Development of second-tier cities key to sustainable economic growth

For those of you who haven't read it, this research may help to inform your views on the National Planning Framework.

Policies should aim to rebalance growth by encouraging regional development led by a small number of large urban centres outside Dublin, according to new ESRI research.
If the current pattern of growth continues, it will lead to a further gap in prosperity between Dublin and the rest of the country. In Dublin, it will lead to additional housing demand and increased long-distance commuting.
The research provides projections for regions and counties across Ireland up to the year 2040, examining what will happen if current spatial planning patterns continue, and what would happen in a range of alternative scenarios.
These projections set the context for regional and local development policy including the forthcoming National Planning Framework (NPF) and the Regional Spatial and Economic strategies.

Read the full article @ www.esri.ie

Frances Ruane: Planning framework must be founded on courage

A few people have asked for a link to this Irish Times article.

The publication of the National Planning Framework is imminent and should be a landmark event for the country. It will be published on Friday alongside the Government’s capital spending plan for the next decade. How this pans out will depend crucially on political will and leadership, and on whether the long consultation process behind the planning framework has generated a wide understanding of how good planning can ensure more regionally balanced growth. It is now 60 years since our population started to grow, following a century of decline. Despite that, we have not succeeded in the intervening period in planning for population growth and sustainable living patterns in our cities, towns and rural areas.

Read the full article @ The Irish Times

Decentralisation 'a failed strategy'

A LEADING academic has denounced decentralisation as a failed strategy which has undermined the institutional fabric of the state and become a charter for mileage claims, writes Anita Guidera.

Professor Brigid Laffin, principal of the college of humanities at UCD, told the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, yesterday that failures of accountability went beyond unethical behaviour to the performance of public institutions and those holding positions of responsibility.

Citing the example of the 2003 decentralisation project, she said there was not a single developed country in the world that would have treated its public institutions the way they were treated in the decentralisation process.

"It wasn't decentralisation. Decentralisation is a very good thing. This was a dispersal of public jobs throughout the country in the most extraordinary fashion and it went completely against the government's own spatial strategy," she said.

"Decentralisation was costly. It increased the fragmentation of our public institutions. It is a charter for mileage claims and a high cost to the Irish public."

She added that it had also failed politically. "Fianna Fail had its worst performance in the subsequent 2004 local elections," she said.

Her call echoed criticisms of decentralisation by two other academics in Glenties this week. On Monday, Ed Walsh, founder of the University of Limerick, described the policy as daft and called for its reversal.

Management consultant Eddie Molloy, meanwhile, called it the most scandalous political stroke of all time.

Irish Independent

www.buckplanning.ie

€28m for transport and regeneration projects

GRANTS totalling €28 million from the European Regional Development Fund have been approved for transport and regeneration projects for designated towns throughout the country.

European regional assemblies, established 10 years ago, are administering the funds which will assist the growth of certain towns from the border down to the south-east.

The Border, Midland & Western and the Southern & Eastern& regional assemblies have announced they have approved grants totalling €28m to fund projects in designated gateways and hub towns under the National Spatial Strategy. The grants will be used for:

Cork: €2.8m: This is to co-finance the entire costs of the Christ Church project which is to be converted into an arts centre in conjunction with the adjoining Triskel Arts centre.

Dublin: €2.4m: This grant is in respect of the Smithfield project and consists of the completion of the Public Realm improvements to the square.

Limerick/Shannon: €3m: This grant is in respect of the Limerick city centre project and consists of the ‘Crossroads’ public transport hub and public realm enhancement works.

Waterford: €2.7m: The Waterford proposal consists of two separate, but related projects. The first project consists of the restoration and conversion of a collection of adjoining buildings in the city centre into a tourism project. The second project consists of upgrading the Bolton Street car park.

In the Border, Midland and West Region, Dundalk, Galway city, Letterkenny, Midlands (Athlone, Tullamore, Mullingar) and Sligo have been awarded €10.85m towards strategic transport, urban regeneration and cultural investments; while Ballina, Castlebar, Cavan, Monaghan and Tuam will benefit from an investment of €6.3m in urban renewal, amenity provision, energy efficiency and cultural infrastructure investment.

Irish Examiner

www.buckplanning.ie

'Unbalanced' development highlighted

The "unbalanced" nature of Ireland’s economic development must be addressed despite the economic downturn, a report on the west of Ireland said today.

The report published by economist Jim Power of Friends First examined the effect of the boom years on counties Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon, Longford, Offaly, Galway and Westmeath.

“One of the most worrying features of the strong Irish economic performance of recent years has been the unbalanced nature of regional economic growth and development,” Mr Power said at the report’s launch in Galway this morning.

“It is incumbent on policy makers and stakeholders to rectify this regional imbalance which won’t be easy in today’s testing economic and financial circumstances.”

He said the Government must ensure that national policies, such as Transport 21 and the National Development Plan, are delivered to the fullest extent possible despite the difficult economic and financial environment.

