Why Cork must build homes, not just housing units, to create a thriving urban future

Cork’s housing future needs more than units and numbers — it needs vision, vibrancy and neighbourhoods that people call home writes Shane Clarke

Office and residential developments at Horgan's Quay, Cork City. Picture: Larry Cummins

Housing is a numbers game it would seem — 40,000 new builds the 2024 pre-election pitch; 30,000 the post-election fact; 20,000 Airbnb short-term lets; a paltry 2,300 long term rentals.

Developer Michael O’Flynn noted recently that “insufficient profit” is the core reason for the lack of housing delivery, yet property prices remain at record levels. The Department of Housing report in January revealed over 15,000 people are classed as homeless.

But don’t worry. Micheál Martin informed the president of the free world’ that “housing is our number one priority”. Simon Harris recently told the Fine Gael parliamentary party that housing must be treated as an "emergency".

The Central Bank Quarterly Bulletin for Q1 2025, rather tempered such fighting talk, noting that, over the period to 2027, “overall investment is forecast to remain below required levels based on population growth and household formation”. On and on we go. And that is before Trump may yet extend his havoc into the Irish property market.

These numbers are fundamentally important of course, but we seem to have lost sight of the need, indeed the necessity, to build homes, not housing units; to create communities, not dormitories; to engender the flourishing of our historic towns and cities, not to further suburban sprawl.

How might Cork City develop against such considerations? Projections dominate once again. The Census tells us that urban Cork had a population of 224,000 in 2022. The published ambition is for 250,000 by 2030 and 340,00 by 2040.

The docklands strategy seeks 10,000 apartments, 20,000 residents and 25,000 new jobs but the ‘decade of transformation’ is fast running out of time to deliver such optimism. Planning permissions proliferate but delivery is only slowly emerging.

This stands in contrast to the new two-car dependent suburban estates that proliferate in Glanmire, Carrigaline and further afield — usually in a fairly recent field. An Augustinian pledge to sustainability, but not just yet.

Presuming that Cork City bucks the national trend of unevidenced boosterism on housing delivery, what of the vision for the city? The rhetoric of the council’s library of development and economic plans is encouraging: ‘The regeneration of Cork docklands will grow the heart of Cork City and create walkable neighbourhoods that connect with the river, city and surrounding communities’.

That’s an A-plus for urban design ambition. When the sun shines, Cork is a lovely city. Delivering on that ambition would transform the city and realise its potential to be a great city. But planners tend to take the birds-eye view, what does this look like at street level?

Apartments under construction by BAM, beside the River Lee at Horgan's Quay, Cork. Picture: Larry Cummins

A good litmus test is whether a young couple would choose to bring up children in the city centre. The current reality is that such families head to the suburbs.

We’ve fashioned a city that caters to the needs of students and young professionals. Great for a night out and good for retail therapy but not a community in which to build a future. If Cork is to achieve its laudable vision one might keep a flaneur’s eye on three characteristics of great urban neighbourhoods. Density, amenity, and diversity.

Streets have been the connective DNA of cities since emergence of Mesopotamian urbanism some 5,000 years ago. But international finance too often thinks otherwise. Such investment prizes simplicity over complexity, large blocks over smaller plots, single use over entrepreneurial opportunity.

A deadening blandness results. The Dublin docklands look just like those of Belfast or Cardiff. The Cork docklands will be more successful to the extent you’re walking down streets, not bus corridors; shopping in a family business rather than big-box retail; whose architecture connects seamlessly to Blackrock, Ballintemple and the city centre; an urban nexus rather than a gentrified cul-de-sac.

The exciting announcement of the Cork Luas alignment should be the catalyst for the delivery of an urban density that counters the tendency to suburban office-park like development.

The success of the city centre and the docklands hinges on the delivery of world class amenities and public investment. Education facilities across the spectrum of life, playgrounds, parks, community centres, health provision, the highest quality public realm and so forth.

The public library is perhaps the exemplar in this regard. If this astonishing institution hadn’t been invented, then these neo-liberal times would scoff at the farcical notion of giving away books in temples to civic pride.

That for 10 years we’ve championed the ghost of a private events centre over the possibility of a new world class public library doesn’t give one faith that our political class understands that cities are fundamentally civic spaces. While it’s marvellous to see the investment in the stunning new food-hall in ‘posh’ Dunnes on Patrick Street, where is the vision and capital backing for Cork’s treasured English Market?

Our world is changing and Cork with it. Welcoming a diversity of communities and demographics into the city centre will only be for better of the city. Let’s hold the students and the young professionals, but let’s invite back in the retirees, the new arrivals, the wealthy and the financially challenged into a thriving, diverse and resilient city centre.

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I’m a blow-in, but to my mind that’s pure Cork. The city has form here. It’s very friendly, genuinely welcoming, incredibly mixed and generally very safe. That’s reputational gold that resonates. That’s the sort of city that businesses invest in and that families want to live at the heart of. Let’s run with that. Everybody needs good neighbours. My Corkometer on this is a good nine out of 10.

So, deliver the housing units but make them homes. Carve out new streets and set them within communities. Embrace complexity.

Let’s co-create the city centre as one of Europe’s great neighbourhoods. Let’s get the finance and decision-making wherewithal out of Merrion Street and down to Cork where it belongs as per the most ambitious and successful of Europe’s great smaller cities. Thereafter, investment, jobs, and long-term sustainable urbanism will follow.

Cork would then be in danger of getting this right!

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