How to contain urban sprawl — fly to the midlands

NEW airport, new city, new jobs, new homes?

With many economic commentators, domestic and international, warning of the serious implications of our overheated property market, solutions are being desperately sought by policymakers.

There is considerable reluctance on the part of the Government to risk a repeat of the consequences of earlier interventions that targeted property market investors and led to a shortage of rental properties with an inevitable explosion in rents.

The fundamental problem is a shortage on the supply side — not of houses, but of land for housing.

There are thousands of acres of cutaway bogland available not very far from Dublin.

It is land of very little value and its isolated location makes it currently unattractive for development, residential and other.

How could such land be made attractive for development?

John Kasarda, a leading international expert on aviation economics, believes that “airports will shape business location and urban development in this century as much as motorways and roads did in the last century and railroads in the previous one”.

For him, accessibility, rather than location, is the new byword of successful urban development. If it was decided to build a state-of-the-art airport on such land, a new city could be developed (what Kasarda calls an ‘aerotropolis’). It could all be designed so that residential communities were not put under flight paths or too near runways.

It makes much more economic sense to build such an airport than to continue the unsustainable development of an increasingly inaccessible Dublin airport in an already very congested north County Dublin where land is worth e2 million an acre.

Housing could be made available at a very reasonable rate given the cheap land at such an alternative site.

And, as this land is State-owned, social housing could be provided easily and cheaply.

Industrial development would be easily attracted to such an accessible site where residents would find jobs within easy commuting distance. These and other spin-off benefits will not arise from the continued uneconomic development of Dublin airport.

At the same time, if a second parallel runway is not built at Dublin airport, thousands of acres of very valuable land, public and private, will be released for development and there will be no new flight path over existing communities. It is a win-win option.

On Sunday morning last on RTÉ Radio 1, economist Jim Power said a new airport should be built on a green-field site somewhere like Mullingar in the middle of the country.

It could be accessed by a high-speed rail link and a good road network.

Enterprise, Trade and Employment Minister Micheál Martin agreed that such alternatives should be considered and maybe we needed a second airport to the south of Dublin.

He was also concerned that our national planning would continue to be made with a ‘recession mindset’ that underestimated our future needs because it failed to take due account of the real demographic and economic changes that are taking place.

The question now is whether he and his Government have the foresight to think the unthinkable and the courage to make it happen?

If they fail, does the alternative team for government have what it takes?

Matt Harley

60 Martello Court

Portmarnock

Co Dublin