“Already, some projects are being deferred or delayed and certainly there is a clear risk that this will get worse over the next couple of years as the Government struggles to rebalance the national finances,” Mr Power added

Mr Power highlighted a number of measures, which he said should be taken:

The completion of the inter-urban motorway network by 2010;

The funding of essential capital works at the six existing regional airports;

The upgrading of the N5 with an investment of €220 million over four years to protect 9,000 manufacturing jobs. According to the Mayo Industries Group the bad condition of the road from Longford to Scramogue in Roscommon is damaging product, delivery and travel times are slow and cost competitiveness is being negatively affected;

Broadband availability needs to be improved as it is “a key business and economic enabler particularly important for geographically remote areas”.

The report highlighted the fact that the midlands region had the lowest level of disposable income in the State (9.4 per cent lower than the national average and 19.3 per cent lower than the highest region Dublin). The Border region had second lowest (8.9 per cent lower than national average and 18.9 per cent lower than Dublin) and the west region third lowest (7 per cent lower than national average and 17.2 per cent lower than Dublin).

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Council has ‘turned its back’ on housing plan

THE members of Clare County Council were yesterday accused of walking away from their responsibilities by refusing to participate in a regional housing strategy for the mid-west region.

Making the charge, the mayor of Limerick City, Cllr John Gilligan (Ind), said that councillors in Clare had turned their backs on 2,000 people on the housing list in the city.

Mr Gilligan was speaking yesterday after members of Clare County Council voted by an overwhelming majority for the council not to play any role in the new regional housing strategy.

“We can’t provide all the social housing for the 2,000 people within the city council area — that is what contributed to huge problems in the past.

“The Limerick city area is administered by three local authorities and now you have one council walking away pulling away one of the legs of the strategy,” he said.

Mr Gilligan described the approach by Clare councillors as “irresponsible”.

However, at Clare County Council’s adjourned September meeting on Monday, Cllr Tony Mulcahy (FG) said that Limerick City should sort out its own housing problems that it has created on its own.

At the meeting, councillors backed colleagues from the Shannon area who urged that the council “have no act, hand or part in the strategy”.

“Why has it taken until 2008 for Limerick City Council to discover that it has serious problems?

“We have our own social housing problems and we should have nothing to do with it,” said Mr Mulcahy.

Cllr Gerry Flynn (Ind) said that recently gardaí “armed to the teeth” have been in Shannon to deal with families that have been relocated to Shannon.

He said that the regional housing strategy has already been rejected by Shannon Town Council and councillors from the Shannon electoral area.

Cllr Paschal Fitzgerald (Lab) said Limerick City Council had purchased 17 houses on his doorstep.

“I’m getting calls at 3 o’clock in the morning and we’re the people getting the abuse,” he said.

Former mayor, Cllr Patricia McCarthy (Ind), said the regional housing strategy being put forward had been brought about by an abdication in responsibility by Limerick City Council.

She said: “We will have nothing to do with this strategy.

“If the Minister for the Environment wants to come to impose this on us, let’s see if he has the guts to come before us and answer our questions.”

One of the few councillors to speak in favour of the strategy, Cllr Brian Meaney (Green), asked: “How many houses have we provided in the environs of Limerick City because it is my belief that Clare County Council and Limerick County Council have provided no social housing in this area.”

Irish Examiner

www.buckplanning.ie

Regions need more power to govern

THE power to make many decisions about local areas should be taken away from central government, a conference has heard, writes Dara deFaoite.

A conference on the future of regional governance heard that Ireland's towns and cities need to be governed regionally if they are to develop at a meaningful and sustainable level.

It was also suggested that county Dublin and parts of adjoining counties should form a new, pilot regional authority to assess the potential for devolved governance.

"Ireland is traditionally a very centralised country with essential services being maintained locally," said John McAleer director of the South West Regional Authority.

"But when it comes to certain needs such as waste management, economic development and water and sanitary services they are not always best served by individual local county councils," he said.

"Ireland should examine the benefits of granting more powers to regional bodies and perhaps consider having direct elections to these regional bodies," said Mr McAleer.

Mr McAleer was speaking at the eighth annual Conference of the Southern and Eastern Regional Assembly, comprising councillors from 20 local authorities.

Irish Indepependent

Contemporary regional development approaches

Some thoughts from a recent lecture. Refs are a bit old.

Is a new approach to explain regional development needed? If so, what are the problems with the Top-Down/Centre Down (Classical) development theory? There is a school of thought which holds that old theories of regional development need to be replaced with a new approach or model, that being the "bottom-up" approach. This stems from the widely held belief by detractors of the classical regional development theories that these simply did not work sufficiently well.

