Planning blind alley comes to a dead end at house without a hall
If the party takes a hit, as some commentators are predicting, it won't be for the want of smooth moves by the leadership. At last weekend's árd fheis we got swingeing attacks on Sinn Féin, tons of good news announcements and lots of feelgood stuff about the national flag and rural Ireland.
Some of the stuff is pure candyfloss like the recent decision of Minister Mary Coughlan to give babies born on February 29 a "once-off bounty payment of e100", or her announcement that e1 million will be available for community celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary of the UN Year of the Family.
But some of the Government's proposals have more substantial implications for family life. Its resolute defence of decentralisation and the relaxation of restrictions on one-off housing may be populist moves, but they are correct.
It's not just a matter of Fianna Fáil placating country people who don't like city slickers operating out of Temple Bar telling them where they can live. Anything which supports rural life is a good thing. Rural life only matters, however, because of the people in it. It is just as important to develop an urban environment which is conducive to family and community living.
In recent weeks I have been around various private housing estates in Dublin's northern suburbs. Some of what developers have perpetrated, with the acquiescence of planning authorities and central government, is hard to credit.
For example, you may have thought that a hallway or some variant of vestibule would be an essential feature of any new dwelling these days. Not so.
In some very new estates in the Blanchardstown/Clonee area, one of the first things you notice as you approach the doorway of a house is a curtain on the inside of the glass panel. A moment later, you see why. As the door opens, you find yourself peering into a family's living room.
Once upon a time, this would have been considered quite normal.
For centuries, perhaps thousands of years, Irish families lived in close proximity to their relations and neighbours. People went in and out of each other's kitchens without inhibition. Privacy, as we now understand it, was not an issue outside of the bedroom.
Over time, middle class notions took hold and we came to value our personal space. Most of us still like to be friendly and have people call to our doors. But we don't like to be caught in the middle of our dinner. Hallways provide that important buffer space between our private lives and our public selves.
This fact is ignored by developers who, in their rush to make profits, are happily herding homebuyers into ever tighter shoe boxes. Residents are separated from their neighbours by paper-thin walls which fail to block out noise.
Developers don't complete work on time or disregard, with impunity, the conditions attached to planning permission. You have false advertising plastered on billboards outside new estates, promising amenities such as shops and schools to home-buyers. Sometimes, these services take years to materialise.
It's not all the fault of developers. In the first instance, the Department of the Environment has failed to establish acceptable minimum standards for housing. According to Kieran Kennedy, director of planning with South Dublin County Council, the minimum floor space required by the department for dwellings is "completely out of date" and "not sufficient to support long-term family living". Secondly, local authorities often fail to enforce existing building regulations. When you're hearing more of your neighbour's conversations than you need to, it's probably because the builder flouted the regulations. The local authority lacked either the competence or the resources properly to supervise matters.
The third issue is the reluctance of local authority planners to remedy government failures by requiring higher standards in their development plans. One reason for this, says Kieran Kennedy, is the fear that tighter restrictions could be struck down on appeal before An Bord Pleanála. But is that really a reason for inaction? Surely it would be no bad thing if such appeals drew attention to the inadequacy of government regulation for urban housing.
The latest draft development plans, covering the years 2005-2011, will bring some positive changes. For example, South Dublin County Council will end the phenomenon of 'single aspect' apartments, and ensure that apartments must have natural light coming in on at least two sides. They have already done this in the master plan for Adamstown, the new town to be built near Lucan.
FINGAL County Council wants standards for private dwellings to come into line with those required by the Department of the Environment for social housing. The director of services for planning, David O'Connor, says that, under the new development plan, each bedroom must be square enough to allow people place the bed both lengthways and width-ways.
The question is, will the proposed changes be enough? And isn't it absurd that regulation in this area should be left to county development plans, which vary from place to place? Shouldn't better standards be enforced nationwide?
Perhaps the real issue is that the Department of the Environment and planning authorities are not making family and community life their top priority. Economics and the efficient supply of services seem to dominate their thinking. The Government argues and the planners agree that Dublin has expanded too much and that low-density housing in suburbia leads to massive traffic congestion and infrastructural costs. They are convinced of the merits of high density housing, and this of itself necessitates smaller living space.
How can families be properly catered for if housing provision is too dense? One planner points to a city like Amsterdam which successfully accommodates a Dublin-size population in about half the geographical area. "Their apartment developments are no more than four or five stories high not too high to alienate you from the street," he says. "In almost every housing scheme there is a purpose-built playground."
This view holds that density is not the problem, so much as the lack of amenities. But there are two problems:
(1) it is hard to blame the public for being sceptical of high-density proposals, when they are still waiting for the schools and services in low-density areas;
(2) amenities alone will not save communities.
Development plans which prize apartment blocks and small houses presume small family size and latchkey living. Communities need families and children if they are to thrive. The built environment should encourage, not militate against, this.
The first problem is easily remedied. Local authorities need to make it a condition of planning permission that developers provide services and amenities. Allow development to take place in a staged way, with permission for new phases only given once the amenities are in place. But the second issue requires a real commitment by government to give families and communities the space they need to live and thrive. Instead of giving us sugar-coated celebrations of family life, Mary Coughlan should be putting the squeeze on Martin Cullen and the mandarins in Environment.
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