The Skehan/Sirr plan

Ha funny you should say this. I spent the afternoon thinking precisely the same thing while availing of the newly opened stretch of the Luas Green Line running out to Brides Glen in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains. It is baffling, indeed nigh on frightening, to see the extent to which planners have encouraged this new model of development, based on spurious ‘sustainable’ grounds through the provision of a light rail line. Vast, high density, dormitory residential developments are clustered, or proposed to be clustered, around light rails stops many miles from Dublin, one of them already with a preposterous 18-storey tower at Central Park, quite literally surrounded by agricultural land. And intended to be surrounded by rural lands, as if building another contained finger of densely developed Copenhagen.

Why would anybody want to, or be encouraged to, live in an urban apartment a tedious, overcrowded and uncomfortable 40 minute journey from Dublin, surrounded by fields, and serviced by a Spar, a hairdressers and a creche? Even if populated by multiple retail units, this in no way accounts to anything even approaching the variety of the urban experience, never mind its social, cultural and economic vibrancy and inherent optimal sustainability. This is Suburban Living Round II and everyone is pulling their hats over their eyes pretending they’re living in eco-towns. You might as well be driving from Kells or Sallins.

Yet this is precisely what is also proposed with Metro North – not supporting Dublin, but diluting incentive to built in the city and develop the city, in favour of its hinterlands. Providing a rail line instead of a motorway, and building apartments instead of semi-ds, does not make a sustainable town or a sustainable community – or a town at all for that matter. All of these developments depend on ‘somewhere else’, in most cases Dublin, no matter what. Most people who live there are going to work somewhere else, while the few places that do sustain employment – inevitably through office use – are surely not going to act as home to the same workforce. Who on earth would want to live and work in one of these places? And on a long-term basis?

Long after Frank McDonald’s well-beaten drum about the hoards commuting from Virginia and Laois, when one presumed the message was now tired and well digested, it is extraordinary to see this policy of far-flung dormitory suburbs in the Dublin Mountains being actively pursued as an ‘enlightened’ policy and template for future development. The discussion of the two ladies opposite me on the tram summed matters up concisely when they said they preferred to drive than use the Red Line to Tallaght, as the journey from the city centre – only on an occasional basis – was too arduous and convoluted to make it worthwhile. I would contend that what we are now doing, and proposing to rank up on a vast scale in future years in Dublin’s hinterlands, will be as damaging, if even more destructive, than the crazed planning policy we have pursued over the past two decades. Dublin needs to be condensed, not expanded. We must not allow competing, leeching local authorities to suck the lifeblood out of Dublin for their own ends. As with all cities, the capital needs to be protected from its inherent magnetism and the counties that claim to be serving it.

@GrahamH wrote:

one of them already with a preposterous 18-storey tower at Central Park, quite literally surrounded by agricultural land.

This tower is surrounded by office blocks a hospital, a hotel and a school. There are thousands of workers, students and patients and hotel guests already located here, and capacity for thousands more. It makes sense to place a railway stop here. There is plenty of landscaped green space around Leopardstown hospital and playing fields around the school but it would be inaccurate to describe this as agricultural land.

Why would anybody want to, or be encouraged to, live in an urban apartment a tedious, overcrowded and uncomfortable 40 minute journey from Dublin, surrounded by fields, and serviced by a Spar, a hairdressers and a creche?

Central Park (stupid name) is 22 minutes from St Stephen’s Green. Being within a half hour reliable commute of work and the city is important because we know that people with long commutes tend to be unhappy. http://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/151.html

Even if populated by multiple retail units, this in no way accounts to anything even approaching the variety of the urban experience, never mind its social, cultural and economic vibrancy and inherent optimal sustainability. This is Suburban Living Round II and everyone is pulling their hats over their eyes pretending they’re living in eco-towns. You might as well be driving from Kells or Sallins.

Kells is 131km from Dublin. Driving a 262km round trip every day is less sustainable in every way than taking a 22 minute tram journey. Do you really believe there is no difference between these two living patterns?

@gunter wrote:

OK, but the point is; if people choose to commute to Dublin from Kells, that’s bad enough, but to deliberately develop a satellite town like Sandyford, or Adamstown, to urban densities, using urban typologies, and sell it using urban imagery, this is a planning obscenity when huge tracts of the city remain squandered to low grade and low density uses.

Leopardstown isn’t a satellite town. It’s a contiguous city suburb 10km from the centre that’s now being densified. Which specific area of the city should be developed in preference?

