We can't undo the damage done in the past decade to our environment by the growth of far flung commuter suburbs says Environment Editor Frank McDonald- but we can still create sustainable non car-dependent communities in viable mixed-use urban areas

DUBLIN Lord Mayor Paddy Burke told a recent conference on urban sprawl, organised by the City Council and the Instititute of Public Administration, that there was something in the Irish psyche that made it impossible to imagine raising a family in an apartment.

What people want, the Lord Mayor told everyone, was a house their own with a front and back garden where kids could play safely. Even tenants in inner city Corpo flat complexes, many of whom had raised children there, aspired to having a house in the suburbs, he said.

Given that the conference was focused on successful apartment living as a way of combatting sprawl, his remarks were off message - certainly for the architects, planners and city officials who seek to promote higher density housing as an alternative to endless expansion.

But the Lord Mayor had a point. Unlike our continental European cousins, we have cultural attachment to being kings in our own castles ; how else can one explain the proliferation of one-off houses in the countryside, removed from basic services in towns and villages?

This cultural issue was compounded from the mid-1990s onwards by the lack of availability of affordable housing of any kind in Dublin to accommodate our rapidly-expanding population. So prices went up year after year, driven by the crude laws of supply and demand.

So people voted with their wheels. They went to places like Wicklow, Arklow, Gorey, Carlow, Portarlington, Portlaoise, Mullingar, Tullamore, Longford, Cavan, Virginia and Carrickmacross, to name but a dozen of the towns in Dublin s commuter belt that now stretches to 100km.

The first time I became aware of this extraordinary phenomenon was on the way back from a planning conference in Galway in 1996, I think, when we came through Rochfortbridge and saw what looked like bits of Ballinteer across the road from a 1930s Bord na Mona village.

Houses were more affordable in these places, so Dublin leapfrogged all over Leinster and even into Ulster. This was completely contrary to stated public policy, in the 1999 Greater Dublin Area Strategic Planning Guidelines, about the need to consolidate the metropolitan area.

Whatever the 2000 Planning and Development Act said about enshrining proper planning and sustainable development, there was no political will to intervene or use the power under the Act to call in aberrant county development plans and direct that they be revised.

A blind eye was turned to what was happening in Dublin's hinterland by every agency that might have been able to influence it - including, most disgracefully, the Department of the Environment. Only recently, within the past year, has this head-in-the sand approach changed.

And the explosion of Dublin was also being facilitated by the Government s motorway programme, with new roads cutting journey times for long-distance commuting - even though many living in the outer commuter belt spend four hours a day driving to and from work.

It goes without saying that this almost wholly car-dependent pattern of development is environmentally unsustainable, with carbon dioxide emissions from transport up by 150 per cent since 1990.

The social costs of long-distance commuters losing valuable time are incalculable.

We cannot undo the facts created on the ground since the mid-1990s. What we can do is to ensure that future population growth is used as an engine to drive sustainable development, putting the emphasis on creating walkable communities in viable, mixed-use urban areas.

That doesn t mean endorsing Sean Dunne's massive scheme for the Jurys/Berkeley Court sites in Ballsbridge. What it does require is that we move decisively away from the standard two-storey house with front and back garden and a car (or cars) parked in the driveway.

We need to create the conditions that would make it more attractive for people, including families, to live in apartment buildings. And that doesn t just mean making apartments more commodious than the huge number of shoebox flats that were built in the early 1990s.

As the city of Vancouver in Canada recognised as long ago as 1992, in its pioneering guidelines, High Density Housing for Families with Children, the external environment is equally important if family living in the city is to be translated from planning lip-service into an everyday reality.

The Vancouver guidelines specify that family housing, usually in condo towers , should be located within 800 metres walking distance of an elementary schoool, daycare centre and grocery shopping, and within 400 metres of a playground and public transport stop.

THE guidelines also go into detail about the facilities that family units should have, including bedrooms with sufficient floor space for playing, generous hallways with room for toys and equipment, secure indoor storage for bicycles and private or semi-private outdoor spaces.

There should also be a sufficient number of family units in a project to give children peers to play with, to encourage a sense of community and to support the provision of adequate amenities for families with children - designed to maximise sunlight, especially in winter.

There are signs that this message is finally getting through. In its review of the 1995 apartment design guidelines, published last January, the Department of the Environment laid down new minimum standards aimed at providing better living spaces for flat-dwellers.

To make apartment living more family-friendly, the guidelines specify that no more than 10-15 per cent of any scheme of 20 or more apartments should be of the one-bedroom type, other than in exceptional cases such as student accommodation.

All apartments with two or more bedrooms should be designed with the needs of children in mind, the new guidelines say, adding that the recreational needs of children need to be planned for from the outset as experience had shown that children will play everywhere .

These guidelines have since been supplemented by new DoE planning guidelines on sustainable urban housing, which incorporate a revision of the 1999 residential density guidelines, as well as what's billed as a best practice handbook on urban design and housing layouts.

Dublin City Council has gone a step further by adopting even higher standards for the spatial quality of apartments, insisting - against strong opposition from property developers and estate agents - that they must be significantly larger than the shoebox flats of the past.

The Dublin Docklands Development Authority has also published a very useful set of guidelines for playspaces, covering everything from courtyards and home zones to urban squares, parks, beaches and waterfront areas, with the avowed aim of catering for everyone.

But we should not forget that apartment living and even the very concept of mixed use areas involves a degree of live and let live.

As I know from living in Temple Bar for the past 12 years, one's quality of life can quite easily deteriorate because of excessive levels of noise.

Last year, the Green Party tabled a private members bill on neighbourhood noise, which would have given powers to local authorities to deal effectively with this form of pollution.

It was defeated at the time, but hopefully will now be revived in some form. It is also very important that owner-occupation of apartments in town is encouraged to the greatest possible extent.

Because a community cannot be built on transient or short-let flats - it needs the building blocks provided by people with a real stake in the future of an area.