Stohr cites the example of Italy during the 1960s in which the central government committed huge financial resources to a regional policy of creating growth centres in line with the prevailing "top-down" development theories of the time. His view of the utility of classical development theory can be summarized in the following quote: The past three decades, dominated by development strategies "from above", have not led to decreased disparities in living levels. Disparities have in general increased. This applies both to disparities between social strata and between geographical areas. (Stohr, Development From Above or Below)

Stohr and other authors suggest that an alternate approach is needed to describe development patterns and provide a basis for government policy.

Centre Down Paradigm:

The general thrust of the Centre or Top Down theory of regional development a relatively few, large investments can be made in specific sectors of the economy or geographical areas and the benefits will spread and help other areas. It is often described as the "trickling down" approach. Decisions are made by government without consultation with local people. Examples of include resource development and process projects such as those involving petroleum, minerals and forestry resources, infrastructure projects such as roads, airports, mass transit, hard services and rail, office and retail development to regenerate urban areas and investments in science and high technology. In a sense, if something is constructed or invested in, benefits will come.

The following briefly summarizes the characteristics of the traditional or classical theories of regional development. New approaches take a different perspective and can be contrasted against this:

• traditional theories stress the core/periphery polarization in which capital flows from the core to the periphery and resources flow back to the core (eg. investments in oil fields flow from the city to a region, oil flows to city to power production);
• assume that development (spontaneous or induced) starts in a few dynamic sectors and geographical areas and spreads to other sectors and areas;
• the emphasis in on urban and industrial, capital-intensive development, the highest available technology and maximum use of external and scale economies;
• development usually involves large scale investment projects, efforts at increasing functional and territorial integration, increasing scale of the private and public organizations required to transmit development through these integrated units, large redistribution mechanisms and the reduction of economic, social, cultural and institutional barriers which hinder transmission effects with and between these units (Stohr)

A significant problem with this style of regional development programs is the risk of back wash effects. Back wash occurs when capital and resources invested flow from the periphery back to the core, something that is contrary to the intent of a regional development program (Stohr). It is this sort of problem why some suggest the need for an alternative approach.

Bottom-Up Approach:

This approach holds that decisions and power should be as close to the bottom as possible with coming from a region rather than being imposed from outside. Self-directed and self-generated economic growth and development will occur with greater success than a potentially risky project imposed from above.

One promoter of a new approach is Illeris who suggests that regional development patterns in western Europe in recent decades exhibit a mosaic like pattern of dynamic and declining regions with no uniform core/periphery polarization. This has, Illeris claims, replaced the former uniform concentration of economic growth in the national core areas. The lack of a regional development pattern exhibiting the core-periphery pattern is used to cast doubts on the success of the traditional models and a reason put forward to support the need for a bottom-up approach.

Illeris has formulated what he calls an inductive theory for regional development in economically societies. The following summarizes his theory:

• the structural composition of the economy of each region plays a role in its development (however, location shifts occur within all sectors)
• whether a region gains or loses depends largely on the local conditions, such as political institutions, regional policy assistance, infrastructure, supply of skilled labour, social qualifications, factor prices and population density

According to Illeris, regional that will perform well are those which have economies characterized by expanding sectors such as oil production, high tech industries, producer services, up to date tourism and international organizations. This contrasts with regions that develop poorly when declining industries dominate the economy, such as agriculture, coal mining, steel, shipyards or port functions. Illeris further claims that his theory fits the pattern of emerging society more appropriately than do classical development theories.

Defence of the New Approach:

On the basis of the premise that Western Europe has, in recent decades, developed along the lines of a mosaic with some regions developing better than others instead of a strict core-periphery model is correct, the following points can be put forward in support of the new approach:

• the failure of centre and periphery theory to explain the factual regional development in Northern Europe since the foundation of the European Community (Peschel)
• the expected pattern of development did not materialize: not true that regions most favoured by the European integration process were those most densely populated and nearest to markets, thus being centrally situated and having highest economic potential (Peschel)

Finally, Stohr notes that a simple division into core and periphery does not fit a complex society any longer, that being a service society, and information society, flexible production, knowledge based society, and post-industrial economy.

Examples of Bottom-Up Development:

The two examples of "bottom-up" development examined briefly here are the Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur (PACA) region in France and rural China.

Development in the Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur (PACA) region in France is an example of a region in which recent prosperity is not due to the influences of "top-down" policies but rather Hansen claims as a result of the presence of a dynamic endogenous industrial milieu.

• the externally planned heavy industrial complexes and scientific technopoles had relatively little impact in terms of diffusing development on a regional basis
• the strong economic performance of the PACA has been associated with small and medium sized enterprises specialized in rapidly growing tertiary activities with a small degree of dependence on declining traditional heavy industries (Hansen)

In the case of rural China, Wu found that rural development had an combination of top-down and bottom-up strategies. In effect, China maintained both types of policies of planning from above and below with differing emphasis on each at different times. On the one hand were policies of decentralizing industrial activities to inland provinces (top-down, centrally directed) and on the other, with collective farming policies, it recognized local custom, social organization and traditional ties in its approach. Regional self reliance under collective ownership and decision making allowed for regional variations in the style of management and in selecting programs suitable for regional level development and available technology. This was done within national support systems that were flexible enough to allow adaption, adjustments and experimentation sympathetic to local conditions (Wu).

