Ireland 2040 plan "will kill rural Ireland"

Shurimgreat

fly_agaric wrote: »

This is really just a catch-all position that puts a moral sheen on not wanting to pay any more tax.

They're all lazy public sector bums on the take anyway, so I'm dead right to vote FF/FG and take my few Euro extra when they cut usc/top tax rate as promised! Shure those wasters would have just squandered it!




There is opportunity cost of subsidising the fairly inefficient "one-off house" lifestyle Irish people like + as was pointed out is traditional for the country. Any subsidy so spent is not available to be directed elsewhere in economy (such as better services for towns and villages...[and cities but say that quietly]).

Technological changes may make this type of living somewhat more feasible but at the moment it is a massive white elephant. Even if there are revolutions in manufacturing, energy, automation etc I can't see it emptying out the cities - most it will do is stop their growth. Clusters of people (as in a town or a village) will still be more sustainable than the way we have been doing things.

And just as bad you would have to agree is the semi detached and detached houses built within a couple miles of Dublin city centre, many of them fairly recent estates. Also the one story houses in Ringsend in what is now prime area for workers. Also the unwillingness to touch or replace Georgian Houses with modern high rise apartments, even those which are vacant and fell into ruin.

The use of land in Dublin is probably more inefficient than in the countryside.

LeinsterDub

Shurimgreat wrote: »

And just as bad you would have to agree is the semi detached and detached houses built within a couple miles of Dublin city centre, many of them fairly recent estates. Also the one story houses in Ringsend in what is now prime area for workers. Also the unwillingness to touch or replace Georgian Houses with modern high rise apartments, even those which are vacant and fell into ruin.

The use of land in Dublin is probably more inefficient than in the countryside.

What metric are you using for this claim?

Also we've plenty of space in Dublin without destorying our Georgian heritage

wakka12

Shurimgreat wrote: »

And just as bad you would have to agree is the semi detached and detached houses built within a couple miles of Dublin city centre, many of them fairly recent estates. Also the one story houses in Ringsend in what is now prime area for workers. Also the unwillingness to touch or replace Georgian Houses with modern high rise apartments, even those which are vacant and fell into ruin.

The use of land in Dublin is probably more inefficient than in the countryside.

Tell me where are all these ruined georgians taking up so much valuable space for modern skyscrapers? We had dozens of square kilometres of open space to do with whatever we wanted in the docklaands and unsurprisingly no high rises were built. So the last thing we need to do is demolish heritage buildings for no reason. Plenty of lowrise central fugly buildings we can build high-rises on before we ever consider demolishing georgian townhouses

Thousands of georgian buildings were demolished in the 60's and 70's and 80's for 'high-rise modern' I think enough damage has been done

Why don't we think about demolishing mount joy prison for instance? Or building high-rises on the many massive open spaces along the luas red line(where georgian buildings were demolished btw).
Demolishing more heritage is such a short sighted, ignorant and lazy way of city planning


ALSO; Goergian buildings have very good population density if used efficiently. georgian dublin was a more densely populated city than modern dublin, and a lot more interesting due to less urban sprawl and more mixed use. 5-7 Storys should be the norm for a city, it maintains a human scale throughout , it is a lot more favourable than a massive highrise city centre and then miles of 1-2 story urban sprawl surrounding it
It is why Id prefer be living as a poorer person in some asian city rather than in a suburb of some massive north american city. Lifestyle looks a lot nicer imo.

bk

Shurimgreat wrote: »

The use of land in Dublin is probably more inefficient than in the countryside.

Errr.. No it isn't! Despite the crappy semi-d's Dublins population density is similar to Amsterdam and other similar sized European cities.

Dublin City 4,811 persons per km2
Amsterdam 5,135 persons per km2

By Comparison rural Ireland is 27 persons per km2 !!!!! :eek:

bk

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

The only thing that will save rural Ireland is twofold: the introduction of fibre-quality (not necessarily actual fibre) broadband, and an actual transition to acceptance of remote working.

