Re: Re: Welcome to Ireland’s ugly urban sprawl

Thomondpark,

Any thoughts?

Well yes actually.

Firstly it’s great to be reminded that there are many people out there, in senior positions, who are still idealistic and engaged.

Secondly – and something I discovered many years ago – if ‘we’ wish to preserve something which ‘we’ consider to be of aesthetic value (or any other value which is not immediately obvious to the majority of people) then we need to be prepared to buy that thing or else make adequate compensation available to the owner of the thing – who may not share our enthusiasm for its preservation.

This will never happen in this country – for lots of reasons – nor will we even resource areas such as heritage officers within planning authorities. Certainly we will write the plans – we have some of the best – the NSS is a smasher – but seriously – you didn’t think we meant it??

We can only muddle on and hope that the core of committed planners will not give up.