Conclusion:

It is easy for supporters of each approach to find fault with the opposing model however, it would be short sighted to dismiss one or the other model completely. On the one hand, supporters of the bottom-up approach can argue that the classical theory has not worked in all instances and has problems associated with it. On the other hand, to claim that Western Europe has developed in a mosaic patten instead of a core-periphery pattern is a sweeping statement and one that can be assailed by supporters of the classical theory. One can also point to examples of successful core-periphery regional development and dispute the existence of a mosaic pattern.

An alternative to the two approaches examined here is to assume that both can occur at the same time. To summarily dismiss one in favour of the other is ill-advised: it is doubtlessly possible to find evidence to support and refute either model. It may be advantageous to proceed with the understanding that both models will apply to varying degrees in different regions in Western Europe. Furthermore, there will be situations in which one model will be more appropriate than the other as one model cannot apply in all situations.

As a regional development approach, bottom-up can be said to leave things to chance. A region or sector will do well or not depending on how well it can respond to changing conditions. However, leaving things to chance is politically risky and hence, top-down can be said to be more certain in its outcomes, not-with-standing, its failures. There may be a role for both approaches, one to let things happen and the other to make sure that certain things happen. It may be more important to discover why a region is succeeding or failing and then decide what intervention is needed, where, and when and then decide on the appropriate approach.

Hansen, N. "Innovative Regional Milieux, Small Firms and Regional Development: Evidence from Mediterranean France" Annals of Regional Science, 64, 1990.

Illeris, Sven, "An Inductive Theory of Regional Development" Papers in Regional Science, 72, 2, 1993.

Peschel, Karin, "European Integration and Regional Development in Northern Europe", pp. 39-72 in Development From Above or Below?, Walter B. Stohr and DR Fraser Taylor eds., John Wiley and Sons: Chichester, UK: 1981.

Wu, Chung-Tong and David F. Ip, "China: Rural Development- Alternative Combinations of Top-Down and Bottom-UP Strategies" pp. 155-82 in Development From Above or Below?, Walter B. Stohr and DR Fraser Taylor eds., John Wiley and Sons: Chichester, UK: 1981.

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City As Community: The Life And Vision Of Lewis Mumford

Useful article on Lewis Mumford:

Throughout history, cities have been places where people gather to exchange goods, ideas and culture. Americans, however, have always been ambivalent about cities, fretting over the noise, congestion, lack of privacy and social ills that often attend urban growth. The roots of this ambivalence lie deep within the agrarian foundation of the United States and anchor the thinking of such major intellectuals as Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau and Frank Lloyd Wright. So perhaps it is not surprising that an alternative — suburban living — would become so wildly popular in the years following World War II. Yet many critics see the vitality of the nation’s sprawling suburbs as having come at the expense of its cities. Nearly 75 years ago, critic Lewis Mumford aptly described the space-gobbling aspect of the American character as the “romanticism of the pioneer.” In his view, such overly romantic notions would eventually lead to disequilibrium or even disaster.

Outside of architecture and urban planning circles, few people today know Lewis Mumford’s name. Yet, in the early-to-mid 20th century, he was a towering American intellectual with an international reputation. By turns journalist, critic and academician, Mumford was the author of more than 20 books and 1,000 articles and reviews, on subjects ranging from art and literature to the histories of technology and urbanism. His book, The City in History, won the 1962 National Book Award for nonfiction. Before his death in 1990 at age 94, Mumford received numerous accolades, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964) and the National Medal of the Arts (1986).

Ten years after his passing, Mumford is still regarded as the leading 20th century authority on cities — their history, design and communal purpose. Mumford believed in looking beyond a mere cityscape of buildings and streets to the vibrant network of human relationships that are cities’ very raison d’etre. In the early part of his career, Mumford watched American cities boom during the prosperity of the 1920s and then decline during the Great Depression. In his view, dense urban development patterns at that time were tied too closely to free market development and not to sound social policy.

Subsequently, the sprawling American suburbs of the post-World War II era seemed to Mumford to lack any sense of communal focus with their separate residential, commercial and cultural centers and their emphasis on automobile transportation. Although Mumford advocated the establishment of moderately dense regional cities to siphon off some of the pressure on American metropolitan areas, except for isolated experiments such as Radburn, New Jersey and Reston, Virginia, no fully developed examples were constructed in his lifetime.