Unfortunately it doesn't really work out that way. The experience from Norway when they introduced high quality broadband in rural areas was that the rate of decline of rural areas actually increased!!

The theory to explain it, was that as people got better connected, they would be bombarded on Facebook, etc. with pictures of how good and fun life in the city is. Their friends in the city going to the new pub, cafe, restaurant, concert, etc.

Pretty much 24/7 advertising of city life and hardly surprising that when these young people hit 18, they were straight off to the cities to experience the same.

As others have said, broadband isn't the silver bullet that people seem to think it is to save rural Ireland. Folks living in their local village/town is the only thing that will help rural Ireland.

MayoSalmon

May have missed something here but why can't rural dwellers simply pay for their own connection?

When you want to build a bungalow in the middle of nowhere and want an ESB connection you simply call them up and they give you a quote.

Why isn't this done for Fibre?

FreudianSlippers

More rural people getting broadband presumably also means better connected and educated children who are taking jobs in the city as opposed to traditional rural jobs I'd presume.

Shurimgreat

LeinsterDub wrote: »

What metric are you using for this claim?

Also we've plenty of space in Dublin without destorying our Georgian heritage

Dublin is a long long way behind most modern European cities.
If you want to double the population of Dublin that's fine. But you will have to double or treble the current density if you are going to do that.
The simple question is, where do you put all these people? Build out, or build up? These are just basic questions that need to be answered by those who want to see a dramatic increase in the population of Dublin.

wakka12

Shurimgreat wrote: »

Dublin is a long long way behind most modern European cities.
If you want to double the population of Dublin that's fine. But you will have to double or treble the current density if you are going to do that.
The simple question is, where do you put all these people? Build out, or build up? These are just basic questions that need to be answered by those who want to see a dramatic increase in the population of Dublin.

Here's a list of some European cities by density.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_cities_proper_by_population_density

Dublin on the other hand has a density of 1,736 persons per km2

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/census2011vol1andprofile1/Profile1_Town_and_Country_Entire_doc.pdf

You claimed dublin used land more inefficiently than rural ireland, not that it used land less efficiently than many other major european cities , which goes without saying.

FreudianSlippers

Shurimgreat wrote: »

Dublin is a long long way behind most modern European cities.
If you want to double the population of Dublin that's fine. But you will have to double or treble the current density if you are going to do that.
The simple question is, where do you put all these people? Build out, or build up? These are just basic questions that need to be answered by those who want to see a dramatic increase in the population of Dublin.

Dublin should probably be 1.5x more dense at its current population, so an increase of 3x density is probably required in reality. The only way to achieve either of those targets is to build up, not out. We simply don't have the public transport to keep building out; it's fine somewhere like London where most places are 10 mins walk from a Tube or Overground.

Shurimgreat

wakka12 wrote: »

You claimed dublin used land more inefficiently than rural ireland, not that it used land less efficiently than many other major european cities , which goes without saying.

My post was a bit rushed and looking at it again, urban areas in Ireland have a population density of 1,700 per sq km.

Again however my point stands, it will be a case of build up or build out for Dublin.

LeinsterDub

Shurimgreat wrote: »

Dublin is a long long way behind most modern European cities.
If you want to double the population of Dublin that's fine. But you will have to double or treble the current density if you are going to do that.
The simple question is, where do you put all these people? Build out, or build up? These are just basic questions that need to be answered by those who want to see a dramatic increase in the population of Dublin.

There a plently of areas of low qualify , low density, historically unimportant housing and retail that could be redeveloped.

Shurimgreat

wakka12 wrote: »

You claimed dublin used land more inefficiently than rural ireland, not that it used land less efficiently than many other major european cities , which goes without saying.

Yes Dublin does use it very inefficiently. Most people agree Dublin has to go up. But its difficult to see how you can build up enough to double the population. The suburbs are probably not an option. Building new towns such as Cherrywood, etc just increase the pressure on LUAS or cause more cars and more misery for commuters.

At some stage difficult decisions will need to be made around pulling down lower density structures around the city centre.