If there was a shred of strategic planning in this country, places like Sandyford, Adamstown and Cherrywood [whatever that is] would never have got beyond being a glint in a property developer’s eye, but we don’t have strategic planning we have some kind of mapping service that seems to think it’s role is to record what’s happening and facilitate more of it happening by zoning contiguous lands.

We have endless planners and levels of planning authorities and strategic plans. We have public consultations and professional and political input at every stage. Planning is so detailed that planning permissions come with conditions specifying the texture and colour of paint for the walls of ordinary suburban houses. I can’t imagine how we could have any more planning.

We can pretend that if we only had an elected mayor, …

sorry but that’s a strawman

Yes Sandyford Industrial estate looks like it’s not the nicest part of Dublin to live in and it won’t match the vibrancy of the city centre, but how does it compare with the old 1970s model of living in the surrounding suburban housing estates of Balally or Leopardstown? These places were monumentally boring to live in and by their nature they could not support more than bus transport and sparse public amenities. It could take more than an hour to get into town on a steamy bus and at night there was nothing to do. Very few people had the luxury of working near to home.

In the 70s, Sandyford industrial estate consisted of a number of manufacturing sheds This morphed into low rise offices in the 1990s when there was just one bus out of the estate in the evenings. Now there are separate office and residential developments in Sandyford Business Estate, Stillorgan Industrial Park, South County Business Park, Central Park and Leopardstown Retail Park. There are schools and hospitals and shops and hotels and restaurants. Road and rail links are much improved, the place is even landscaped now and signposted. Every single bit of it was agreed by a local authority planner & a board pleanala board member, All of it was built according to local authority county development plans, local area plans, regional guidelines, national guidelines, & rafts of reports on everything from aesthetics to energy use.

That sums it up really. This distance to these places is not in dispute Frank – though the end destination of Brides Glen where development is proposed is a full 40 minutes from St. Stephen’s Green – rather it is the commuting model it generates. Indeed, the fact that this line was paid for, or eventually will be paid for, by private developers merely confirms the developer-led nature of this ‘planning’. I reject the notion that this even is planning – a 13 year old in geography class can come up with a case study of light rail line and ‘clusters’ or ‘hubs’ of development around stations. But it is not real planning in a comprehensive, rounded sense, based on principles of building communities around local employment, services, leisure and recreational facilities, nor about caring for the health of the nation’s capital. Yes, these hubs may have an office block or three and an hotel, suggesting town or urban status, but token speculative ventures mixed in with overwhelmingly residential content does not make a sustainable town. They still depend on somewhere else to make living there bearable.

I’m not saying we’re the only ones struggling with this – many European cities are using the same model as we speak, with soulless, planned high density residential suburbs with a token office building connected by a purpose-built rail line to the nearby urban centre. But at least the urban centre in question is generally vibrant, dense and well populated – Dublin city is not. And these new suburbs, if dull, are at least cycling and highly family friendly, making strong nods towards sustainability. This I would wager is not the case in the Dublin instance.

Furthermore, at Brides Glen, a vast park and ride facility has been built to cater for the immediate residential population who still need to drive there, but also the vast swathe of one-off housing and low density housing estates built over the past thirty years in the hinterlands. The line actively encourages long distance commuting to Dublin city and in turn negates the development potential of the city it claims to serve. In addition to the journey times mentioned earlier, even the 22 minutes from Central Park quoted by Frank, add at least ten minutes at either end to that for real door-to-door commuting time, and it tips over the comfortable 30 minute commute recognised internationally. The stations further beyond this point, and if aided by a car, can easily tip over an hour. Compare the same journey within the city from home door to office door – not to mention the potential to be done by bicycle – and the contrast is marked.

Brian Cowen stated at the opening that: “This new extension of the Green Luas Line is a further development in our infrastructure investment programme which offers sustainable public transport and paves the way for the creation of a fully integrated network.” Neither of the two principal points can be said to be true. Indeed, if this line could only have been built by public money, very simply it would never have been built. Because it should not have been built if we were serious about consolidating Dublin city. An ‘integrated network’ would involve the rollout of Luas within the city. This disintegrates whatever limited network Dublin has, and the chances for a better one.

Well I have to be honest here guys.

Yes, I have done my fair share of housing estates, three in Gorey, one in Ratoath, none huge, all under 150 units, most in independent private practice.
At the time these were seen as progressive, going well above the previously imposed 6 houses per acre density for rural towns.