Engaging The Imagination

Part of the difficulty in evaluating Mumford lies in his own refusal to be pigeonholed intellectually. In a used bookstore, for example, one might as easily find his books shelved in the social sciences as in the arts or humanities. Mumford thought of himself not as a specialist but as a generalist, one who sought to make connections among various academic disciplines in order to discern a larger purpose in human endeavors. This, combined with his belief that society could be improved through rational and ecologically sound planning, marks him as a committed modernist. Postmodernism, the dominant intellectual mode of the present that emphasizes, among other things, the fragmentation of meaning and the failure of planning, has largely ignored him. This is unfortunate, for Mumford remains a remarkably prescient and relevant writer whose work stands ready to engage the imagination of a new generation of readers.

Mumford was born in 1895 in Flushing, Long Island, three years before the consolidation of New York City. An only and illegitimate child, he was raised by his mother on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Books were his most beloved companions; Ralph Waldo Emerson, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were among his favorite authors. Mumford graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1912. Although he studied for several years at the City College of New York, he left before receiving his baccalaureate degree.

His education was largely self-directed after that, using as his role model the Scots intellectual Patrick Geddes, a biologist turned educator and town planner, who was at the center of Edinburgh’s turn-of-the-20th-century cultural renascence. Following Geddes’ example, Mumford began a series of “regional surveys,” essentially extended walks around the New York metropolitan area, during which he would sketch and take notes. So committed was he to the study of his environment that Mumford continued these surveys even during his stateside tour of duty with the U.S. Navy in 1918-1919.

Following his discharge from the Navy, Mumford quickly established himself as a journalist, writing critical reviews and commentary for such publications as The Dial, The Freeman, The American Mercury, The New Republic and The Journal of the American Institute of Architects. In 1921, he married his Dial colleague, Sophia Wittenberg. The couple eventually had two children, and through freelancing and lecturing, Mumford was successful enough to sustain his small family. In 1931, Mumford began a long tenure at The New Yorker, writing art and architecture criticism, the latter under the heading of “The Sky Line.” This was perhaps the most influential column of its kind in the United States, with an audience composed of professionals and nonprofessionals alike. Mumford’s witty prose ideally meshed with the magazine’s urbane image.

Changing The World

Although Mumford was not himself an architect or planner, he became the spokesman for the Regional Planning Association of America, an informal group of architects, planners, economists and writers who came to prominence during the 1920s and 1930s. This group lobbied business and government for the establishment of regional cities as an antidote to the metropolitan congestion then increasing at an alarming rate. Essentially a reworking of the British “garden city,” the regional city would be planned on a sustainable scale with requisite residential, cultural, commercial and industrial components. Furthermore, the regional city would be surrounded by an agricultural greenbelt that would supply its food as well as delineate its borders from neighboring communities.

Among the association’s best-known achievements are the planning of the Appalachian Trail along the eastern mountain ridge of the United States, the residential neighborhood of Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, New York, and the New Jersey town of Radburn, the forerunner of today’s neo-traditional suburbs. The “townless highway,” one of the association’s most ambitious proposals, would have linked America’s cities via limited-access parkways. Unlike today’s interstate highways, townless highways were intended to harmonize with the rural landscape while skirting downtown districts altogether.

During the late 1930s, Mumford took a bold political stance in his writings, urging his countrymen to enter World War II on the Allies’ side. Consequently, he alienated many of his friends, including the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, but to Mumford, intervention was the only morally acceptable choice in the fight against Nazism and fascism. Sadly, Mumford’s son Geddes was among the thousands of U.S. servicemen killed in battle. After the war, Mumford redirected his attention to the threat of global nuclear annihilation, and in later books and articles, he warned his readers that technology, left unchecked by human reason, would lead to mass destruction. He was vocal in his opposition to the Vietnam War and also to the environmental degradation brought about by industry, the automobile and ineffective planning.

His most important contribution to the study of technology was his construct of the “megamachine,” which in antiquity he identified as the vast human organization that had built the pyramids and, in the 20th century, as the vast, nearly automated organization that had built the atomic bomb. Had the Internet been more pervasive at the time of Mumford’s death, one wonders what he would have extrapolated, both positive and negative, from it. Yet, Mumford ultimately believed in humanity’s ability to renew itself, and it is not surprising that his ideas of the 1960s found favor with a younger generation of readers looking to change the world for the better.

The recent spate of neo-traditional suburbs — including Seaside, Florida and Kentlands, Maryland — would have ultimately dissatisfied Mumford. Though they imitate the pedestrian scale and Romantic architecture of older American towns, they do not provide the unique civic focal points, let alone the civic institutions, that have defined all great cities from ancient Athens to Renaissance Florence. Of some suburbs’ plans to create town centers from scratch where none presently exist, Mumford would, I think, have only shaken his head in disbelief. “Go slow!” he might have said, in the same way that he once advised a U.S. Senate committee on housing and urban renewal to “experiment with small measures and small units” until such time that government or society could better plan and organize for an uncertain future. In Mumford’s view, without patience or prudence, neither the good of the community nor of humanity would be well served.

