Welcome to Ireland’s ugly urban sprawl

quote sjpclarke “But what are young working childless couples doing in a three bed houses with front and back gardens (they never use or concrete over)…”

This touches on a very valid point. The problems are recognised, but there is a very real perception problem with “apartment living” in this country. A drive towards greater densities can only succeed if people are willing to live in such communities. Past apartment developments in our urban areas have certainly not helped people’s perception. An overhaul of D.O.E. guidelines on minimum apartment sizes?

Most certainly – it is interesting to note the difference in attitudes towards terraced housing in the UK and in Ireland.
Whereas in the major cities in the UK that are jam-packed with Victorian terraces for then considered lower middle class and middle middle class, here terraces are still considered to be the lowest of the low in the housing heirarchy.

Yet even the most exclusive housing in the capital on Palmerstown Road or Morehampton Rd etc are all terraced!
Fair enough we can do without their prairie back gardens today, but they’re good examples of how housing can still be built to a high density and can be very commodious with three storey over-basement, without having to go the apartment route.
It never fails to astonish how vast the seemingly modest Edwardian semis/terraces of Glasnevin etc are – most have five bedrooms and 3 recs.

The problem with terraces is that they’re very much so associated with major urban centres, and the very notion of building them in a field in Mullingar is not even on the radar of developers in this country.
Nor even is the idea of mixed developments – with a multitude of units to cater for different needs, from tall family terraces and/or semis, to apartments for younger/older/single persons etc.
Just row upon row upon row of yellow semis with three bedrooms and often a single person clattering about inside.

It’s partially the developers/planners fault, but also the mindset of young people wanting to grab hold of a 3-bed semi for future security.

That a country of 5 million people (inc. the North) (basically the size of South London) cannot plan its physical environment (which we all claim as so precious) in a sustainable fashion is a sorry indictment of politicians, local councillors, voters, planners, money grabbing gombeen men and the apathetic public at large. Contrary to the above I don’t think that the Irish have any real feel for nor commitment to a sustainable urban and rural future.

Good point, needs to be said more often I feel. These ideas are good, but often forgotten at crucial times, when big decisions are being made with regard to future planning. I need to constant repeat and repeat, the most basic steps in regard to designing good architecture to myself, every day – you think that they stick, but really they need to be refreshed all of the time – so I don’t expect many planners remember the basics either, without a constant refreshing on regular basis. Very true, but unfortunately rarely observed, in either architecture or in planning.

I have friends they have bought starter houses out in Kildare and to a certain extent I can sympathise given the cost in Dublin. But what are young working childless couples doing in a three bed houses with front and back gardens (they never use or concrete over) which they basically occupy from 7pm to 7am. A complete waste of space. The demographic of Ireland is such that two parent three odd child families are very very much in the minority yet we keep building and buying such inflexible space.

Again, what I like a lot about your post, and often when guys like Frank McDonald from the Times talks on radio etc, is you are just issuing very obvious (what should be obvious) statements or guides to proper approachs to design. You aren’t saying much out of the ordinary – but sometimes, I guess in the attempt to create stuff which is ‘extraordinary’ (trumpets and big drums) we can just forget the ordinary stuff, which is far, far better for design and planning in general. And, you know, if you take a lot of the quoted points, in this post, on board at all – we here in Ireland could be contributing to problems in the future – problems this country is going to have to deal with at some stage or other.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Large industrial centres like Birmingham, Manchester , Liverpool Bradford, etc, etc?
I would not live there if you paid me!

Conceptually comparing us with cities that have really got their act together as against South London which is only a bit of a mess would just be too depressing.

I know people like space but the costs of providing decent public services such transport and public open spaces to developments at 16 to the acre is prohibitively expensive. I have no problem with apartment living as a concept, I lived in a great apartment with three freinds on Georges St for a couple of years during College which had 75 sq metres of internal space as well as a courtyard to the back. The problem is that very few apartments are as well done as this place was and when the rent went up from 600 to 1100 pounds in one review that was it.

A freind recently bought an apartment at Santry Demense which I think was a very good move at 275k for a 2 bed of 75 sq m, it has much better recreational amentiy than your typical semi with a postage stamp garden as you get both a private balcony and large communal gardens.

Themond Park – I’m sure we’re pretty much of a similar mind here though I take issue with both yourself and DublinLimrick with regard to South London. I’ve lived in London nearly ten years now with the last four or so in South London. Its certainly a bit messy but in no way an urban wasteland. I actullay live in Brixton which is one of the most vibrant, culturally mixed, cultural, fun, well-connected, green and leafy inner suburbs one could wish to live in. Similar could be said of ten’s of other such urban villages that South Londoners call home. I’m not suggesting that Ireland and London are equivalent just that it is possible to house considerable populations in relative urban luxury at medium densities – London is in no way a high density city like Paris or Barcellona.

