A LEADING economist has urged the Government to reject its urban housing policies for the greater Dublin area and instead seek to limit the city's sprawl.
Speaking at a housing conference in Dublin yesterday, Mr Colm McCarthy of DKM Economic Consultants said the Brady Shipman Martin report published this year appeared "to reflect a degree of contentment with the patterns which have given rise to today's problems".
Rather than accepting as inevitable the projected population increases in the strategic planning guidelines, he said, the Government should set a minimum objective of returning the population of Dublin city to where it was 25 years ago.
The report predicts a rise in Dublin's population by 250,000 to 1.65 million in 2011. It recommends the creation of new development centres in towns such as Naas, Navan and Wicklow. Mr McCarthy said the strategy was "a policy of continued sprawl".
Such sprawl imposed heavy infrastructure, pollution and "stranded asset" costs in depopulated city centres, he said.
The conference, "Stopping the Sprawl", examined planning and development practices against a growing consensus that increased housing densities, coupled with improved quality of design, formed part of the solution to the housing crisis.
Mr David Taylor, a consultant and adviser to the UK Department of the Environment, argued for a move away from the existing housing estate model of a warren of cul-de-sacs with houses on the perimeter backing on to main roads to one where vehicle throughways and pedestrian access to local amenities dominated.
If designed properly, he stressed, through roads should not result in rat-running. "By creating a tighter urban space with tighter roads and junctions and less sweeping curves you can reduce road speeds naturally to 20 m.p.h. Such a space makes drivers feel, not that they should not be there but that they are not dominant."
Dr Patrick Clarke, a London planning consultant, said housing estate designs were all too often centred on providing roads and car-parking rather than a community setting. The demand for parking was overestimated, he said, with only 14 per cent of low-income households and half of high-income households with two or more cars.
A study which he carried out found that 27,000 additional dwellings could be created in London if off-street parking spaces were reduced to an average of one per household. Onstreet parking, he noted, served the dual function of increasing site capacity and improving the visual character of an area.
Meanwhile, Mr Ciaran Ryan, the Construction Industry Federation's head of housing, described the Government's recently-announced social housing proposals as "flawed and inappropriate". He said it was "disingenuous to suggest that every site is capable of integrating a sufficient mix of house types and tenures so as to provide full social integration."
Site selection criteria identifying sites suitable for affordable housing should be produced, he said. "This is essential so that land-owners, developers, builders and house-buyers understand precisely what will be developed in their areas."
Opening the conference, Mr Eoin O'Cofaigh, president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, which organised the event with the Irish Planning Institute, criticised the low quality of many new homes, which stemmed from poor design. The average spend on design for many suburban housing estates was about £400 per house, "about the cost of a decent washing machine", he said.