Going back further to my earlier incarnation working with another roffice it was all brownfield redevelopment in urban areas, both residential of circa 100 ot 200 units and commercial from 20,000 to 40,000 sq.ft.
Between feasibility studies, designing, building and certifying I have been involved in many urban renewal schemes: one in Parnell Street, one in Merrion Street Upper, two in Barrow Street, two or maybe three in Gardiner Street, one in Fitzwilliam Quay, one in Ushers Quay, one in Arran Quay.

People may have fogotten that the first phase of the Celtic Tiger from 1992 to 2002 was largely concerned with such urban infill schemes.
Perhaps they were/are distracted by the battle of the regional shopping centres of Blanchardstown and Liffey Valley which was also carried on around the same time.

As for the apparent preciousness about new towns, I think that’s a kind of intellectual snobbery based on a misunderstanding of people’s wants and needs and what a city has come to be.
Irish people prefer houses to apartments, their “own bit of land” – its well known, don’t ask me why. Live with it.

A well designed new town will look much like an old town, and a low density new town will still provide the timely provision of services – this is vitally important
Some years back I attended the Smart Growth Workshops in Kevin Street run by Dorothy Stewart under the guidance of Professor Kirk [he of the Power of One Street website].
Rory Deegan, assisant City Planning Officer attended thes workshops also and offered the following comment in relation to the workability of comnuity building through the planning process.
“I can get developers to provide whatever building I want – Garda Station, School, Health Centre – to support a community. But I cannot arrange for any of them to be staffed or run.”

The comments to this thread betray the common lack of understanding of many people both within and without the archtiectural profession.
Our own hubris seems to blind us to the fact that our masterpieces merely reflect and support human endeavour and activities. Without the political and local will to build a community, it doesn’t happen.
You can redesign the bejaysus out of point blocks and high density social housing [now up to a dizzying four stories in DTA’s excellent Santry Demense scheme] but merely offering good buildings is never enough.

The significance of the Luas connection should not be minimised.
Its like broadband is to teh internet – its ahigh volume thread to connect people to a city.
A city, which is something that is more of an idea than a location – a head space where people meet and things happen.

It doesn’t matter in real terms whether you’re walking 20 minutes from your compact and bijou in Rathmines or commuting for 20 minutes on a LUAS line, in Dublin.
it dosn’t matter whether you’ve walked or taxied in from Chelsea or Kensington or tubed in from Kingsbury in the north, or cycled or driven in from Between the Commons in the south west – its all London.

You identify with the city in terms of distance travelled and your state of mind.
Land use and density can never be the sole determinants of urbanization and certainly not of quality of life.
The idea of architecture and urban form being the sole determinant of urbanisation is a defunct as the idea of nationhood in a globalised society.
And all the time you have to balance the concepts of personal self-sufficiency [see FKL’s study on this] with that of self-sufficiency of a civilisation as a whole.

ONQ.

Mary Wilson just had Lorcan Sirr on the radio. Skehan must have been asleep in the cave.

What did we find out? . . . . We found out that ”we need a plan” and a ”plan in which the ‘plan’ takes precedence”.

Are we all OK with that?

He didn’t mention what might be in this plan, but he did say he’s been ”getting traction” recently with the notion of having a plan, so whether that’s a veiled reference to the proposed retraction to the Pale we’ll have to wait and see.

Seems like a nice guy, a sort of bright hobbit to Skehan’s intelligent troll.

Where did you find this Gunter? Hodges Figges…seems worth a look.

‘twas Hoggis Figgis Stephen as it happens, in there on the left where the light is crap, you’d almost think they don’t want you reading the books with their lousy 15 watt bulbs.

There was a promo article in the Irish Times on Nov. 9 last, which I was going to let go by, but since we’re on the subject . . .

The IT article trumpeted the familiar Sirr Skehan line that ‘what is good for Dublin is very good for Ireland’ and then went on from there to point out that ‘The engine of Dublin now stretches from Louth to Wicklow, and out to Westmeath . . .’

That latter phrase is not delivered in any kind of [Frank McDonald style] rebuke, as you’d expect, it’s more a case of – look how big our engine is.

Somewhat at odds with all of this, and seemingly borrowing from the Kearns/Motti thesis, the article also states, in the things to do section, that; ‘Dublin City now needs a manager with a proven urban ethos to run and improve the city, a person who will live in the city, cycle in the city, who will engage with its social, economic and transport problems on a daily basis’.

There’ll need to be a high fitness threshold in the job description too, if we’re asking this guy to cycle in from Westmeath.

Everything that Sirr Skehan propound is at odds with the concept of the ‘compact city’.

