A GROUP campaigning for sustainable rural communities has criticised a Government decision to defer funding for the Gateways Innovation Fund, which is part of the national spatial strategy.
Minister for the Environment John Gormley announced last week that as part of his department's plan to reduce capital and current expenditure by €48.3 million this year, some €40 million allocated to the gateway fund for 2008 had been withdrawn and €100 million for 2009 deferred.
However, Irish Rural Link chief executive Seamus Boland said the decision was a setback to balanced regional development.
"In the current economic climate a signal to investors that all the regions of Ireland are open for business would have been a very positive message. Unfortunately the Government has sent the opposite signal to the investment community."
He said when the current national development plan was published, interest groups agreed that a crucial measure of its success would be its ability to deliver balanced regional development.
"Balanced regional development is crucial both for Dublin and for the regions. Failure to deliver will mean continuing problems for Dublin, such as congestion, urban sprawl and unaffordable housing.
"For many of the regions outside Dublin the failure to deliver balanced regional development will mean weak labour markets and the out-migration of young people and skilled workers."
Irish Rural Link says the funding was "pretty small" but was important as it "forced regional actors to work with each other to devise imaginative proposals for the region's development".
The gateway towns involved are Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar, Cork, Dublin, Dundalk, Galway, Letterkenny, Limerick/Shannon, Sligo and Waterford.
Some €300 million was allocated over the period 2008-2010.
The Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Showing posts with label national spatial strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national spatial strategy. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Monday, 31 March 2008
Planning for a future that is going to happen, not against it
Proper planning is about more than permission to build; it is about managing the future. And planning in Ireland, including the National Spatial Strategy, isn't working, writes CONOR SKEHAN and LORCAN SIRR
Unless we are prepared to make some politically unpalatable decisions and begin to plan for a new and rapidly changing reality that is already unfolding around us, Ireland is on the threshold of making critical planning errors that will significantly prolong the unfolding recession. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
In 2008, we face similar choices to Japan after the end of its property boom in the early 1990s. They failed to acknowledge change and take the hard but necessary decision to re-evaluate their economic and political model, and as a result Japan has seen its economy stagnate over the last 15 years with no end in sight.
Ireland now needs to address startling new challenges and old problems caused by outdated models of enterprise and client-based systems of governance.
To meet these challenges many familiar practices need to be questioned, none more so than our repeated failure to plan adequately and appropriately for the future.
Planning aims to support and enhance environmental, social and economic betterment. It cannot create jobs but it can create and sustain attractive conditions for creating jobs.
But "planning" in Ireland, in the words of Michael Smith, the minister for environment in 1993, has become a "debased currency".
Used almost exclusively to describe consent to build, it is almost never used for its original purpose - to make provision for the future. The Irish planning system's lack of foresight is now recognised as one of the fundamental causes of the recent property bubble. This has distorted our economy and ultimately undermined our competitiveness.
Planning for a successful Ireland of, say, 2030, means identifying, examining and working with, not against, the forces that will shape our future. To plan a future Ireland on a business-as-usual, or, worse still, on a political basis, as we have already done with the plan for the decentralisation of government, would be another exercise in folly.
Recent commentaries on Ireland's future have concentrated on the familiar topics of immigration and the high-tech industry, but they have overlooked a series of deeper spatial and social changes that are already completely changing Ireland. These changes are both tangible and intangible and the hardest decision will be to acknowledge their existence and accept the magnitude of these changes.
The biggest intangible change will be to our value systems. Urban attitudes are different, solutions are demanded immediately, and problems left unsolved are obvious and cumulative. Most Irish people now live urbanised lifestyles, living in or near towns. However, very few settlements have reached the critical size of 100,000 that allows all of the benefits of city life to begin to occur.
The small size and the markedly eastern distribution of Irish settlements is a reality that few policies recognise or accommodate, and the rate of urbanisation in Ireland means that our traditional rurally based value system will change more rapidly than any other European country.
Changing values, combined with increased urbanisation and a larger population mostly concentrated in the area around Dublin and four other cities, also have profound political implications.
For the last 25 years or so, the two largest and traditionally rural-based parties have been losing their share of overall voting percentages at each election. In less than 10 years urban agendas will dominate politics in Ireland. These large political parties will need to rethink their approach to local and national governance in order to survive in this changing society.
The first major tangible change will be our population and where we'll be living. By 2030, it is estimated that the population of the Republic will be around 6.45 million. Of these, 2.76 million, or 43 per cent, will be living in the greater Dublin area (GDA) - which occupies less than 10 per cent of the area of the State. If we include the seven counties adjacent to the GDA, then almost two-thirds of the population will be living on about a quarter of the land.
