion.

Now, he could have bought himself a selection of luxurious mansions around the world and bid his home town goodbye. But he didn’t. Instead, he made it his mission to do all he could to restore the town - bringing pride, economic clout and, perhaps most importantly, aspiration back to its population.

It didn’t happen overnight but the town’s revived prosperity today owes him an enormous debt of gratitude.

“If Roger De Haan hadn’t invested in the town,” reflects Alan Taylor, chairman of the Folkestone & District Local History Society, “I don't know what would have happened.

“He's brought the town together. He bought the harbour and dozens of properties and spent millions.”

His Creative Foundation united with various partners and public bodies, his money leveraging other investment in the town. It was a winning formula.

Adds Alan Taylor: “He reunited the east and west of the town again.”

Not all his choices have won the support of the locals, but it’s hard to be too critical of a man whose single-minded devotion to reviving the town’s fortunes has been financed by a personal investment of many tens of millions of pounds.

Art was a key weapon in his arsenal. He used it to bring colour, creativity and occupation to the many empty shops which lined its sprawling town centre. It provided a springboard to bigger and better things.

But it carries risks too. Adds Dr Brydon: “Art-washing or cultural-led gentrification can be really problematic and cause real divisions in these areas. So it needs really joined-up thinking.

“Art has the power to attract people to create places that are meaningful; it can give places a new identity.”

And it is a route Margate has used to its advantage too.

There is a truth that once a place falls to its knees, opportunities for creatives emerge. When rents hit rock bottom, artists spy an opportunity. Opening a gallery suddenly becomes affordable, while those struggling to make a living through their art realise they can afford to live in the town too; communities form, word spreads.

Coupled with the obvious inspirational qualities of living by the sea - the light, the skies, the grandeur in the declining architecture - and both Folkestone and Margate have taken advantage.

For Margate, art did not so much naturally emerge, but was rather foisted upon it.

As the 21st century got underway, so the powers-that-be started working on how to revive the town. The answer? An ambitious art gallery.

Derided by many at first - not helped when the original plans saw it jutting out to sea and with a price tag topping £50 million - the plans were re-drawn to a more reasonable, yet still substantial, £17.5 million and, as North Thanet MP Sir Roger Gale said at the time: “However much hassle it has been, it will be worth it.” And he was quite right.

It may have been an unusual investment but Kent County Council - which provided the bulk of the funding - knew it could act as a catalyst for regeneration not just of the town, but Thanet and east Kent more widely.

Since it opened its doors in 2011 it has pulled in millions of visitors and boosted the local economy to the tune of £80 million. And it continues to do so. It has inspired the regeneration of the Old Town - the original Margate settlement - just yards away and the feel-good factor of crowds and money is seeing the impact spread.

Joined, in 2014, by a revived Dreamland - a site earmarked for housing before local campaigns insisted it be saved, prompting Thanet District Council to deliver a compulsory purchase order on the land - suddenly the town went from having little to pull in the day-tripper to two bona fide attractions.

“People said you can't possibly have an art gallery and an amusement park,” says Sir Roger today, “they don't work together. Well of course they do. People with kids will want to see a good exhibition at the Turner and then take the kids to Dreamland too. What's wrong with that? They're not mutually exclusive.”

Both played on the heritage of these places - JMW Turner used to stay close to where the gallery was sited, Dreamland was, since the 1920s a pleasure palace that entertained many a generation - and gave them a modern spin.

Buoyed by the pair’s pulling power - Dreamland eventually finding its feet as much for its live music offering as its rides - the town saw investment. Artists came to the town and Londoners with a few quid in their pockets snapped up properties and shops.

As with Folkestone, the revived commercial opportunities saw an improvement in the jobs market.

Adds Sir Roger: “The Turner Contemporary has transformed the town - and [artist] Tracey Emin has done a hell of a lot for Margate.

“There's still a long way to go, but the difference it has made is remarkable.”

But with revival comes issues.

Gentrification - the process of the middle classes snapping up properties, doing them up and driving up house prices - is perhaps both inevitable and, in many ways, needed. But, as the likes of Folkestone, Whitstable and Margate have found, improvements to their towns and heightened demand pushes property out of the reach of the local population.

Which is what drives resentment towards the DfL.

“The reason there's a degree of resentment,” explains Sir Roger Gale, “is that since the DfLs moved in, property prices in Margate have now rocketed. You used to be able to buy those beautiful places in Cliftonville for barely anything because no one wanted to live there.

“Now these beautiful Georgian and Edwardian houses are being tarted up and gentrified. So property prices have gone up.

“The resentment to the DfLs is not so much they have come in, but when they try to tell everyone what we should be doing.”

It’s a fair point. After all, the fabric of these places may have been superficially improved, but the bedrock of these communities remains the people who lived there before they were subject to such cultural overhauls.

Adds Folkestone and District Local History Society chairman Alan Taylor, who at 87 remembers its hey-day and its decline: “I have six London families living near me now. Most of them work from home, still with jobs in London, so they have well-paid employment and they spend in the town.

“But the problem with Folkestone now is it is becoming like some of the seafront towns in the West Country, where local people can't get onto the property ladder.”

In decades gone by, seaside towns fought hard to ensure the summer season money sustained them during the off-season.

Today, the introduction of art and culture is keeping them buoyant year-round.

Concludes Lavinia Brydon: “The high-speed trains make it not as seasonal as it once was. The Turner, the high-end Whitstable restaurants - you can get the Londoner coming out of the summer season.

“But to sustain these places you need the off-season, local economy and that's the bit you need to think through.

“Margate was a well-thought-out strategy of how to execute a regeneration plan that would mean the town would sustain tourism, local, domestic and international across the months.

“It's important to attract the tourist from out-of-town but they're a success because they're looking at a more local, regional population.”

While many will decry changes to the towns ushered in by their new-found popularity, such moves are a necessity. They need to adapt - to cater for the 21st century rather than dream of a hoped-for revival of a bygone age.

There is still, undeniably, a long way to go for many of our towns, Solving the socio-economic problems of some of our most deprived areas is not going to be achieved in the relatively short space of 20 years.

But if our seaside towns continue to improve - and all the pointers suggest they will - the employment and aspirational qualities they usher in will, hopefully, provide the bedrock for broader growth and revitalisation over the years ahead.