Fast-Track Infrastructure legislation
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i think you are missing the point. times change, styles change. that is reality. you may not like what you see now, but you could at least attempt to imagine that people in 200 years time might actually find it quaint (they will probably be living in even larger houses still!). You shouldn’t let your dislike of th epresent cloud your understanding of the past or vision of the future.
No I think you are simply trying to defend a point, your claim is basically that people have always lived in the country and that becuase of this people should be allowed to build whatever they want today.
Your analysis of tourism is equally flawed; the John Hinde generation of tourists were the Diaspora generation who wished to see how their ancesters lived; in this context pre famine architecture was an important embodyment of this as over 1m emigrated in a five year period with a further million going before 1870 to North America. How most would have traced their roots was via landing records which simply would have listed a name and a townland; to these tourists any traditional house fitted the bill.
Going forward the Diaspora generation will evaporate and the only way the countryside will attract International tourists to this highly expensive Country is through landscape protection. Which given your attitude which is fairly representative of government will not happen and tourism will die out beyond sites such as the World Heritage sites and major towns and cities.
Perhaps its because of the influence of the diaspora that our contemporary vernacular architecture is a mish-mash of some pseudo Americanesque styles (the big eagles and large surrounding gardens, the two garages etc). In that context, these houses reflect the cultural influences that have seeped into irish culture since the famine and emigration and are therefore valid as an element of the broader Irish cultural experience. To that end, they represent irish culture as it now stands – its ambitions and influences, its bold self-confidence, perhaps its conflict with its own process of self-identification. These buildings are an archictural embodiment of a culture shaping itself anew – facing the 21st century as a confident and bold nation, able to encapsulate some historic self-ironies into the fabric of its buildings. Truly wonderful. Have we have stepped beyond the Pale and the limitations of a peasant pyschology? I do hope so. More the reason we should celebrate these buildings.
I don’t go with that those the were long term emmigrants generally return at a phase of life that is too mature to take on a house building project; those that are younger are more urbanised given the changes in Diaspora destination i.e. places like London, New York, San Francisco, Brussels, Sydney, Milan places where design quality is more likely to rub off.
I think it is safe to blame the middle classes of our cities and towns for the worst excesses on Irish hillsides as they max floor areas including their ‘Chill out rooms’ and look out the windows and not at the muck that afflicts the landscape and passing motorists.
So is someone with a bungalow w/driveway directly onto the N22 with their pre-cast concrete eagles on the pillar, (picked up in the local Woodies DIY garden centre) complete with Grecian style true terracotta flower pots rreflecting the “influence of the diaspora”…?
PDLL, you’re away with the fairies if you think any of the dross currently being thrown up will become tourist attractions. It’s just so crazy I don’t know where to begin debating it.
Search for detached, min. 4 bed in co. cavan on this page and tell me they’ll be a tourist attraction! 😮 They are monstrosities in the main and completely out of sync with their surroundings. Here’s a samples;
Real rennaissace masterpieces, NOT!
All they do is blight the once beautiful landscape.
Stop being so anti rural!
Its the right of everybody in rural Ireland to have a McMansion, complete with jeep parked outside. Its what Davitt would have wanted, honest!
It has to be the ultimate irony. People spend their free time campaigning about the need for investment in the WRC ‘to encourage tourism’, .. and then go off and build all kinds of monstrosities scattered around the landscape, seemingly designed to scare tourists off and cause the maximum damage to the landscape. I was in Co Mayo recently, and it was quite an education. These houses may become tourist attractions in years to come, but only to gape in astonishment that this stuff was actually allowed!
Proper guidelines on the conservation of energy alone would rule many of these houses out.
@Thomond Park wrote:
It is your denial of architectural history that is manipulation you aren’t on trial in Vienna today by any chance for a certain lecture delived in 1989?
Sorry Thomond Park but that’s essentially a breach of Godwin’s law
Sorry Thomond Park but that’s essentially a breach of Godwin’s law
Not quite, for he is talking about historical manipulation and not just making an unwarrented reference to Nazzism.
I disagree that PDLL is wrong historically , though, and I agree with him that there is some Dublin bias here, and the economic arguments againsty once offs are incorrect. Nevertheless I dont like these new McMansions either.
in fact I am much more favorable to bungalows, they weren’t all the spanish type, many were just modern cottages. It all depends where they are. Is the midlands being ruined by once off housing? The landscape is pretty – in a much blander way than the west – but it needs to be broken up occasionally. We dont need once offs in the very scenic areas, of course, particularly between the sea and the road.
Would people be happier if we had once offs with proper design?
hmmm… perhaps if one-offs actually paid their way in terms of infrastructure provision, rather than having our utilities cross subsidise… mind you if a more realistic ‘cost of connection’ was in place you might see people thinking differently about building patterns
@PDLL wrote:
Regarding the economic elements of your argument, Frank, I have address the complexities of these issues in the Eoghan Harris thread where I attempted to show as calculating the price of a few telegraph poles or the infill for a few potholes. I would refer you to the many posts in this thread which I think expose some of the additional complications in working out whether the net cost of one-off houses to the state is greater than the net cost of urban houses to the state.
I’ve read through your arguments detailing why one-off housing may not be more expensive to the state than urban dwellings. When comparing urban with one-off housing I am thinking of urban as any area of a village, town or city with density of 30-40 people/acre.
I was interested to read it because I couldn’t imagine what arguments could be made. OK so here is my summary of your points. (Correct me where I have misunderstood you.)