Although the population will continue to grow, there is unlikely to be much change in the pattern of low-density accommodation provision. This means that urbanised areas will spread both up and down the eastern region, creating a corridor of continuous development, ultimately stretching from Belfast through Dublin to Waterford and on to Cork. About two-thirds of the population will be living within 35kms of the entire east coast, and no plan for "balanced regional development" is going to prevent that.
By 2015, the Common Agricultural Policy will have been reformed and Irish agriculture as we currently know it will have been altered forever. For climatic and geological as well as economic reasons, it is likely Ireland will have two main agricultural sectors, with intensive agribusiness concentrated mainly in the south and east. In the north and west, it is likely that environmental designations will become common, and will be the main determinants of future development.
There will also be far fewer farmers in a future Ireland, which means larger landholdings, and, through necessity, the emergence of creative agriculture, food and farming practices.
The economy, too, will alter significantly. Our over-reliance on foreign direct investment (FDI) is a dated approach to economic planning. We have also failed to provide the infrastructure many large corporations need in time, and what is there is arguably too dear, too small and in the wrong location. FDI has also FSC - Found Somewhere Cheaper.
The future scale and distribution of Ireland is not crystal ball-gazing: several publications have dealt with likely future scenarios for Ireland, most recently the Urban Forum's Twice the Size report.
The indicators and patterns of development have been evident for some time, and yet, incredibly, no credible plan exists to deal with this clearly emerging future. Instead we have the National Spatial Strategy (NSS), a plan devised to achieve balanced regional development, thereby diverting resources from Dublin. The net result of this is a lack of investment for economic growth in the one region that sustains the rest of the country.
This in turn makes the transfer of funds from the advantaged areas to the disadvantaged more difficult.
The continued implementation of the NSS has serious implications for our future success. It proposes spreading the jam too thinly across the country, so everybody gets a taste but nobody's hunger is satisfied. Crucially, the NSS is planning for an Ireland that is probably not going to happen.
There is a need for plan for the future that is more likely to happen - the continued urbanisation of the eastern region - instead of trying to prevent it. This has obvious political implications.
Deliberately fostering, providing and sustaining the conditions for a human being to live an entire fulfilled lifetime is the business of planning, and it is a huge challenge. Where rural communities can survive in a laissez faire regime, the urban citizen is entirely dependent on the city to supply and sustain these conditions of life, potential and prosperity. We need to acknowledge our duty of care to urban dwellers, those whose prosperity will have direct positive economic and social impacts on the rest of the country.Many existing institutions, policymakers and professionals will find these changes and challenges difficult to accept. No one is saying planning for the future will be easy, but planning against the future is far more difficult.
Conor Skehan is head of the Department of Environment and Planning; Dr Lorcan Sirr is head of research, Faculty of the Built Environment at Dublin Institute of Technology
The Irish Times
www.buckplannng.ie
Unless we are prepared to make some politically unpalatable decisions and begin to plan for a new and rapidly changing reality that is already unfolding around us, Ireland is on the threshold of making critical planning errors that will significantly prolong the unfolding recession. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
In 2008, we face similar choices to Japan after the end of its property boom in the early 1990s. They failed to acknowledge change and take the hard but necessary decision to re-evaluate their economic and political model, and as a result Japan has seen its economy stagnate over the last 15 years with no end in sight.
Ireland now needs to address startling new challenges and old problems caused by outdated models of enterprise and client-based systems of governance.
To meet these challenges many familiar practices need to be questioned, none more so than our repeated failure to plan adequately and appropriately for the future.
Planning aims to support and enhance environmental, social and economic betterment. It cannot create jobs but it can create and sustain attractive conditions for creating jobs.
But "planning" in Ireland, in the words of Michael Smith, the minister for environment in 1993, has become a "debased currency".
Used almost exclusively to describe consent to build, it is almost never used for its original purpose - to make provision for the future. The Irish planning system's lack of foresight is now recognised as one of the fundamental causes of the recent property bubble. This has distorted our economy and ultimately undermined our competitiveness.
Planning for a successful Ireland of, say, 2030, means identifying, examining and working with, not against, the forces that will shape our future. To plan a future Ireland on a business-as-usual, or, worse still, on a political basis, as we have already done with the plan for the decentralisation of government, would be another exercise in folly.