The Practice of Regional Planning in Ireland

The Practice of Regional Planning in Ireland

Ireland’s planning system is supposed to have adopted a tiered approach from the national to the local level. We are now meant to see the planning system as a policy tree: from the National Development Plan, to Regional Plans, to Development Plans, to local plans. This is the way Irish planners want the public to understand planning policy implementation. People need to see the bigger picture, to understand what planners are trying to achieve each day, to understand that planning is meant to be strategic.

Brief history of statutory regional planning

Anyone with a specific interest in Irish regional planning may know that regional planning was not mentioned at all in the founding legislation for Irish statutory planning: the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1963; even though the intention existed while the Act was still a Bill.

That’s not to say the need for regional planning was not recognised at all!

Although not required to produce regional plans under the 1963 Act, when the 1963 planning bill became law, the Minister, recognising a need for some regional planning, grouped the counties into 9 physical planning regions, to facilitate the co-ordination of development plans, and appointed consultants to prepare advisory reports on two of them – The Dublin Region (Prof. Myles Wright of Liverpool) and the Limerick Region (Nathaniel Lichfield and Associates) – both good reads! Subsequently, in an attempt to resolve the sensitive issue of selectivity with regard to centres of growth (just like decentralisation some areas were going to gain and others lose and others be ignored entirely), Buchanon and Partners were asked to complete regional studies for the remainder of the country. The Buchanon report was published in 1969 and regional development organisations (RDOs) were established in each of the nine planning regions the same years. These unelected bodies consisted of representatives of local authorities (councillors and managers), various other state sponsored organisations and the Minister for Local Government. The function of the RDOs was to co-ordinate the programmes for development in each region and their first task, the production of regional development reports, was concluded in the early 1970s. Despite little commitment to them from local or central government, which was reflected in their limited allocation of resources, the RDOs continued in existence until 1987, mainly to co-ordinate the work of the various state development agencies. They represent Ireland’s first attempt to co-ordinate planning across jurisdictional boundaries.

Regional planning was finally put on a statutory footing by the 1991 Local Government Act which empowered the Minister to establish regional authorities. In January 1994, eight such authorities were established under The Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1993 (Regional Authorities) (Establishment) Order 1993. And they covered the whole country.

• Dublin Regional Authority

• Mid east Regional Authority

• Southeast Regional Authority

• Southwest Regional Authority

• Midlands Regional Authority

• Midwest Regional Authority

• West Regional Authority

• Border Regional Authority

Membership is composed of city and county councillors selected by the constituent authorities and, in his press release on their establishment, the Minister for the Environment carefully reassured the local authorities that these regional bodies would not diminish or restrict their powers (so are they toothless? There’s another debate!). The regional authorities have been given two functions: (1) promoting the co-ordination of the provision of public services on a regional basis and (2) monitoring/advising on the implementation at regional level of the various Operational Programmes for delivery of European Union Structural and Cohesion funds.

As part of its co-ordinating role, a regional authority is required to review from time to time the development plans of local authorities in its functional area and within two years of being established, and thereafter at five yearly intervals, to prepare a regional report covering the overall development needs of the region, the review of development plans and the provision of public services.

By mid 1996, all 8 regional authorities had produced a report. The approach taken to the mandatory review of constituent development plans varied greatly in these reports. It has been noted that where planners had a strong input into the report’s preparation, the final documents reflected a corresponding strength in terms of spatial issues.

The regional authorities are not statutorily empowered to take strategic decisions. Although a number of them interpreted their mandate liberally, enlarging their brief to produce reports which, in some cases, are explicitly plans and, in others, have a considerable degree of policy content, the regional reports are of persuasive value only.

In 1999, a non-statutory report of far more planning significance on the regional scale was drawn up for the local authorities in the Greater Dublin and Mid-east Regional Authorities.

The Strategic Guidelines for the Greater Dublin Area were prepared at the initiative of the Department of the Environment, to provide an overall strategic context for the development plans of the relevant planning authorities and to provide a framework for investment in sanitary services, transportation and other infrastructure.

The guidelines set out a logical development strategy of maintaining a compact metropolitan area while developing strong growth centres in the hinterland. Many of the policies contained in the guidelines are being delivered through the development plans of the constituent local authorities.

Before moving onto look at the most recent strategic plans, such as the national spatial strategy, it is necessary to consider the impact the EU has had on recent regional planning, as it has made the whole issue of regional planning a complicated one.

Regional assemblies

Regional planning was given a new impetus in mid 1998, with the discovery that Ireland’s recently achieved prosperity would leave us excluded from the highly lucrative Objective 1 status under the next round of EU Structural funding (2000-2006). In November 1998, after an extended period of political consultations, the Government proposed to divide the country into two regions to ensure that the poorer counties, which still had incomes below the EU threshold for Objective One areas, could continue to draw down the maximum level of EU funding. It was initially thought that this would result in some genuine devolution of power, if only to satisfy the requirements of the European Regional Affairs Commissioner.

