Spatial plan ‘victim of expediency’

From todays Indo:

“THE dramatic seachange in how and where we live is graphically outlined in a major new report today.

It shows how the great economic changes – and soaring prices – of the past decade have impacted dramatically on hundreds of thousands.

An official Central Statistics Office (CSO) census report shows how Dublin’s commuter tentacles have spread relentlessly into neighbouring counties under enormous pressure from soaring house and commodity prices.

Little clusters of houses that were close-knit villages ten years ago are now swarming commuter belts.

The report says the urban sprawl in these commuter counties around Dublin – most notably Kildare and Meath – is spreading out of control.

That is directly as a result of a booming population . . . and the need for more affordable housing further away from the capital.

High house prices have also doubled the number of people forced to rent homes.

The report shows that one-in-nine houses and apartments is now rented out privately.

The statistical snapshot highlights:

* Apartment living has shot up from 6.5pc of dwellings nationwide to almost 9pc in the past ten years.

* A quarter of the entire housing stock in the commuter counties of Kildare and Meath was built since 1996.

* More than 70pc of all the houses in the villages of Sallins in Kildare and Ratoath in Meath were built during the six years between 1996-2002. Their populations quadrupled as a result.

* The amount of private rented accommodation almost doubled between 1996 and 2002, fuelled by rocketing house prices. One-in-nine dwellings is now rented privately.

* The Dun Laoghaire Rathdown area in south Dublin is the most expensive in the country in which to rent – the average for a furnished property is €250 a week.

* Donegal is the cheapest county to rent, averaging just €96-a-week.

* Almost half the families in the country has a personal computer or internet access.

More than a quarter of houses in Galway city, Carrick-on-Shannon and Skibbereen lives in privated rented houses – only 2.6pc of people in Portmarnock are renting.

The number of private rented dwellings increased from 71,000 in 1991 to 141,000 in 2002, reversing declines observed in the previous 30 years.

The one-off housing explosion now accounts for one-third of all houses being built, creating 400,000 septic tanks, many of them polluting water supplies.

Of the 1,280,000 dwellings in the state, 400,000 are in rural areas.

This often means they have to rely on septic tanks which are frequently linked to water contamination.

And 15pc of the current 1.28m houses and apartments nationwide were built in the seven-year housing boom period 1996-2002.

The report shows the number of new households being created is outstripping population growth.

This means that we have far more houses, many with just one occupant.

The report also shows that urban population is growing by 1.5pc a year.

Treacy Hogan
Environment Correspondent”

If ever the need for a Spatial Strategy was to be demonstrated – this article does just that!

I have learned all of two things now…. that there is something called a ‘Planning Institute’ in this country,…. and that there is something called a ‘Planning conference’! Neither of which I knew before! 🙂

The Planning game documentary.

One of the things that the RTE documentary about planning dealt with well I think,…. was introducing people to the notion of ‘a spatial strategy’. I.e. the implications of that for ordinary you and me,…. things like increasing spoiling of the landscape, use of raw materials, production of those materials, the embodied energy required in producing gravel for instance,… the noise factors, the safety factors and using towns virtually as high ways for large lorries.

The only thing that I can compare it with, is in the early 1980s when Aughinish Aluminum Plant was being constructed down in my native Limerick and the amount of commuter traffic which this lengthy build period brought through the tiny narrow roads and byways where I grew up. There were several accidents…. and there is a saying down that way, still heard even now… ‘no one worked since Aughinish’… meaning the money poured in while the build was happening… but noone wanted to take ‘less money’ to do ordinary jobs having experienced the rush during building the Aughinish Plant.

I think the spatial strategy is something like that… and someday people may say…. noone worked since the spatial strategy. 🙂 But I have my doubts overall, about how skillfully the RTE documentary dealt with all the other issues… some of which I may post up here, if I get around to it. But on that one simple issue, that of ‘introducing people, making people aware’ of what this theme of ‘a spatial strategy’ is all about… I think the RTE documentary suceeded in getting its point across.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

I have a few criticisms about the RTE documentary… more to do with the ‘Trim Castle’ type of problems… and how the documentary dealt with that… but just to respond to the spatial strategy points you were making…. I think you have to separate things like resource extraction, from ‘building beside Trim Castle’ as they are totally different kinds of issues/problems.

I mean, I think that Archaeologist guy from Duchas got far too much ‘air time, moan time’ on the Trim Castle…. there wasn’t one Architect asked to speak about that issue… and I presume some kind of architect will be designing/building the actual hotel…. a bit like the debate here a while ago about Dun Laoire STW scheme of gated apartments.