Recent commentaries on Ireland's future have concentrated on the familiar topics of immigration and the high-tech industry, but they have overlooked a series of deeper spatial and social changes that are already completely changing Ireland. These changes are both tangible and intangible and the hardest decision will be to acknowledge their existence and accept the magnitude of these changes.
The biggest intangible change will be to our value systems. Urban attitudes are different, solutions are demanded immediately, and problems left unsolved are obvious and cumulative. Most Irish people now live urbanised lifestyles, living in or near towns. However, very few settlements have reached the critical size of 100,000 that allows all of the benefits of city life to begin to occur.
The small size and the markedly eastern distribution of Irish settlements is a reality that few policies recognise or accommodate, and the rate of urbanisation in Ireland means that our traditional rurally based value system will change more rapidly than any other European country.
Changing values, combined with increased urbanisation and a larger population mostly concentrated in the area around Dublin and four other cities, also have profound political implications.
For the last 25 years or so, the two largest and traditionally rural-based parties have been losing their share of overall voting percentages at each election. In less than 10 years urban agendas will dominate politics in Ireland. These large political parties will need to rethink their approach to local and national governance in order to survive in this changing society.
The first major tangible change will be our population and where we'll be living. By 2030, it is estimated that the population of the Republic will be around 6.45 million. Of these, 2.76 million, or 43 per cent, will be living in the greater Dublin area (GDA) - which occupies less than 10 per cent of the area of the State. If we include the seven counties adjacent to the GDA, then almost two-thirds of the population will be living on about a quarter of the land.
Although the population will continue to grow, there is unlikely to be much change in the pattern of low-density accommodation provision. This means that urbanised areas will spread both up and down the eastern region, creating a corridor of continuous development, ultimately stretching from Belfast through Dublin to Waterford and on to Cork. About two-thirds of the population will be living within 35kms of the entire east coast, and no plan for "balanced regional development" is going to prevent that.
By 2015, the Common Agricultural Policy will have been reformed and Irish agriculture as we currently know it will have been altered forever. For climatic and geological as well as economic reasons, it is likely Ireland will have two main agricultural sectors, with intensive agribusiness concentrated mainly in the south and east. In the north and west, it is likely that environmental designations will become common, and will be the main determinants of future development.
There will also be far fewer farmers in a future Ireland, which means larger landholdings, and, through necessity, the emergence of creative agriculture, food and farming practices.
The economy, too, will alter significantly. Our over-reliance on foreign direct investment (FDI) is a dated approach to economic planning. We have also failed to provide the infrastructure many large corporations need in time, and what is there is arguably too dear, too small and in the wrong location. FDI has also FSC - Found Somewhere Cheaper.
The future scale and distribution of Ireland is not crystal ball-gazing: several publications have dealt with likely future scenarios for Ireland, most recently the Urban Forum's Twice the Size report.
The indicators and patterns of development have been evident for some time, and yet, incredibly, no credible plan exists to deal with this clearly emerging future. Instead we have the National Spatial Strategy (NSS), a plan devised to achieve balanced regional development, thereby diverting resources from Dublin. The net result of this is a lack of investment for economic growth in the one region that sustains the rest of the country.
This in turn makes the transfer of funds from the advantaged areas to the disadvantaged more difficult.
The continued implementation of the NSS has serious implications for our future success. It proposes spreading the jam too thinly across the country, so everybody gets a taste but nobody's hunger is satisfied. Crucially, the NSS is planning for an Ireland that is probably not going to happen.
There is a need for plan for the future that is more likely to happen - the continued urbanisation of the eastern region - instead of trying to prevent it. This has obvious political implications.
Deliberately fostering, providing and sustaining the conditions for a human being to live an entire fulfilled lifetime is the business of planning, and it is a huge challenge. Where rural communities can survive in a laissez faire regime, the urban citizen is entirely dependent on the city to supply and sustain these conditions of life, potential and prosperity. We need to acknowledge our duty of care to urban dwellers, those whose prosperity will have direct positive economic and social impacts on the rest of the country.Many existing institutions, policymakers and professionals will find these changes and challenges difficult to accept. No one is saying planning for the future will be easy, but planning against the future is far more difficult.
Conor Skehan is head of the Department of Environment and Planning; Dr Lorcan Sirr is head of research, Faculty of the Built Environment at Dublin Institute of Technology
The Irish Times
www.buckplannng.ie
Friday, 25 January 2008
National Spatial Strategy should be scrapped, conference told
The National Spatial Strategy is not working and should be replaced by policies that favour growth in the area around Dublin, a conference was told yesterday.