Shurimgreat

bk wrote: »

Errr.. No it isn't! Despite the crappy semi-d's Dublins population density is similar to Amsterdam and other similar sized European cities.

Dublin City 4,811 persons per km2
Amsterdam 5,135 persons per km2

By Comparison rural Ireland is 27 persons per km2 !!!!! :eek:

But no-one in the Netherlands is calling for the doubling or huge increase of the population of Amsterdam. Netherlands is a good model of how to distribute population evenly. Ireland is going towards an alternative model where it seems to be all or nothing in Dublin.

LeinsterDub

Shurimgreat wrote: »

But no-one in the Netherlands is calling for the doubling or huge increase of the population of Amsterdam. Netherlands is a good model of how to distribute population evenly. Ireland is going towards an alternative model where it seems to be all or nothing in Dublin.

Once again urban doesn't mean Dublin only

FreudianSlippers

Shurimgreat wrote: »

But no-one in the Netherlands is calling for the doubling or huge increase of the population of Amsterdam. Netherlands is a good model of how to distribute population evenly. Ireland is going towards an alternative model where it seems to be all or nothing in Dublin.

I do think we should fix the problems in Dublin though. We need a strong Dublin to support pushing growth to the secondary cities; it seems to be the thought that it's an either-or situation, whereas it's a rising tide lifts all boats.

Shurimgreat

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Once again urban doesn't mean Dublin only

I agree. But if you look at the concentration of low tech industry, commerce, Hi-tech industry, banking HQs, major sports infrastructure and stadiums, universities, hospitals, government, museums, etc etc, in Dublin, then its pretty clear Dublin will continue to grow significantly more than elsewhere. Dublin is a huge draw for young people, young overseas workers, and workers who need to support families. When the majority of new jobs are in Dublin, don't be surprised when the majority of people have to live there. At this stage its a trend which is too late to reverse. So its going to be commuting and accommodation misery for a lot of people in Dublin for the foreseeable future and people need to understand this and stop complaining about it.

wakka12

Shurimgreat wrote: »

Yes Dublin does use it very inefficiently. Most people agree Dublin has to go up. But its difficult to see how you can build up enough to double the population. The suburbs are probably not an option. Building new towns such as Cherrywood, etc just increase the pressure on LUAS or cause more cars and more misery for commuters.

At some stage difficult decisions will need to be made around pulling down lower density structures around the city centre.

I agree, but on second point why would it be difficult? Are you saying low rise historic? Theres not a lot of low rise historic buildings, most georgian buildings are 4-6 stories, and also they will never demolished.
What would be much wiser is demolishing modern ****e architecture and doubling its height not demolishing historic buildings. Every building in the docklands should be 2x-3x higher than it is with a few skyscrapers thrown in. Why not focus on demolishing them rather than history , seeing as they boring glass boxes of no cultural value. The least they could do is densify our city

And theres lots of 1 story cottages around areas areas like ringsend and behind bolands quay, and literally thousands more in prime areas. The ones of little historic value should be demolished.
There is no argument ever for demolishing large amounts of intact georgian townhouses of reasonable density.

bk

Shurimgreat wrote: »

At some stage difficult decisions will need to be made around pulling down lower density structures around the city centre.

Dublin has plenty of space to massively densify. Move Dublin Port and you have massive amounts of available space.

Look at Broombridge Industrial Estate, what a waste, hundreds of acres of underused industrial warehouses, inside the M50 and right next to both the new Luas line and commuter rail line! You could houses literally, tens of thousands of people there.

40,000 new homes planned for Swords once Metro North is built.

Tens of thousands of new apartments in south Dublin once the Green Luas line is built.

I could go on all day....

Shurimgreat wrote: »

But no-one in the Netherlands is calling for the doubling or huge increase of the population of Amsterdam. Netherlands is a good model of how to distribute population evenly. Ireland is going towards an alternative model where it seems to be all or nothing in Dublin.

While Amsterdam is a great comparison for Dublin, Netherlands is a very poor one.

Netherlands is 17 million people living in an area half the side of Ireland! The entire country has massive population density. Also it isn't an island and is highly connected with it's neighbours.

