High-density housing not all bad
Its ill-effects stem from poorly built and maintained facilities. Lifts breaking down are an indictment of lifts maintenance, not the housing. The social and psychological problems associated with high-density housing are due to tower blocks peopled with the less-well-off and which did not provide ancillary facilities. The towers often fell prey to anti-social behaviour and dereliction.
Perhaps high-rise development is not suitable for young families, but suggesting that all high-density development be discarded in favour of low-density housing would promote urban sprawl. The boom years left us with vast swathes of low-density housing estates. These are both an inefficient use of land and require high-quality public transport for widely-dispersed inhabitants, which is difficult.
One of the key difficulties in providing public transport in Ireland is the lack of sufficient density to ensure that such facilities are well-used. The negative impacts of low-density urban sprawl hardly need to be described, save to mention the traffic jams, pollution, and other ill-effects of car-dependency.
Cllr Collins confuses badly executed developments, like Ballymun (which certainly could be hard to live in), with all high-density development.
The slightest look at cities in countries like The Netherlands and Germany, which combine high-density housing with a high-quality built environment, allowing for parks and playgrounds and public transport, would show that high-density housing doesn’t necessarily result in a bleak concrete jungle and psychologically damaged inhabitants.
Rather than fixating on the ill-effects of high-density housing, surely Mr Collins would be better to encourage a higher standard of urbanism in Ireland, which would allow for the development of a well-designed mix of high-density and low-density housing that reduces car-dependency, encourages public transport, increases the prevalence of walking and cycling, and generally improves our health and happiness.
Conna
Fermoy
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