Fifteen counties were selected for inclusion in the disadvantaged or west coast region. These were the counties forming the functional areas of the existing Western, Midland and Border Regional Authorities plus counties Kerry (South West) and Clare (Mid West). The Government was able to show clear differences in relative wealth between the west and east of the country, with dependency on agriculture much higher in the west which had not experienced economic growth similar to that of the east over the period of the 1994-1999 National Development Plan. After assessment by Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Commission, the Minister for Finance announced to the Dail that with the exclusion of Kerry and Clare, the regional proposals had been accepted by the EU. In April 1999, development strategies for each of these approved regions were published as inputs to the 2000-2006 National Plan on behalf of a joint committee representing the existing regional authorities in each of the NUTS II regions (The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) is a Eurostat term meaning the uniform breakdown of territorial units for the production of regional statistics throughout the EU).

To give effect to the new regionalisation, two assemblies were established as and from 21 July 1999, with membership drawn from the existing 8 regional authorities. The Border, Midland and Western Regional Assembly based in Roscommon and the Southern and Western Regional Assembly located in Waterford City. The functions of the assemblies centre mainly on the promotion of coordination among local, regional and other public authorities.

Here’s the confusion! Because the existing regional authorities remain unchanged there are now four layers of administration (central, supra regional, regional and local).

What’s this to do with planning?

This material is all important for understanding why regional planning has finally been placed on a statutory footing in the 2000 Act. From a position of virtual abandonment of regional policy during the 1980s, Ireland has now moved back to a situation where there is widespread acknowledgement of the importance of balanced regional development and growing interest in its effective implementation. This understanding now extends to acknowledging the spatial dimension to economic and social development and the impact on people’s lives on a daily basis.

Due to the success of the land use strategy for the Greater Dublin Area, EU pressures and growing realisation that many of our policies are spatial in nature: for example, the National Sustainable Development Strategy; Waste Management Strategy; Land Use Planning and Regional Planning Guidelines; Rural Development Policy; Coastal Zone Management; National Spatial Strategy & the European Spatial Development Perspective; and the National Employment Action Plan. We now require co-ordinated planning more than ever before.

What’s happening now?

The National Spatial Strategy is made. In early 2000 work began on the National Spatial Strategy which ended with its publication in November 2002. The National Spatial Strategy (NSS) is a coherent national planning framework for Ireland for the next 20 years.

To achieve its objectives the Strategy will have to be driven forward. Structures and mechanisms to integrate the Strategy into planning and activities at government, departmental, state agency, regional and local levels are being put in place. The purpose of this is to ensure that it shapes the spatial aspects of public sector planning, policies and programmes. The Strategy will also be rolled out through regional and local authorities, starting with the preparation and adoption of regional planning guidelines.

To support the implementation of the NSS as a "big picture" framework for achieving the Government's objective of more balanced regional development, effective planning strategies are needed at regional level. Spatial planning at the regional level must work within the overall approach taken in the NSS, while providing more detail and establishing a development and spatial framework that can be used to strengthen local authority development plans and other planning strategies at county, city and local level.

Implementing the NSS now requires that “Regional Planning Guidelines” be put in place across the country. Strategic Planning Guidelines for the Greater Dublin Area are now in place (OVERHEAD) and other regions are at various stages. Regional Planning Guidelines (RPGs) must encompass a socio-economic vision and context for more detailed planning guidance. These guidelines will all take the form of a single document and – this is the important bit - will act as a regional framework for the development plans at city, county and through the county or city plan, other local plans as well. Project Managers and Steering Groups have been appointed to assist each of the Regional Authorities in preparing guidelines. Planning authorities, the enterprise agencies and the Department of Transport and other relevant Departments and Agencies will also be involved in this process.

In order to achieve this and this is also an important bit of this material, provision has been made in the Planning & Development Act 2000 to extend the process of creating regional planning strategies to all other Regional Authorities. Thus, Regional Authorities now have responsibility for preparing Regional Planning Guidelines.

The Minister for the Environment and Local Government also made two other legal instruments to support the process of preparing RPGs on 1 May 2003.

1. The Planning and Development (Regional Planning Guidelines) Direction 2003 formally directs each regional authority to make Regional Planning Guidelines for the whole of its region. (Note: the Dublin and Mid East Regional Authorities were directed to jointly review the Strategic Planning Guidelines for the Greater Dublin Area (1999) and to make new Regional Planning Guidelines in respect of the whole of the combined area of their regions). The Regional Planning Guidelines Regulations set out a number of requirements in relation to the preparation of Regional Planning Guidelines. In particular, by way of the Regulations, in accordance with powers under section 23(4)(a) of the Planning and Development Act 2000, the Minister has specified that the National Spatial Strategy is of relevance to the determination of strategic planning policies. This means that regional authorities are obliged to take account of the NSS when making regional planning guidelines for their areas.

And…

2. In February 2003, Guidance Notes were issued by the Department to assist regional authorities in preparing guidelines.