On the spatial strategy…

You are right, it did not show other countries, where resource extractions has happened in a more organised fashion,… and can actually enhance a landscape afterwards. I remember in Malta, a tiny Island in the med, they use all stone there to build everything,… but there are huge vast ‘holes’ in parts of the Island where they quarry that stone… other countries have problems like this too.

Yeah, it seems like we are talking about ‘leading the EU’ in terms of environmental control policies like smoking ban etc,etc,etc…. but when it comes to ‘not so nit-picking’ kinds of issues, like resource extraction,… we still have a long ways to go in our attitudes.

My biggest worry, is the precedent set… if people are allowed just to get away with it,… the whole industry of resource extraction could spiral right of control. It just so happens nowadays that we have a wonderful home market for these materials… because of the national spatial strategy/de-centralisation/road building bonanza… spear-headed by Bertie, etc, and rural housing initiatives…

This artificially created boom in demand for raw materials, has created this huge explosion in production of high embodied energy producs like gravel, concrete, ready-mix, land fill, blah, blah, blah. None of which has been watched, regulated or properly implemented. It is one thing to say, we are going to have this spatial strategy, it is quite another to go about it in an organised, intelligent and scientific manner.

And not only are some of these remote areas where extraction takes place left with a bombed out landscape/environment… but they are also left ‘to cope’ with the aftermath of this temporary artificial resource extraction boom, which creates all kinds of social upheavals and problems when the party ends.

I mean, in this day and age, you would honestly expect any resource extraction to take place… but to be incorporated into some overall strategy to replace the landscape and re-use it properly after extraction has finished… this should be ‘part of the plan’ chosen by the contractor/company doing the extraction right from the beginning… a bit like bin taxes… if you produce it, you pay for it. It seems the law isn’t winning in this area either… dunno how strong/weak our environmental law is in this country.

They had a similar problem in Scotland though, where the Government paid for a couple of very high-class Snow resorts and ‘cable car’ lines up in the Scotish highlands… the only problem now, is there has been no worthwhile snow there for a decade now, and people are wondering what is going to happen!

But it seems to me recently, that we have created an enlarged Gardai presence, a range of environmental laws like bin taxes, smoking bans, on top of income taxes and all the rest,…. which you and me have to comply with. I seems like everything is very well wrapped up, that Fianna Fail is taking very good ‘care’ of us all and our health and well-being, but then something like this breaks…. on the other end of the scale, where a guy can just blast away, half of the landscape and cultivate a very ‘Dev-like’, high-bridged Roman nose, kind of Fianna Fail, high moral stance about it afterwards… LOL! And that is all okay!

I seems to me there is a very big inconsistency, in the law of the land there. And something I only assume that baristers and solicitors are just sitting on at the moment, hoping for a windfall later on, after the fact…. so to speak – rather than helping out the ordinary folk right now, who actually deserve and need so better representation. I felt that local people living down in rural Clare, having to fork out 5 grands worth of ‘tax’ just to hire a legal rep to speak on their behalf was a disgrace.

There is a very interesting series of documentaries on the Discovery Channel about Train wrecks… and one in particular is very good, which shows in America, where oil/gas pipelines often run right underneath residential areas. A train de-railed one day at a bend beside a residential area… and not only killed some people but also damaged a gas pipeline. A week later, when everyone ‘thought’ they were safe and moved back into their houses, the gas leaked out and exploded killing more people.

Net result,…. some con man lawyer moved in for the kill and strung the residents on for years, making a fat salary out of it all…. but the residents never got so much as a dime. Anyone who lives beside a large mining operation like in Clare should be compensated for the loss in value of their property as a result of mining… plain and simple… should be incorporated into the original deal/plan… and if it is not economical to do this, then the mining/extraction process should never be allowed to commence in the first place.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

It’s a nice idea to compensate local residents, but then again if a prison or similar is built next to your home you’ll be told where to get off.
But certainly strict regulation of processes and operational hours goes without saying – as does the regeneration of quarries when exhausted.

I agree Trim Castle shouldn’t have been lumped in with the more industrial elements of development, but the programme in general was short of cases to cite – esp evident towards the end, when local residents were allowed to blab on for days to fill the full hour.
It is very difficult to make such an investigative programme, it takes a heck of a lot of time, so one can hardly blame them for popping Trim in too to fill it out a bit.

A programme dealing with the true impact of one-off housing would be facinating – highlighting a myriad of S140s, and families who didn’t comply with rulings. It would be hilarious to pick on Mary and Joe Bloggs who’s septic tank is doing this, and Jane and Joe Soap who built this rubbish etc etc.
Could never be done though – poor old RTE would be slaughtered by the regions, and die a slow painful death.

Cullen and Parlon would have a field day.

I might as well pick up some other loose ends while I am at it… hammer/hatchet… 🙂

I think that Trim is central to the overall theme of the programme, as it was about Planning which is generally defined as ‘The proper and orderly sustainable development of an area’. It begs the question was the creation of a modern hotel so close to a very important National Monument appropriate?