BTW of course no one is saying it should just be Dublin. We are saying develop all urban areas, which in Ireland is any town/village with a population of 1,500 or more.

Shurimgreat

wakka12 wrote: »

I agree, but on second point why would it be difficult? Are you saying low rise historic? Theres not a lot of low rise historic buildings, most georgian buildings are 4-6 stories, and also they will never demolished.
What would be much wiser is demolishing modern ****e architecture and doubling its height not demolishing historic buildings. Every building in the docklands should be 2x-3x higher than it is with a few skyscrapers thrown in. Why not focus on demolishing them rather than history , seeing as they boring glass boxes of no cultural value. The least they could do is densify our city

And theres lots of 1 story cottages around areas areas like ringsend and behind bolands quay, and literally thousands more in prime areas. The ones of little historic value should be demolished.
There is no argument ever for demolishing large amounts of intact georgian townhouses of reasonable density.

I've no problem with huge skyscrapers in Dublin. Unfortunately I'm not a planner or someone who would object. Anytime someone proposes a skyscraper in Dublin, either the planners shoot it down, or the Georgian society object because it might be near a Georgian area.

bk

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I do think we should fix the problems in Dublin though. We need a strong Dublin to support pushing growth to the secondary cities; it seems to be the thought that it's an either-or situation, whereas it's a rising tide lifts all boats.

This big time. People don't seem to understand the importance of this.

Cork, Limerick, etc. will never attract top tier employers like Google, Facebook, etc. (Apple aside for historical reasons in Cork). However they can attract the smaller second tier companies, the Ubers, Payapls, etc.

However they can only do that if Dublin is attracting the top tier companies. The second tier companies are hoping to attract top tier talent from the top tier companies, either due to people wanting to move for family reasons, cheaper housing, big fish in a small pond, etc.

It is a network effect. We need all our cities performing to really develop our economy.

Bray Head

bk wrote: »

Dublin has plenty of space to massively densify. Move Dublin Port and you have massive amounts of available space.

Except that Dublin Port is responsible for lots of economic activity and is home to billions of euros in sunk investment.

Dublin is not so stuck for space that it needs to build on its port. I would start with the dozen or so golf courses inside the M50!

Shurimgreat

bk wrote: »

BTW of course no one is saying it should just be Dublin. We are saying develop all urban areas, which in Ireland is any town/village with a population of 1,500 or more.

You can't develop small and medium sized towns without having significant industry and well paying jobs nearby and these are largely absent from many parts of Ireland.

Here's a shocker for you, a lot of people in Dublin particularly those not from Dublin, would love to work somewhere else in the country. But they can't as the jobs aren't there.

Its a catch-22 situation with our spatial strategy. You can't develop the rest of the country without jobs. But the jobs won't go where there aren't people and developed infrastructure. Ideally the government would encourage a more even distribution of population across the island but I'm not hopeful.

bk

Bray Head wrote: »

Except that Dublin Port is responsible for lots of economic activity and is home to billions of euros in sunk investment.

Dublin is not so stuck for space that it needs to build on its port. I would start with the dozen or so golf courses inside the M50!

Plenty of cities have moved their port out of the city center and developed the land as housing. It is pretty standard.

Dublin Port really isn't that economically important, really it just serves Dublin and the surrounding region. It certainly is no Rotterdam or Antwerp.

bk

Shurimgreat see post 382 where I pretty much say exactly that!

wakka12

Shurimgreat wrote: »

You can't develop small and medium sized towns without having significant industry and well paying jobs nearby and these are largely absent from many parts of Ireland.

Here's a shocker for you, a lot of people in Dublin particularly those not from Dublin, would love to work somewhere else in the country. But they can't as the jobs aren't there.

Its a catch-22 situation with our spatial strategy. You can't develop the rest of the country without jobs. But the jobs won't go where there aren't people and developed infrastructure. Ideally the government would encourage a more even distribution of population across the island but I'm not hopeful.