The radical proposals were unveiled yesterday by the Futures Academy at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). The academy, a group of academic staff and researchers based at DIT, has warned that no proper planning is in place to deal with the most likely scenario that counties in the eastern half of the State will continue to grow faster than other counties.
The DIT warned that the spatial strategy, which envisages balanced growth, could be planning for a future that will never happen. It is proposing a transport network running in an east-west direction directly linking cities like Sligo and Dundalk and Tralee and Waterford, along with a high-speed rail link from Belfast to Waterford.
The academy's draft report, commissioned by the Urban Forum (which consists of groups representing engineers and planners), points out that regional cities, with the exception of Galway, grew slower than the national average in the last decade, and that the largest growth was concentrated in the counties around Dublin.
It warned that planning policies that attempt to fight the trends of where people actually live are doomed to failure and support for shifting resources from east to west may not be there in the future as the voter base becomes increasingly urban.
The report envisages that by 2030 the portion of the population living in Dublin and the 10 nearest counties will increase from 53 per cent to 60 per cent, with 3.8 million people out of a population of 5.3 million living within 25km (15.5 miles) of the east coast. This will happen irrespective of the spatial strategy, the academy says.
The plan was presented yesterday to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce seminar, The Future of Dublin - Imagine Dublin 2020. The chamber has endorsed the proposals.
The plan's recommendations are in direct contrast to the Government's spatial strategy of balancing regional development.
The strategy, which began in 2002, envisages developing nine gateway cities: Dublin, Cork, Limerick/Shannon, Galway, Waterford, Dundalk, Sligo, Letterkenny/Derry and the midlands towns of Athlone/ Tullamore/Mullingar, along with nine medium-sized hubs.
The strategy, which runs until 2020, envisages that regional towns and cities would be twice the size they are now, providing a counterbalance to Dublin.
The Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The radical proposals were unveiled yesterday by the Futures Academy at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). The academy, a group of academic staff and researchers based at DIT, has warned that no proper planning is in place to deal with the most likely scenario that counties in the eastern half of the State will continue to grow faster than other counties.
The DIT warned that the spatial strategy, which envisages balanced growth, could be planning for a future that will never happen. It is proposing a transport network running in an east-west direction directly linking cities like Sligo and Dundalk and Tralee and Waterford, along with a high-speed rail link from Belfast to Waterford.
The academy's draft report, commissioned by the Urban Forum (which consists of groups representing engineers and planners), points out that regional cities, with the exception of Galway, grew slower than the national average in the last decade, and that the largest growth was concentrated in the counties around Dublin.
It warned that planning policies that attempt to fight the trends of where people actually live are doomed to failure and support for shifting resources from east to west may not be there in the future as the voter base becomes increasingly urban.
The report envisages that by 2030 the portion of the population living in Dublin and the 10 nearest counties will increase from 53 per cent to 60 per cent, with 3.8 million people out of a population of 5.3 million living within 25km (15.5 miles) of the east coast. This will happen irrespective of the spatial strategy, the academy says.
The plan was presented yesterday to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce seminar, The Future of Dublin - Imagine Dublin 2020. The chamber has endorsed the proposals.
The plan's recommendations are in direct contrast to the Government's spatial strategy of balancing regional development.
The strategy, which began in 2002, envisages developing nine gateway cities: Dublin, Cork, Limerick/Shannon, Galway, Waterford, Dundalk, Sligo, Letterkenny/Derry and the midlands towns of Athlone/ Tullamore/Mullingar, along with nine medium-sized hubs.
The strategy, which runs until 2020, envisages that regional towns and cities would be twice the size they are now, providing a counterbalance to Dublin.
The Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Saturday, 29 December 2007
Minister of State O'Keeffe outlines his plans for developing areas to Gateway and Hub Managers
Mr. Batt O'Keeffe, T.D., Minister of State Minister for Housing, Urban Renewal and Developing Areas has welcomed the high-level of engagement and firm support he has received from the NSS Gateway and Hub City and County Managers, when he met them to outline his plans for his broadened portfolio on Developing Areas.
In outlining the aim of the Developing Areas brief, the Minister highlighted - "the need to better position Government at both central and local level to co-ordinate development in fast-growing strategic locations throughout the country" - and stressed that this is a priority commitment for the Taoiseach and the Government.
He also recognised the need to look beyond the simple provision of housing to consider a more holistic approach to the development of sustainable communities and delivery of both hard and soft infrastructure - such as water and waste water services, roads and public transport, schools and sports and community facilities.
