Dublin, or what has become defined as "Dublin" these days, already contains 40 per cent of the State's population - 8 per cent more than it accounted for in 1961. By the middle of this century, at the rate things are going, the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) could surpass the critical level of 50 per cent.
This prospect would turn Dublin into "Ireland's citystate of the 21st century", as Brian Hughes, of the DIT in Bolton Street, has called it. But given that much Dublin-related housing is being built far beyond the GDA, (which includes Meath, Kildare and Wicklow), it would be a citystate with dependencies throughout Leinster.
Not only are the GDA's outlying counties growing more than four times faster than the rest of the State, but the lack of affordable housing in Dublin has encouraged thousands of first-time house-buyers to look much further afield - even as far as Virginia, Co Cavan - in an ever-expanding commuter belt.
In theory, Dublin's development is governed by strategic planning guidelines (SPGs), published in April 1999. But though the SPGs ostensibly set out to consolidate the metropolitan area, at least 75 per cent of the anticipated population growth over the next 10 years - which could be as high as 300,000 - would be housed outside the city.
Apart from large tracts of new housing in Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, the guidelines envisage that development would be concentrated in growth centres in the capital's "hinterland area", such as Balbriggan, Drogheda, Navan, Naas-Newbridge and Wicklow, with the rest of it treated as a series of large green-belts. The aim is to develop growth centres that would ultimately become self-sufficient, rather than mere dormitories for Dublin. Such consolidation of existing urban areas, with an associated emphasis on public transport, is seen as "the only way forward" - especially in coping with an upward revision of population, household and employment figures. But though the guidelines were commissioned by the GDA's seven local authorities, it is already clear that many councillors and even senior officials in Meath, Kildare and Wicklow have not subscribed to the strategy. "Some of them never really agreed with the guidelines because they prefer a free-for-all," said one senior planner.
Thus, the wildcat rezoning of land in designated greenbelt areas of south Meath and north Wicklow is not even justified by its proponents on the basis of "local need". One senior Wicklow County Council official admitted they were responding to the housing crisis in Dublin, saying "more houses have to be built", with good access to the N11.
Anecdotal evidence from estate agents suggests that seven out of every 10 new homes built in Meath, Kildare and Wicklow are being bought by Dublin commuters. This would tend to confirm fears that "local need" is not the main of development, but rather a determination to house Dublin's over-spill in whatever fields might be available.
What is happening, in effect, is that rival local authorities are grabbing what they can of Dublin's growth. The resulting "scattered urbanisation", as Brendan Williams and Patrick Shiels of the DIT in Bolton Street have called it, has made private cars the preferred means of transport, rendering commitments to sustainable development "null and void".
That's why a Greater Dublin Authority is now on the political agenda. In the meantime, Meath and Wicklow have been advised by the Department of the Environment not to proceed with land rezonings that contravene the strategic guidelines, while the Minister, Mr Dempsey - a Meath TD himself - has threatened to use his powers to overturn them. However, the guidelines are not without their critics - notably economist Colm McCarthy. In a paper last May, he warned that the strategy being pursued within the Greater Dublin Area would produce "a low-density, car-dependent non-city" extending 115 kilometres from Drogheda to Arklow and inland for a distance of 50 kilometres.
Housing development would occur throughout an area "more than twice the size of that contained within the M25 around London", he said. Thus, the guidelines were "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".
One of the inevitable consequences is that the M50, originally envisaged as a bypass of Dublin for national traffic, no longer fulfils that function, with traffic volumes already close to capacity at 68,300 vehicles per day on average last year. This figure is bound to rise when the rest of the route is completed and a second bridge is built over the Liffey Valley.
What was meant to be a bypass has become the spine of a US-style "edge city" strung out with high-tech industry, business parks, shopping centres and retail warehousing.
BUSINESS parks - "21st-century battery-hen working environments" as one senior planner called them - are also being planned for the Kilcullen Road outside Naas, Co Kildare, with parking for up to 7,000 cars, and an even larger 250-acre "gateway" development outside Clonee, Co Meath, in an area designated as "strategic green-belt" by the SPGs.
Brendan Williams and Patrick Shiels, in their paper on Dublin's growth, noted that the planning system was unprepared for this major surge in development activity, especially in the absence of a coherent strategy. .
The two DIT lecturers point out that fiscal policies here, notably grants for first-time housebuyers and stamp duty exemption on new homes, "have tended to systematically favour and support new building in greenfield locations".
Colm McCarthy suggested abolishing the lot and instead offering the money as a "bounty" to local authorities related to all new housing construction in their areas. The rate of bounty would average about £6,000 per unit, but he said it should be higher in urban core areas such as Dublin's inner suburbs, to encourage their regeneration.
What the planners should do, he believes, is to "aggressively zone and service all undeveloped land within 10 miles of the city centre for housing and mixed-use developments". Otherwise, the expensive light rail and metro systems now being built or planned would end up serving areas of static or declining population, including parts of Tallaght. He cited the staggering statistic that the population of Dublin city - the Corporation's administrative area - actually declined faster than the population of Leitrim between 1971 and 1991. All of the urban renewal of recent vintage, including an influx of new residents into the city centre, only stabilised the 1996 figure at the 1991 level. For him, a "minimum objective" of any sustainable settlement strategy should be to return the population of Dublin city to where it was 25 years ago.
Alternatively, most of the GDA's additional population could be accommodated along the proposed rail link between Dublin and Navan, with a station every two kilometres - just like the existing DART line. "This would amount to building not just a new DART line, but a DART catchment population to go with it," McCarthy said.