Much of Ireland's recent population growth has been happening in the wrong places, with designated "gateway" cities and towns losing out to North American-style sprawl elsewhere, the Irish Planning Institute (IPI) heard yesterday.
Addressing the institute's annual conference in Kilkenny, IPI president Henk van der Kamp said growth since 2002 in many counties with such gateways was well below the national average, while it was well above the average in some counties without gateways.
Only four of the 10 counties with gateway growth centres designated under the 2002 National Spatial Strategy - Galway, Louth, Offaly and Westmeath - had recorded above-average population growth, while 12 counties without gateways had thrived.
Mr van der Kamp said this was due to the continued sprawl of Dublin and the low levels of growth in cities generally (with the exception of Galway). "Only a minuscule 4 per cent of the population growth between 2002 and 2006 took place in our five main cities combined," he told the 300 planners attending the conference.
At the same time, the population of rural areas grew at a faster rate between 2002 and 2006 than in the period from 1996 to 2002, mainly due to the spread of one-off houses in the countryside, while the population of villages continued to decline.
"Even if significant housing development had taken place in many of these villages, this would not necessarily translate into significant population growth given the finding in the 2006 census that 15 per cent of the entire housing stock is vacant," he said.
Mr van der Kamp said planners should be worried about the decline of villages because this would be "acutely felt by people without access to private transport, in particular the elderly, where the local shop, the post office and the pub may all face closure".
Many villages lost more than 10 per cent of their population during a period of population growth in the rest of the State between 1996 and 2002. It remains to be seen how they have performed in the 2006 census results, which will be available later this month.
Michael Starrett, chief executive of the Heritage Council, stressed the need to consider villages and towns in the context of the landscape, as is the practice throughout Europe, and he called for new legislation to enable this to happen.
"We are out of step with the rest of Europe in not having such legislation," he said, adding that anyone who travelled to the Baltic states or even along the Mediterranean coast could "see the benefits of considering villages and towns fully within their landscapes".
Minister for the Environment Dick Roche told the conference that some very poor-quality development was still taking place in growth areas and he said he was urging local authorities to use their powers "aggressively" to refuse permission for sub-standard schemes.
Prof Kevin Leyden of West Virginia University said there were parallels between what was happening in Ireland and in the US in terms of car-dependent sprawl, with many people now commuting long distances to work and even to do their shopping.
Urging planners to create "walkable neighbourhoods", he said this made sense in social, environmental, economic and public-health terms. "The best communities were all designed to be walkable places where people could walk to school, church, pub and shop."
Fingal county manager David O'Connor referred to Ireland's ageing population and said a "grey wave is sweeping over our cities", forcing younger people to live farther away from where they work. "Now that we can do anything, what will we do?" he asked.