To drive forward the Developing Areas agenda, the Minister is focusing initially on those areas within the nine Gateways and nine Hubs - designated under the National Spatial Strategy - which are experiencing huge growth and development pressure and where the timely provision of the necessary infrastructure and supporting services needs to be addressed.
It is planned to concentrate on discrete developing areas where, for example, there is development potential of more than 1,000 new housing units and the Minister is engaging with the Managers to quickly identify these areas.
The Minister emphasised the need for his Department to lead by example. "I've set up a dedicated Developing Areas Team, overseen by a top-level steering group within my Department, to drive this work programme. I want this Team - in close partnership with the planning authorities, agencies and other Departments - to identity and help to resolve critical blockages in the co-ordinated delivery of infrastructure and services, necessary to create vibrant, sustainable communities."
The Minister also noted the progress that is already being made in ensuring delivery of schools' infrastructure and schools' places in key developing areas for September 2008 and beyond. "Both Minister Gormley and myself have met recently with Minister Mary Hanafin to discuss how we can assist in this regard and officials in my Department have been engaging in intensive joint discussions between the Department of Education and local authorities to progress the priority school sites in key locations where pressures are most acute."
www.buckplanning.ie
In outlining the aim of the Developing Areas brief, the Minister highlighted - "the need to better position Government at both central and local level to co-ordinate development in fast-growing strategic locations throughout the country" - and stressed that this is a priority commitment for the Taoiseach and the Government.
He also recognised the need to look beyond the simple provision of housing to consider a more holistic approach to the development of sustainable communities and delivery of both hard and soft infrastructure - such as water and waste water services, roads and public transport, schools and sports and community facilities.
To drive forward the Developing Areas agenda, the Minister is focusing initially on those areas within the nine Gateways and nine Hubs - designated under the National Spatial Strategy - which are experiencing huge growth and development pressure and where the timely provision of the necessary infrastructure and supporting services needs to be addressed.
It is planned to concentrate on discrete developing areas where, for example, there is development potential of more than 1,000 new housing units and the Minister is engaging with the Managers to quickly identify these areas.
The Minister emphasised the need for his Department to lead by example. "I've set up a dedicated Developing Areas Team, overseen by a top-level steering group within my Department, to drive this work programme. I want this Team - in close partnership with the planning authorities, agencies and other Departments - to identity and help to resolve critical blockages in the co-ordinated delivery of infrastructure and services, necessary to create vibrant, sustainable communities."
The Minister also noted the progress that is already being made in ensuring delivery of schools' infrastructure and schools' places in key developing areas for September 2008 and beyond. "Both Minister Gormley and myself have met recently with Minister Mary Hanafin to discuss how we can assist in this regard and officials in my Department have been engaging in intensive joint discussions between the Department of Education and local authorities to progress the priority school sites in key locations where pressures are most acute."
www.buckplanning.ie
Wednesday, 29 November 2006
Spatial plan a load of nonsense
David McWilliams tells us planners what he thinks of the National Spatial Strategy:
Apparently, we have a National Spatial Strategy.
It was published some time last year, or maybe it was the year before. It was full of hubs, corridors and gateways. It said something about more balanced development, more decentralising of jobs and generally less congestion, commuting and snarl.
Like a national school project, a lovely map of the country was unveiled with lots of straight blue and red lines. It alluded to fancy-sounding things like radial corridors and seemed very progressive at the time. Economic activity, research and employment were to be spread more or less evenly around the country. Most crucially, this would take pressure off house prices in the Dublin area.
No expense was spared on the PR exercise to unveil it and the later plan for decentralisation of civil servants.
Unfortunately, just like the Luas, the National Spatial Strategy and plan for decentralisation did not join up.
Towns which were supposed to become hubs and gateways and, as such, were earmarked for jobs and development, didn’t get earmarked for civil servants. Other towns seemed to be getting government departments based on the precariousness of the local government politician’s electoral majority.
But who cared? Did anyone notice? For awhile, little else was talked about. The only problem was that it was all nonsense.
There has been little effort to plan the country and, even when there is planning, it is rarely implemented. Planning a growing economy is like clothing a growing teenager - you buy him expensive trainers and combats and, within six months, he has outgrown both.
Similarly, with a growing economy, roads that are adequate today are jammed within eight months. The capacity of some trains was increased last year, but they resemble the Calcutta Express already.
Towns that were villages in 2001 are now concrete jungles. So, even if there was an effective planning strategy, it needs to be modified, expanded and updated constantly.