Planners are simple folk they can’t accommodate two different notions simultaneously, the Compact City and the City Region, it’s one or the other.

In an Irish context, the City Region is not even a proper planning concept, it’s just an attempt to rebrand urban sprawl and make it acceptable, jump aboard a run away train.

We were just beginning to succeed in getting the Compact City concept into the consciousness of those who write the development plans in this country, the last thing this country needs is someone of the stature of Sirr Skehan telling us that all that dodgy re-zoning that our gobshite councillors masterminded to feather their own nests over that last fifty years was really just Dublin rebooting its engine and getting ready for the 21st century. Come on onboard everyone.

I would be very wary of strategies which seem to be causing the rest of us to pack densely in a defined area, easy to take out or control from the air, while the most aggressive military power on the planet is testing its unmanned high altitude drones on civilian populations in the middle east and Israel has a rocket with a 10,000 mile range.

Its easy to lull people into a false sense of security in peacetime – it all changes when war breaks out and you’re left wondering “Why the Fuck did I not see the disadvantages in doing this?” The survivors of Dresden, Hiroshima or Nagasaki know the reality.

Ir architects and planners are supposed to plan for the future, they should at least realize that not all futures may be rosy and defensive military planning has been integrated with city planning for hundreds of years.

Hmmm.

Starting with an ad hominem seldom impresses Gunter, which is why I didn’t (I complemented your comments) and why I suggest you don’t continue in that vein if you want to maintain your credibility as a poster of note on Archiseek.
I’ll put this one down to a lingering Christmas hangover, but don’t keep it up, there’s a good chap.

Let’s take your relevant points.

“The danger that I saw, and still see, in the Sirr Skehan vision of a ‘Dublin Functional Urban Region’, or DUFUR, is that it takes the focus off efforts to re-engineer the compact city model, and it simultaneously legitimizes the haphazard urban sprawl that has spread the city’s bulging midriff all over its straining-to-breaking-point commuter belt.”

“Dublin’s weaknesses are its car dependency, its poor public realm and its miserable density, all of which are interconnected and all of which result in the strength of the core being continuously drained by the demands of the periphery. Adding ever more periphery at ever greater remoteness from the core is just not the solution.”

Reading this piece, its as if the Internet never occurred, as if communications by Skype and video don’t happen every day, as if people who produce things cannot collaborate and the benefits of Globalization are not being realised every day (I do not slavishly support it, not by any means, but credit where its due). Cars do not define my work, attendances or interaction with clients or local authorities. Much of my work can be done on the desktop.

The Leon Krier ideal of “living over the shop” was born out of necessity, not lifestyle choice, by those who had to do business this way to survive economically.

Now people seem to look back on such a situation through rose tinted spectacles, without the attendant horrors of the day, which included huge risk of death by fire, disease, pollution, poor sanitation, and being run over by a horse-drawn carriage having slipped on dung in the streets. It was the squalor of Paris slums that drive the quest for modern accommodation for families and latterly for old folks, incorporating the benefits of fresh air, light and amenity. Until the morally superior Greens with their wood pellets and “sustainability” tried to choke us to death again.

Personally I never liked city living – I was born in the suburbs and have lived all my life there.

I hate commuting, which is why I work from home (with Planning Permission I might add – a bit of a rarity in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown). I commuted for years from Wicklow, no less, not even the outer suburbs, forced to buy a house where I could in the early nineties, that suited my pocket and supported a good way of living in the fresh air – sometimes too “fresh” if you get my “drift”.

I cannot speak for Dublin as an entity, as you and Sirr Skehan seem to do, but I can speak from my own experience.

Dublin is constrained to the south by mountains and the east by the sea, to the north by a green belt and flat land relatively poorly drained – still! The city will expand hugely westwards and to a limited degree via reclaimed land to the east. There will never be a sprawling conurbation to the southwest because of the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains and European Wildlife Directives. Northwards matters are not so constrained, while the city’s Commercial Core has historically moved eastwards, as the development of Docklands has shown with the relocation of offices from Fitzwilliam towards the Grand Canal Basin.

The city is moving and it is doing so by responding to many different stimuli, most of which are economic in nature and not due to the imposition of walls. Walls are well gone as the definers of development, having been left behind by land-use zoning. Recognizing the National Spatial Strategy was never more than a vote-getting gimmick by the discredited Fianna Fáil -led government that introduced it is not something Sirr Skehan should be reviled for – rather he/she,it should be praised for facing the facts.