The low density urban sprawl that surrounds Dublin will continue and make public transport systems ineffective unless development policies change, the annual conference of the Irish Home Builders Association in Edinburgh was told last weekend.
Colm McCarthy, of DKM Economic Consultants, warned delegates that the development policy being pursued by Government "constitutes a mandate for continuing urban sprawl, which will create an ever-expanding metropolis around Dublin at lower density than any comparable urban area in Europe".
Recommendations in the Strategic Planning Guidelines for the greater Dublin area prepared by Brady Shipman Martin in April, 2000, would feed existing trends towards slow growth within Dublin matched by rapid development of towns located 40 km, 60 km even 75 km from the capital, he said.
The sprawl "has recently begun to reach the eastern part of Co Westmeath, eastern Offaly, eastern Co Laois and southern parts of Co Louth," Mr McCarthy said.
"One consequence is that the Luas system is due to serve areas which are set to experience static population and out-migration. The same is true of some of the recent underground rail proposals," Mr McCarthy stated in a paper entitled: How to Develop Dublin (and Save Leinster).
Studies had suggested that the Dublin region could grow in population by between 200,000 and 250,000 over the next 10 years, requiring between 150,000 and 180,000 new housing units. Suburban development at six units to the acre, or 14 to the hectare, would accommodate 165,000 dwellings, but absorb an area of 118 sq km (about seven miles sq).
Demand would require that development occur over an area more than twice the size of that within the M25 around London, an area with a population of about eight million people, Mr McCarthy said.
Dublin city's population declined steadily between 1971 and 1991 according to census data, he said, at a rate that exceeded population decline in Co Leitrim. In 1971, 567,900 people lived in the city compared to 478,400 in 1991 and 481,900 in 1996. Urban regeneration had done no more than stabilise the 1996 figure at the 1991 level.
"The settlement strategy of Brady Shipman and Martin, which includes dormitory suburbs at increasing distances from Dublin, may well fit easily with what current planning practice and political preferences are bringing about. However, it is a policy of continued sprawl, with all that sprawl implies by way of hidden cost," Mr McCarthy said.
"A minimum objective of any sustainable settlement strategy should be to return the population of Dublin city to where it was 25 years ago. This would in turn require a flat rejection of the settlement strategy proposed."
Figures for dwelling completions showed how rapidly settlement outside Dublin city was progressing. In 1999, there were 2,804 completions in the city, compared with 7,231 in the Dublin county area, 5,193 in the Meath, Kildare, Wicklow catchment and a startling 8,177 in the rest of Leinster. The figure for Dublin was no higher than it was a decade ago, while rest of Leinster completions had risen to three times (1998) and four times (1999) the level 10 years earlier, he said.
Towns such as Gorey, Carlow, Portlaoise, Mullingar and Dunleer were developing rapidly as commuter belt locations, he said. ". . . the sprawl of Dublin into Leinster towns, and the suburbanisation of the countryside that results, will exacerbate the transport problem. Sprawling cities are poor markets for public transport," he added. "The current trends will intensify car reliance."
Prof Michael J Bannon, professor of regional and urban planning at University College, Dublin, argued strongly for a "spatial development strategy" for Dublin and its environs. The terminology, spatial development or spatial planning, had emanated from Europe and as used in most European countries implied an emphasis on long-term rather than the short-term planning.
It focused on larger issues rather than local detail and upon strategic actions over local and incidental events, he said. The Government had already established a National Spatial Strategy Unit and issued a consultation paper with a view to preparing a strategy by the end of 2001.
"One of the most important but most intractable problems in formulating a national spatial strategy is the issue of urbanisation. A meaningful urban strategy will inevitably require difficult choices," Prof Bannon said.