But don’t worry about these hypothetical details, because the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing - our government says one thing and does precisely the opposite.
For example, last Thursday, the IDA- a central agent of government policy - unveiled plans to seek pre-planning permission for new high-tech businesses. The idea is that a tailor-made technology campus be put in place before investment decisions of large multinationals are made.
Having such ready-made sites available would obviously encourage investors to set up here. The IDA forecasts that 2,000 jobs will come to the campus in the next few years, which is great news. The only problem is that it is in west Dublin. Just in case you hadn’t noticed, west Dublin is the most congested, badly-planned place in the country.
Now, let’s go back to the great National Spatial Strategy. According to this plan, this type of development was to be relocated away from Dublin, allowing the city to breathe and, in turn, to re-energise parts of the west and south of the country.
But no - that’s only in dreamland. Back here in Ireland, PR takes precedence over planning.
So this little development will add to the swelling of Dublin. But just how dominant is Dublin?
To get an idea of its bloated pre-eminence, let’s take a trip to our maternity wards. There were more babies delivered in Dublin in 2004 than in the entire province of Munster - an area 20 times bigger.
There were three times more babies delivered in Dublin than in the entire province of Connacht.
But these babies are not born to city dwellers; they are largely the progeny of the commuter class - the ‘Kells Angels’.
The census reveals a crescent stretching from Drogheda to Arklow, where people are commuting more than one and a half hours a day. This large ‘baby belt’ is home to the most fertile counties in the land and is creating a dependency on Dublin that will be very hard to rebalance.
At the moment, Dublin’s truly overwhelming dominance means that commuting begins in the womb. The commuting foetus is uniquely Irish. In the same way as maternity books advise mothers to play classical music to their unborn children, the fact that expectant mothers from towns like Kells, Navan, Wicklow and Edenderry have to commute in the traffic to Dublin for scans and proper antenatal care, can be seen as perfect pre-birth training for life on the outside.
The newborn child will be able to tell his Mozart from his Bach, his hard shoulder from his roadworks, his unleaded from his diesel, his M50 from his N11, and his Abbeyleix jam from his Monasterevin bypass. A perfect traffic symphony for the traffic people - a sort of fanfare for the common commuter.
But who benefits from this haphazard development? The developers, for starters.
It has been said that Fianna Fail is the political wing of the construction industry, and a quick glance at the residents in the Fianna Fail tent at the Galway Races every year would suggest that this is not too far from the truth.
Is this closeness to the construction/land/property industry healthy? Obviously not, particularly as the housing market is overheated already. Think about the following statistic: we are building more houses per head than post-war Germany did when trying to rebuild itself from scratch.
Why are so many houses going up now?
Because they have to build as quickly as possible. Many developers who have bought sites at astronomical prices need to get the houses up immediately, just in case anything happens to the market. Nobody wants to be sitting on a huge land bank on the day it dawns on the Irish that we do not need all these extra houses.
A conspiracy theorist would suggest that the reason for the National Spatial Strategy in the first place was to copper-bottom the investments of well-placed developers who saw their land zoned into perpetuity. The reason it has not yet been implemented is because the same developers’ other land banks have not been fully developed yet.
When they are, the government will introduce the plan in earnest. But who believes conspiracy theorists? Surely not you, not here, not now?
One of the less obvious problems with developer-led rather than planner-led policy is that it is anti-economic in nature.
Much of economics is about scale: if a town or a region has scale or mass, it can become self-sufficient. It will be able to sustain itself.
Typically, on the continent, regions are aggregated together to create a sustainable community of larger and smaller towns. They market and advertise themselves as one. For example, in Belgium, the towns of Bruges, Ghent and Ostend marketed themselves as the region of west Flanders, with predictably positive economic results that broke the commuter link with Brussels.
If this were done in the midlands of Ireland, it could prevent the great sucking sound of the area being drawn into Dublin with the attendant commuting and overcrowding issues.
The problem for the midlands now is that it might already be too late. None of the five main towns has a population of more than 20,000 and, as this column has pointed out before, close to half the populations of Athlone, Tullamore and Mullingar now commute to work.
Without scale, these towns will be unable to resist the gravitational pull of Dublin and decisions such as the IDA’s one last Thursday will make that more difficult.
Moving 10,000 civil servants won’t do much either. Think about it: more than 120,000 people will move jobs this year.
This puts the hullabaloo about moving a few thousand civil servants into context.