But how do you do this? Thats the problem! Population movements have happened organically throughout history, whether the people migrating liked it or not was another story (like slum creation in english cities during industrial era for instance) and government actions to try and change this are generally failures (such as new brazilian capital )

Shurimgreat

wakka12 wrote: »

But how do you do this? Thats the problem! Population movements have happened organically throughout history, whether the people migrating liked it or not was another story (like slum creation in english cities during industrial era for instance) and government actions to try and change this are generally failures (such as new brazilian capital )

Dublin doesn't need more jobs or Facebooks or Googles for a few years. All these new jobs in Dublin is just creating transport and housing chaos as we have seen.

If companies come here and say its Dublin or nothing then they are not welcome. This might lead to shot term pain and a short term loss of jobs. But it will be better for the country in the long term.

Unfortunately this is all pie in the sky and the reality is jobs will become more and more concentrated in Dublin with people unable to afford to live in Dublin living further and further out.

hans aus dtschl

Shurimgreat wrote: »

When the majority of new jobs are in Dublin, don't be surprised when the majority of people have to live there. At this stage its a trend which is too late to reverse.

I don't quite understand this particular train of thought which is evident throughout this thread (not just you) it seems to be as follows:
1: Dublin is too congested, it needs better infrastructure to grow
2: Dublin is growing fastest because it has jobs
3: Dublin has jobs because it has the best infrastructure and density
4: Nowhere else can grow

Some thoughts: until November, Dublin was the only Irish city that was connected to more than one other City (it's connected to 5 cities).
Unlike the other small cities, Dublin has a fully completed ring road (M50)
Dublin has good (subsidised) public transport systems compared with all of the other small cities
Dublin has most of the government agencies, including the government-owned state airport company DAA located locally

I don't see why, for instance, Cork-Limerick-Galway as a single investment alternative couldn't grow as fast combined as Dublin, if they had the same raw interconnecting infrastructure that Dublin has.

hans aus dtschl

Also, this thing of multinationals only wanting to be in Dublin is complete nonsense also, as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dell, EMC, Apple and too many pharmas to mention can attest.
This mentality that "everyone wants to be in Dublin" is really just thinking of tech companies like Facebook/Google and closing your eyes to manufacturing.
A lot of Irish GDP comes from pharma and other manufacturing companies outside Dublin. A lot of the GDP booked in Dublin (Google, Facebook) is being actively contested by other EU states.

Putting all your eggs in the Dublin-Tech basket is essentially repeating the mistakes of the London-dependent UK. Manufacturing should still be important to us in 20 years. And we'll only be competitive for manufacturing if the other cities have proper modern infrastructure.

Shurimgreat

hans aus dtschl wrote: »

I don't quite understand this particular train of thought which is evident throughout this thread (not just you) it seems to be as follows:
1: Dublin is too congested, it needs better infrastructure to grow
2: Dublin is growing fastest because it has jobs
3: Dublin has jobs because it has the best infrastructure and density
4: Nowhere else can grow

Some thoughts: until November, Dublin was the only Irish city that was connected to more than one other City (it's connected to 5 cities).
Unlike the other small cities, Dublin has a fully completed ring road (M50)
Dublin has good (subsidised) public transport systems compared with all of the other small cities
Dublin has most of the government agencies, including the government-owned state airport company DAA located locally

I don't see why, for instance, Cork-Limerick-Galway as a single investment alternative couldn't grow as fast combined as Dublin, if they had the same raw interconnecting infrastructure that Dublin has.

The point I was making is that all the big companies such as Facebook, Google, etc want to base themselves in Dublin. As long as the government are happy to bend over backwards to accommodate them in Dublin, then Dublin will continue to grow at the expense of the rest of the country and its own expense. There may need to be a negative bias against Dublin when it comes to new jobs. If these companies say they'd rather go elsewhere good luck to them. With an improving economy we can at last afford to move the focus away from new jobs in Dublin.

As an aside, here's an example of the nightmare of our planning process, where rival companies can attempt to block new developments.
https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/apollo-house-developers-oppose-10storey-tower-project-in-dublin-36576175.html