DublinLimrick – You do not seem to have read my submission above. I make no comparions in my piece at all – just the singular observation that we’ve got a lot of space and not very many people who collectively live in a disjointed and unsustainable manner. How this suggests a “rather geographically ( and perhaps culturally ) restricted knowledge” I do not know. To date I have lived in Dublin, London, Sydney, Melbourne and Boston for extensive periods of time. I do agree that London is not, cannot and should not be a model for Dublin in the round but there are valuable lessons that can be learnt from this city. (Dave – London’s population is increasing and has been for about a decade. While the official population is about 7.5 million this does not take into consideration the green belt which artifically – but positively – confines the popluation figures). Certainly there are much more appropriate models as you noted.

This is both a cultural (manstein) and infrastructural issue (dave123) in addition to the architecture or not of the developments in question. Leaving this to the market is proving a disaster.

Apologies sipclarke if I misinterpreted your points.
I just like leafy suburbs and houses with gardens in well-kept streets. I like communities who take an active interest in their local areas. Medium-density housing is fine for central Dublin but not further out (we need choice).
One problem with high-density housing – particularly some apartment developments – is that management of apartment blocks tends to become dysfunctional, probably due to absentee landlords who take the rent but do not participate in the day to day management of these developments. Relatively new apartment blocks can thus become degraded and are seen
as less desirable to live in.
I believe the Dublin City Manager spoke of this problem recently and perhaps we need a look (in legal terms) at the rights
and responsiblities associated with estate management.

@David McWilliams wrote:

One-off housing is simply a response to pester power

17 April 2005 By David McWilliams
“Mummy, mummy, mummy, I want a Kit Kat.” “No, darling, you can’t have a Kit Kat, have an apple instead.” “Why can’t I have chocolate?” “Well, because too much chocolate will rot your teeth, make you fat, possibly leading to obesity, heart problems and diabetes.” “What’s diabetes?” “Diabetes is one of the fastest growing ailments in Ireland and doctors say it is related to bad diet and specifically too much sugar.

“Diabetes can weaken your immune system, making you more susceptible to other illnesses and it affects your circulation. Obesity will have an emotional and psychological element to it. For example, in your early teens you will be slagged at school and possibly bullied.

“This might make life more difficult for you than it already is.

“Carrying too much fat might prevent you from playing sport or just running around with your friends. Although you don’t realise it now, its better for you in the long term if Mummy does not give you chocolate and sweets every time.”

“OK Mum.”

If only dealing with pester power was so easy. It is incessant and parents can – in one split second – go from dealing with a sweet, loveable little darling to being faced by a tantrum-throwing creature resembling Damien from The Omen, all triggered by a Barbie Magazine, a hair clip or even face paints. Yet, all adults can see the logic of adult supervision in the above encounter between mother and child.

In many ways, running a country is similar. It is a fine balancing act – a bit like exercising adult supervision – between the squabbling and conflicting demands of every lobby group, vested interest, voter or even parishioner.

In an ideal world, politicians would act like concerned parents, always looking to the longer-term implications of today’s decisions and understanding the basic premise of pester power, which is that today’s path of least resistance might lead to serious problems tomorrow.

The economy displays similar characteristics. Like the human body, it is a fragile ecosystem with sensitive and interrelated functions. Nothing works in isolation. This is why the government’s decision on one-off housing last week is so misguided and is the ultimate expression of political irresponsibility.

Minister Dick Roche has been bullied and he has bowed to political pester power in the same way as a jaded mother buys peace at home with a Kit Kat, knowing well that the rapid ingestion of sugar will only lead to a short-term kick that will soon wear off.

The decision on one-off housing will cost us a fortune in the years ahead. A lot of the coverage has focused on the possibility that some of our natural beauty spots will be tarnished by bungalows. For this column, bungalow blight is not the issue.

The main reasons for opposing this retrograde move are political, economic, and environmental or resource-based.

On the political front, Napoleon once stated accurately that “to govern is to choose’‘. It is crucial that a government is not seen to be continually compromising.

It needs to make hard choices and to stick to its convictions. A government without conviction is a government without credibility. It has to stand for something.

If it changes the planning laws and guidelines too frequently and in response to pestering from lobby groups, the credibility of all directives, laws and decrees will be tarnished. In short, no system can work without a set of rules and if the rules are bent too often the entire system is undermined.

