New housing estates are badly planned, says architect

MUCH of the housing development taking place in towns and villages is poorly designed and ill considered, a conference on the Future of Towns & Villages in Ireland heard yesterday.

Leading architect Mike Shanahan told the conference in Limerick that we urgently need to tackle the problem of ‘dead-end’ housing estates being built on the edges of towns and villages.

While we witnessed ‘bungalow blitz’ across open countryside over the past 40 years, smaller towns and villages, he said, had been left pretty much unscathed until recently.

“But this has changed rapidly. Recent planning policies have quite rightly encouraged development back in and around existing urban centres. Places which had not seen new building for decades have in the last few years experienced development on an unprecedented level. Although this has to be welcomed in principle, the reality of what is more usually built leaves a lot to be desired,” said Mr Shanahan.

Another speaker, Philip Jones, vice president of the Irish Planning Institute, said formless urban sprawls were being added on to established village and town structures. “These developments pay no respect to that structure, nor to the character and sense of place that makes it an attractive place to live,” said Mr Jones.

A warning was also sent out that the government decentralisation plan is so spread out over 53 different locations, it will be impossible to create critical mass in any one centre to counter the disproportionate growth of Dublin. Tony Reddy, President of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, said Dublin will continue to grow disproportionately to the rest of the country if the government fails to modify its decentralisation proposals.

He said the National Spatial Strategy identified eight designated gateways.

But only one of these had been chosen for a government headquarters.

This, he said, sends out a confusing message to all parties involved in the implementation of the National Spatial Strategy.

“The proposed decentralisation plan has the potential to ignite competition between every town in the country for investment and development, and competition with the Government’s own designated gateways and hubs,” said Mr Reddy.

One strategy, he said, which could counter the growth of Dublin would be to define the line between Cork, Limerick and Galway as an alternate urban network of international significance.

This, he said, would need a planned improvement of infrastructure development to include motorway and railway links.

He said that leaders in all walks of life are drawn to live in places where they can enjoy a range of economic opportunities, a stimulating environment and diverse amenities.

“Dublin shares these attributes with cities such as Boston and San Francisco in the US and Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen and London in Europe,” he said.

But, diluted decentralisation over 53 centres, he said, would prevent the development of a centre with such attributes outside of Dublin.