1. Less urban-style social problems means lower costs
You compare a sink estate in Tallaght with a collection of one-off houses to show that urban housing comes with costly social problems not found in isolated rural houses.
This is not a useful comparison as you are looking at two different socio-economic groups.
2. Residents of one-off houses have money
You point out that people who build one-off houses must have some cash to spend so are likely net contributors to the state coffers. This is true but working people contribute to the state coffers wherever they live. The question is whether they cost the state more or less by living in one-off housing.
3. Tourist attraction
Some one-off houses also function as B&Bs and thus generate revenue for the state through tourism. It was reported a few years ago that one-off housing accounted for 40% of new houses built. (http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2001/0426/fro1.htm ) With 80,000 new dwellings last year, B&Bs cannot make up a significant proportion of that number. Lots of people use their homes to operate some kind of a business, whether in towns or in isolated locations.
4. Less social cost from driving
Rural car driving is less hazardous to the environment than urban driving, so smaller economic cost.
I would agree with you here. Urban driving is far more damaging to the environment than rural driving.
5. Everyone gets subsidies
You suggest that any subsidies received by people in one-off houses are more than matched by subsidies to urban dwellers. You point out that city dwellers have many things unavailable to people in solated locations.
It is true that if you live in a town then the services you get from government will be more numerous and of higher quailty than those you receive in an isolated location. This is because these services can be provided at less cost when people live close together than when they live far apart. it does not follow that higher quality services implies subsidisation.@PDLL wrote:
they embody the aesthetic desires of the people and are, actually closer to the true representation of what the Irish domestic aesthetic ideal is as they are often built by people with enough money to make aesthetic choices, unlike the cottage which was a minimalist structure built with only the bare essentials and thereby not reflecting the aesthetic ideals of the people.
we can afford to include certain aesthetic features in our buildings. We can afford to ‘decorate’ our domestic structures in a manner that does not just fulfil minimalist functional requirements. That decoration may take many forms – porches, gazebos, conservatories, PVC windows, stone eagles etc.These are artefacts of personal choice representing an aesthetci ideal held by the home owner/builder. It is a free choice and as it is replicated time and again across the country, it can understood to represent an embodiment of contemporary domestic architectural aesthetics.
This is all very true, and well argued. Whether we like it or not, what we are experiencing only too well represents ‘the Irish domestic aesthetic ideal’ in a way that no other average dwelling outside of urban areas has ever done in the course of our history. It’s a fact that is difficult to even consider let alone admit to, but it is very much so the case.
As for how we will view one-offs in 200 years time, I wouldn’t completely dismiss the notion that they will have no appeal – one need only look at the certain charm that 1950s ribbon development bungalows are beginning to exude already (well for me anyway :o). Saying that, much of the allure of older one-off housing stems from notions of pre/early Industrial Revolution architecture and general life in Ireland, something that modern-day development will not have in 200 years time – although there may be a renaissance of sorts in the meantime, who knows. (yeah right)
Either way, what is hugely different this time round to how things were until very recently, is that fact that nothing stays the same anymore – fashion and ‘newness’ is everything. Many of the one-offs we have today will be unrecoginsable in as little as 20 years time, let alone 200. There will be no historic fabric left for us to romanticise over even if we wanted to; from here on in one-off housing, similar to most urban housing, is going to ‘keep up with the times’, so they will always be offensive to contemporary sensibilities as eyesores on the landscape should our current standards of design remain constant. However if a ‘reconditioning phase’ takes place somewhere along the line, similar to the current upgrading of 60s and 70s office blocks in Dublin, then things might be very different in the future. But even in that case these buildings will simply be more aesthetically appealling, not heritage pieces looking old and quaint and crumbly just how we like it 🙂
Indeed it is doubful we will have any built heritage of more than 50 years vintage in the future going by current trends…
I appreciate some of the openness demonstrated by some members here in terms of considering the one-off within its broader cultural and economic context. Lest it be mistaken that I have some vested interest in one off’s – I don’t. I have lived in a terraced house for most of my life and I would hate to live in the countryside. I do feel, however, that inaccuracies and stereotypes need to be challenged or corrected and that there is a need to consider all aspects of an issue in a balanced manner before it is flatly condemned. I feel that some of that has been achieved by making people consider the issue in a more indepth manner. For my own part, I am not sure there is much more I can say on the issue (Thomand Park will either welcome that or test that).
Before we all abandon the thread, though, lets remember that it is really about something else entirely 🙂
I, for one, welcome the Fast Track legislation.
Lets just hope that the phantom Sean Carney doesn’t make a brief whirlwind visit again!
I don’t welcome it as it makes local people travel to ABP to make comment on major projects wheras before they could express their considerations at Local authority level or simply call their councillor who could make free representation on their behalf; now a €210 fee will be charged by anyone with any type of issue whether grounded or not.
I view this as an another assault on the democracy of the planning process by further dissauding people to make their opinions known; if a plan is properly conceived it can withstand the observation of those that it most affects. This truely is an assault on the little people of Ireland by a government that has delevered less than half of their National Development plan 2000-06; it is they who will be referred in 2007.
strewth…. I thought it was this type of gombeen local politics that you associated with shady deals for planning permission for one-off houses. Your faith in the local councillor and his honesty seems to have increased in recent weeks.
When local councillors make representations to planning departments on behalf of constituents they are acting reaonably and entirely within the rules.
However when a particular group of councillors Rae trading section 140 resolutions in meetings it is unacceptable as found in Childs v Wicklow Co Co [1992] and there has been a shocking lack of leadership by the DoEHLG in this regard
BTW This measure is an assault on the democracy of the planning process
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