I will certainly beg to differ…. one of the problems with this kind of mass media coverage of these matters…. is their inability to separate distinct issues,… and the ultimate goal of a programme to ‘clarify’ and straighten out some perceptions, conceptions etc…. ends up just creating a whole new mess of new confusion.

I mean, local authorities have ‘all kinds of departments’… all kinds of specific experts,… but none have a department dealing exclusively with resource extraction and the full gamut of what that entails…. (simply because we have never had any great amount of mining, felling of trees, huge crop amounts of crop growing etc, etc’…. so it is perhaps unfair to point all the criticism for mis-management of resource extraction at the local authorities.

Local authorities have specialised in Ireland almost exclusively upon getting ‘rid of things’… housing waiting lists, sewage, waste disposal…. actually ‘taking something back out of the landscape’ that is worth money…. it not the local authorities particular speciality.

I mean, even things like public parks etc, are handled by the OPW… parks could be considered a national environmental resource of sorts… but they are never ‘handled’ by the local authorities. Strange. Pheonix park springs to mind… and anything to do with ‘deer’… 🙂 Landrovers… 🙂 Or ponds, ducks, swans…. canals… amenities.. waterways… the Shannon River…. historic monuments… I mean, you would have expected that the OPW should have been interviewed in the bit about that pier in Clare… but I don’t think the OPW even made an appearance in the whole programme.

The addendum into the price paid was worthy of a primetime special on corrupt sale of assets in its own right. And this in the former minister for Environments home town, there is something just not right there.

Yes, very political indeed…. brings in Eircom, ESB, Air lingus,…. I think the foundation of this state was based all around these state owned/run/operated institutions… when I grew up (I am only 29)… nearly everyone I knew who had a decent job worked for the government in one capacity or another… that has changed of course… and we are now looking at this ‘level’ of state intervention into all kinds of industries, with new perspectives… gained from the recent increase in overseas companies setting up shop here in this country.

In other words, a few more points of view have been added to the debate at least, in recent years.

Quite a good flame war amongst the techies here people, thought you might be interested. 🙂

Design of office spaces for thermal efficiency and so on…

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=115074523

It started off about turning/not turning off monitors/systems…. and ‘sort of grew’ into a trans atlantic flame war.. some interesting links though…

Ah you gotta love the snootiness – although in Ireland we’re hardly ones to talk on the public transport front!

Think Brian sums it up there Diaspora with regard to the ‘new confusion’ created by tossing Trim into the works.
Whereas yes, the programme’s remit was to highlight improper development, resource extraction is a different ball-game, and should be treated as such.
The prog opened on light industrial, closed on heavy industrial, featured a service/infrastructural issue in the form of Shannon’s sewage, and then had the appropriateness of a hotel development thrown in the middle.
It was blatently incongruous in the context of the rest of the prog’s content.
It would have served Trim and the case for regulation of extraction much better to have had Trim featured in a prog devoted to regular devlopment, of which there are hundreds of dubious cases, and a subject to which people can relate to – whilst concentrating Monday’s prog exclusively on the extractive and infrastructural industries.

It is clear from the many other Prime Time Investigates that the primary concern after accuracy and truth is to create as much hype as possible, albeit understated, to generate enough fodder for Morning Ireland the next morning, as well as all the other usual suspects, and the papers, all of which very nicely fulfills RTE’s PSB remit, consolidating the arguement for the licence fee – even if it sometimes means highlighting issues of questionable relevancy that undermine the consistency and primary issue of some of these programmes.

It would have served Trim and the case for regulation of extraction much better to have had Trim featured in a prog devoted to regular devlopment, of which there are hundreds of dubious cases, and a subject to which people can relate to – whilst concentrating Monday’s prog exclusively on the extractive and infrastructural industries.

Yes, there is considerable scope and sub-catagories in just regular development issues, to create a very good programme out of that alone.

Any opinions about the ‘State of the City’ documentary by Duncan Stewart a while ago? ? ? ?

Poor old architecture and built environment – as I recall, the only aspect remotely related to them I did in 13 years of schooling was ‘What my street looked like in 1900’ in Footprints history book – which incidently was a field.

Ah I still remember that pic of a street where everyone had to pick out remenants of ‘the olden days’ – I was very chuffed at noticing the bootscraper…

Yes, I remember now, the notion of having sites ‘laid on a plate’ to developers was bascially the point made in the Trim Castle feature…. and that point was made quite well too… it was just very difficult to keep track of so many busy points being made together at the same time,… in what was quite a decent attempt overall.

That point about selling sites under-priced in the current climate of property prices definitely deserves its very own spot though.