But what about Cork, Galway and Limerick? Well, it appears that the spatial strategy does not see these as being in any way linked. It has been suggested that a motorway arc linking these three substantial cities would be smart and, given the fact that they are the only three urban centres of any significance outside Dublin, this would seem the only way to redress the eastern pull of development.
But, of course, that might make too much sense and risk being seen as too revolutionary; and it might not suit the vested interests.
So we will just plod along, commuting in the sprawl where the new suburbs and older towns are unable to break the umbilical ties to Dublin - Ireland’s 21st century placenta.
David McWilliams’s book The Pope’s Children, published by Gill & Macmillan, is in shops now.
Visit www.davidmcwilliams.ie
Apparently, we have a National Spatial Strategy.
It was published some time last year, or maybe it was the year before. It was full of hubs, corridors and gateways. It said something about more balanced development, more decentralising of jobs and generally less congestion, commuting and snarl.
Like a national school project, a lovely map of the country was unveiled with lots of straight blue and red lines. It alluded to fancy-sounding things like radial corridors and seemed very progressive at the time. Economic activity, research and employment were to be spread more or less evenly around the country. Most crucially, this would take pressure off house prices in the Dublin area.
No expense was spared on the PR exercise to unveil it and the later plan for decentralisation of civil servants.
Unfortunately, just like the Luas, the National Spatial Strategy and plan for decentralisation did not join up.
Towns which were supposed to become hubs and gateways and, as such, were earmarked for jobs and development, didn’t get earmarked for civil servants. Other towns seemed to be getting government departments based on the precariousness of the local government politician’s electoral majority.
But who cared? Did anyone notice? For awhile, little else was talked about. The only problem was that it was all nonsense.
There has been little effort to plan the country and, even when there is planning, it is rarely implemented. Planning a growing economy is like clothing a growing teenager - you buy him expensive trainers and combats and, within six months, he has outgrown both.
Similarly, with a growing economy, roads that are adequate today are jammed within eight months. The capacity of some trains was increased last year, but they resemble the Calcutta Express already.
Towns that were villages in 2001 are now concrete jungles. So, even if there was an effective planning strategy, it needs to be modified, expanded and updated constantly.
But don’t worry about these hypothetical details, because the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing - our government says one thing and does precisely the opposite.
For example, last Thursday, the IDA- a central agent of government policy - unveiled plans to seek pre-planning permission for new high-tech businesses. The idea is that a tailor-made technology campus be put in place before investment decisions of large multinationals are made.
Having such ready-made sites available would obviously encourage investors to set up here. The IDA forecasts that 2,000 jobs will come to the campus in the next few years, which is great news. The only problem is that it is in west Dublin. Just in case you hadn’t noticed, west Dublin is the most congested, badly-planned place in the country.
Now, let’s go back to the great National Spatial Strategy. According to this plan, this type of development was to be relocated away from Dublin, allowing the city to breathe and, in turn, to re-energise parts of the west and south of the country.
But no - that’s only in dreamland. Back here in Ireland, PR takes precedence over planning.
So this little development will add to the swelling of Dublin. But just how dominant is Dublin?
To get an idea of its bloated pre-eminence, let’s take a trip to our maternity wards. There were more babies delivered in Dublin in 2004 than in the entire province of Munster - an area 20 times bigger.
There were three times more babies delivered in Dublin than in the entire province of Connacht.
But these babies are not born to city dwellers; they are largely the progeny of the commuter class - the ‘Kells Angels’.
The census reveals a crescent stretching from Drogheda to Arklow, where people are commuting more than one and a half hours a day. This large ‘baby belt’ is home to the most fertile counties in the land and is creating a dependency on Dublin that will be very hard to rebalance.
At the moment, Dublin’s truly overwhelming dominance means that commuting begins in the womb. The commuting foetus is uniquely Irish. In the same way as maternity books advise mothers to play classical music to their unborn children, the fact that expectant mothers from towns like Kells, Navan, Wicklow and Edenderry have to commute in the traffic to Dublin for scans and proper antenatal care, can be seen as perfect pre-birth training for life on the outside.
The newborn child will be able to tell his Mozart from his Bach, his hard shoulder from his roadworks, his unleaded from his diesel, his M50 from his N11, and his Abbeyleix jam from his Monasterevin bypass. A perfect traffic symphony for the traffic people - a sort of fanfare for the common commuter.
But who benefits from this haphazard development? The developers, for starters.