Farmers, developers and individual owners of land will interpret Roche’s latest move as a green light to chance their arms, leading to a further blurring of planning regulation. Of itself, extending development may not be a big deal, but the related economic ramifications certainly are. Let us be very clear: if we have one-off housing, we cannot have a functioning public transport system, public health service, public education system or postal system, never mind universal access to broadband or cable.

Think five years hence, with thousands of houses dotted willy-nilly around the country, neither in villages nor towns. A rural movement starts complaining, in marginal constituencies, about the lack of buses or other public transport infrastructure.

You then get the airwaves blocked by the rather innocent-sounding “rural bus coalition’‘ that is running a candidate in the local elections on the rural isolation ticket. Suddenly you have local TDs promising hourly bus services to the back end of nowhere to facilitate the people that built their one-off houses at the end of the valley in 2006.

The success of the rural bus coalition spawns the “isolated ambulance platform’‘, which is running another candidate for “immediate ambulance access for the dark-side-of-the-mountain’‘. This flamboyant candidate is threatening the goofy scion of an interbred fourth generation local political dynasty.

Within weeks the local TD is in the Dáil demanding ambulances for all and within a month or so you get the “remote school access project’‘ calling for school buses to travel the 30-mile round trip to pick up little Saoirse from halfway up Errigal and drop her to school for nine o’clock.

It’s the same story with postal services as well as water, sewage, telecom and roads infrastructure. The more you spread the population, the higher the cost of providing all these services.

But do you think a variation of the “polluter pays’‘ concept would be applied to price these extra services – where the more remote you are, the more you pay for basic utilities because it costs more to get the services to you? No way.

There would be uproar, constitutional challenges and entire Liveline programmes devoted to the “constitutional right’‘ to be bussed to the local “educate together’‘ preschool.

So who pays? The worker who has abided by the laws, who has bought a place in a town or a village and who is not lucky enough to inherit land. You pay.

Your bills and taxes will be increased to pay for the lobby group that shouts the loudest.

The combination of a weak political system, opportunistic land owners and pushy local candidates means that the silent suburban majority – the backbone of this country – gets shafted again.

Looking forward, there is another argument for centralised, high density living, as opposed to a sporadic, scattered, one-off pattern – the price, supply and availability of oil. Ireland is one of the most oil-dependent countries in the world and suburban sprawl and one-off housing depend on cheap petrol.

However, we may have passed the period of cheap fuel. Global oil production is set to peak in 2011 and we are unlikely to find anymore of it. Demand from China and India is set to sky-rocket and this week we have seen tension over fuel between China, the second-largest oil importer in the world, and Japan, the third-largest.

Switching back home, the cost of one-off housing will be equally badly exposed if oil prices remain where they are or begin to creep upwards. One-off housing means commuting because, as far as I am aware, we are not talking about one-off offices, one-off supermarkets, one-off schools, one-off shopping centres, one-off restaurants, one-off cinemas or one-off factories.

The houses are designed for people to commute from. If the price of petrol goes through the roof, these people will be looking for subsidies to get from their one-off bungalows to work.

Like doling out sweets in response to pester power, the government’s move is short-term, ill-conceived and will only do damage in the long run. When we suffer the economic equivalent of hardened arteries, liver failure and diabetes, just remember none of these ailments are one-off.

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie

Any thoughts?

@Cori wrote:

Cori calls for sustainable development model
From:ireland.com
Monday, 25th July, 2005

The Conference of Religious of Ireland (Cori) has called for Ireland to adopt a development model that has sustainability at its core.

In its latest report, the body argues there is a growing demand worldwide to find new models “that will conserve the planet and its resources and empower people to meet their own needs and the needs of others”.

Central to this should be a move away from “money-measured growth” as the principal economic target and measure of success, and an emphasis on sustainability in terms of real-life social, environmental and economic variables, Cori said.

Fr Healy of Cori warned that the scale of Ireland’s poverty problem is “sometimes easy to overlook”. According to figures from Cori, there were over 900,000 people technically living in poverty in Ireland in 2003 out of a population of nearly four million.

He said sustainability was the key to tackling poverty, not just in Ireland but globally. “There is a growing awareness that sustainability must be a constant factor in all development, whether social, economic or environmental,” he said.

Fr Healy also welcomed Ireland’s commitment to reaching the emissions targets of the Kyoto treaty. “These emissions are a major cause of climate change, and it is in all our interests to ensure that the limits agreed in the Kyoto protocol are met,” he said.

However, he warned that “major changes” are required if we are to reduce our emissions towards this target.

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/breaking/5971448?view=Eircomnet

This is one I didn’t see coming