For the purposes of this course, it is important to understand what the Act says:

This responsibility is encapsulated in section 21 of the 2000 Act under “Power to make regional planning guidelines”. It says “a regional authority may, after consultation with the planning authorities within its region, or shall at the direction of the Minister, make regional planning guidelines”. Such guidelines can be made for a whole region or for one or more parts of a region. The Minister may direct one or more regional authorities to make regional planning guidelines in respect of the combined area of the regional authorities involved or in respect of any particular part or parts of the area which lie within the area of those regional authorities.

Where it is proposed to make regional planning guidelines, the regional authorities concerned must make whatever arrangements they see fit to prepare the guidelines (i.e. work together to do so).

Interestingly, because they came first, the Act gives statutory effect to the Strategic Planning Guidelines for the Greater Dublin Area which we discussed previously. The Guidelines cover the areas of Dublin Corporation, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Fingal County Council, Kildare County Council, Meath County Council, South Dublin County Council, Wicklow County Council and were produced by the Department of the Environment and Local Government in conjunction with the Dublin Regional Authority and the Mid-East Regional Authority (published 25 March, 1999).

The Minister may make, and as we have seen has made, regulations concerning the making of regional planning guidelines.

Section 22: Where a regional authority intends to make regional planning guidelines in or to review existing guidelines it must consult with all the planning authorities within the region. Authorities must co-operate and assist (including financially). The amount of assistance is determined by proportion of the population of the area.

Under section 25 of the Act, The authorities concerned must agree on a procedure for preparing and making the regional planning guidelines, including the establishment of committees to oversee and consider preparation of the guidelines. The process is managed by committees, but the making of regional planning guidelines is a matter for the members of the regional authority concerned.

Section 23: The objective of regional planning guidelines is to provide a long-term strategic planning framework for the development of the region for which the guidelines are prepared for a period of not less than 12 years and not more than 20 years. The guidelines must address the following areas, in accordance with the principles of proper planning and sustainable development

Regional planning guidelines must also contain information on the likely significant effects on the environment of implementing the guidelines.

Those preparing guidelines must consider the Ministers regulations and guidance notes.

The guideline must take into account: the statutory obligations of any local authority in the region and any relevant policies or objectives for the time being of the Government or of any Minister of the Government, including any national plans, policies or strategies specified by the Minister to be of relevance to the determination of strategic planning policies.

Consultation process for regional guidelines:

Section 24: Once arrangements are made a regional authority must give notice of its intention to make the regional planning guidelines. This notice is circulated to

the Minister, the Board, the prescribed authorities and any town commissioners in the area and shall be published in one or more newspapers circulating in the region for which the regional planning guidelines are prepared (the required content of the notice is detailed in section 24)

Any submissions made must be considered before preparing the draft regional planning guidelines. Once a draft is made, notice and copies are sent to the same groups as previously notified (again the contents of the notice are detailed in the Act).

A copy of the draft guidelines must be available for inspection for 10 weeks and submissions or observations may be made at this time. Following the consideration of submissions or observations the regional authority shall make the regional planning guidelines subject to any modification considered necessary. It then publishes notice of this in newspapers and makes copies available for inspection.

Review of guidelines:

Section 26: Where a regional authority has made regional planning guidelines, it must, not later than 6 years after the making of such guidelines and not less than once in every period of 6 years thereafter, review such guidelines and when so reviewing, it may revoke the guidelines or make new regional planning guidelines.

You may be wondering what happened to regional reports?

We have seen how, under Article 14 (g) of the Regional Authorities’ Establishment Order 1993, Regional Authorities were required to prepare “regional reports” every five years. We saw how the first ones were published in 1996. However, the next reports were postponed to enable account to be taken of the National Spatial Strategy (NSS). To overcome this at the time, regional authorities were requested to produce a regional strategy instead of a regional report.

There is a good deal of potential overlap between aspects of regional planning guidelines and the task involved in preparing a regional strategy. Overlaps could arise particularly in the areas of research and analysis on matters such as population, development patterns, reviewing development and examining economic performance.

The regional strategy is intended to take a strategic overview of the development of the region, how it is progressing and what the strategic priorities are in policy and developmental terms.

Regional planning guidelines deal with many of the practical manifestations of the overall strategic policy and development priorities, e.g. how many houses will be needed in the region ‘and’ how can settlement and transport be integrated. The provisions of the 2000 Planning and Development Act require regional guidelines to act as a planning framework. Such a framework needs to be set within a robust and appropriate set of broad strategic policy and development objectives. It makes sense therefore to draw the two processes together by preparing regional planning guidelines within the legislative framework of the Planning and Development Act, but incorporating within these guidelines a broad developmental context for the region.

The Minister’s guidance notes show how both processes are meant to be integrated in preparing a single document for each region – “Regional Planning Guidelines”.

The regional authorities are at various stages of the process.