It has been said that Fianna Fail is the political wing of the construction industry, and a quick glance at the residents in the Fianna Fail tent at the Galway Races every year would suggest that this is not too far from the truth.
Is this closeness to the construction/land/property industry healthy? Obviously not, particularly as the housing market is overheated already. Think about the following statistic: we are building more houses per head than post-war Germany did when trying to rebuild itself from scratch.
Why are so many houses going up now?
Because they have to build as quickly as possible. Many developers who have bought sites at astronomical prices need to get the houses up immediately, just in case anything happens to the market. Nobody wants to be sitting on a huge land bank on the day it dawns on the Irish that we do not need all these extra houses.
A conspiracy theorist would suggest that the reason for the National Spatial Strategy in the first place was to copper-bottom the investments of well-placed developers who saw their land zoned into perpetuity. The reason it has not yet been implemented is because the same developers’ other land banks have not been fully developed yet.
When they are, the government will introduce the plan in earnest. But who believes conspiracy theorists? Surely not you, not here, not now?
One of the less obvious problems with developer-led rather than planner-led policy is that it is anti-economic in nature.
Much of economics is about scale: if a town or a region has scale or mass, it can become self-sufficient. It will be able to sustain itself.
Typically, on the continent, regions are aggregated together to create a sustainable community of larger and smaller towns. They market and advertise themselves as one. For example, in Belgium, the towns of Bruges, Ghent and Ostend marketed themselves as the region of west Flanders, with predictably positive economic results that broke the commuter link with Brussels.
If this were done in the midlands of Ireland, it could prevent the great sucking sound of the area being drawn into Dublin with the attendant commuting and overcrowding issues.
The problem for the midlands now is that it might already be too late. None of the five main towns has a population of more than 20,000 and, as this column has pointed out before, close to half the populations of Athlone, Tullamore and Mullingar now commute to work.
Without scale, these towns will be unable to resist the gravitational pull of Dublin and decisions such as the IDA’s one last Thursday will make that more difficult.
Moving 10,000 civil servants won’t do much either. Think about it: more than 120,000 people will move jobs this year.
This puts the hullabaloo about moving a few thousand civil servants into context.
But what about Cork, Galway and Limerick? Well, it appears that the spatial strategy does not see these as being in any way linked. It has been suggested that a motorway arc linking these three substantial cities would be smart and, given the fact that they are the only three urban centres of any significance outside Dublin, this would seem the only way to redress the eastern pull of development.
But, of course, that might make too much sense and risk being seen as too revolutionary; and it might not suit the vested interests.
So we will just plod along, commuting in the sprawl where the new suburbs and older towns are unable to break the umbilical ties to Dublin - Ireland’s 21st century placenta.
David McWilliams’s book The Pope’s Children, published by Gill & Macmillan, is in shops now.
Visit www.davidmcwilliams.ie
The Atlantic Gateways Report
Has anyone else seen the Atlantic Gateways Report? This appears to have received no attention at all, yet it has been around since September 2006.
According to this 79 paged, heavily designed report, the Atlantic Gateways initiative aims to establish greater levels of connectivity and synergies between Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford across areas such as economic development, physical infrastructure as well as
social and cultural development. The basic premise of the concept is that by co-operation in relevant areas, the development potential of all of the four gateways will be enhanced. This enhanced development potential would help to create a higher level of critical mass and a more self-sustaining growth impetus complementing the Greater Dublin Area and the Dublin/Belfast Corridor. In so doing the Atlantic Gateways will promote more balanced regional development.
It is meant to build on the National Spatial Strategy.
Here's the link:
http://www.irishspatialstrategy.ie/pdfs/Atlantic%20Gateways%20Report%20-%20final%20pdf%20-%20sep06.pdf
Anyone want to write a review?
Brendan Buck
According to this 79 paged, heavily designed report, the Atlantic Gateways initiative aims to establish greater levels of connectivity and synergies between Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford across areas such as economic development, physical infrastructure as well as
social and cultural development. The basic premise of the concept is that by co-operation in relevant areas, the development potential of all of the four gateways will be enhanced. This enhanced development potential would help to create a higher level of critical mass and a more self-sustaining growth impetus complementing the Greater Dublin Area and the Dublin/Belfast Corridor. In so doing the Atlantic Gateways will promote more balanced regional development.
It is meant to build on the National Spatial Strategy.
Here's the link:
http://www.irishspatialstrategy.ie/pdfs/Atlantic%20Gateways%20Report%20-%20final%20pdf%20-%20sep06.pdf
Anyone want to write a review?
Brendan Buck
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