We are building an impressive number of homes: more than 50,000 a year for the past four years, with the figure for 2003 exceeding 65,000. When it comes to where we build them, however, we could do a lot better.

As many as a third of homes built since the late 1990s are out of reach of basic services such as shops, schools and sports facilities except by car, according to a study carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute.

Even when homes are built at the edge of existing towns they are seldom knitted into the existing street fabric, meaning that the advantages of town living are largely lost.

The authors of Suburban Nation, a book about the way towns are planned in the US, observed a near universal pattern. A cul-de-sac, or subdivision, of houses would be built off one of the main routes, or collector roads, serving a town. This forced traffic from each subdivision onto the small number of collector roads. Congestion set in - even in areas with relatively small

populations. Walking or cycling along a collector road became unpleasant - and rare.

Occasionally, the ends of two culs-de-sac built off separate collector roads would occur a stone's throw from one another. They would not intersect, however: both would be cut off, cul-de-sac from cul-de-sac.

Residents might have to drive out of the subdivision, onto the collector road, into town and back out on another collector road just to get into the neighbouring subdivision. The authors termed this phenomenon: "When nearby is far away."

US influence on the expansion of Irish towns is obvious. Winding culs-de-sac of new housing are common. Following US styles, the houses are usually set at different angles; open space, when it is provided, is fragmented and too small to kick a ball around on, as are the houses' gardens.

Is weaving new development into towns a lost art? Hugh Oram recently referred in this newspaper to the way old maps record civic expansion and, in doing so, provide "a priceless barometer of social change".

A 1780 map of Dublin shows what is now O'Connell Street beginning at the Rotunda Hospital and ending at Henry Street. A narrow lane called Drogheda Street continued south but was stopped short by an old east-west street called the Lots - still there as a back street. To get to the Liffey one had to turn left or right at the Lots. An appreciation of what it means to plan, together with a gentle mix of patience and persistence, gave Ireland its best-known thoroughfare.

Eighteenth-century planners also had a designation rarely found on modern maps: intended streets. The 1780 map shows a grid outline for the streets that today make up the IFSC and Spencer Dock.

The need to knit new streets into old has been recognised by the Government, at least to some extent.

A fund called Roads to Support Housing was set up in 1999. Substantial resources - 257 million - were committed, to be administered by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Yet the Department is unable to say how much has been spent. "What we know," according to one official, "is that draw-down by local authorities has been poor."

Eligibility for the Roads to Support Housing fund is limited to urban centres in counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow, as well as the cities of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford. The Department has still to say whether the fund is be adjusted in line with the National Spatial Strategy.

The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government also oversees the Village and Urban Renewal fund. However, none of the 158 million allocated under this head can be used to lay out new streets. Projects funded under the scheme include small parks, public seating and flower beds.

Figures published by the Economic and Social Research Institute show that the country's South and East region used only 58 per cent of available funds. Take-up in the Border, Midlands and West region was slightly lower, at 52 per cent. Both of these statistics suggest a strong case for broadening the scope of the Village and Urban Renewal fund.

The recently announced plan to decentralise the civil service is backed by a hope that Dublin's congestion will not be replicated in other urban centres. Such optimism forgets the long tailbacks that are common in Cork, Limerick and Galway.

House-building and urban expansion in Ireland follow a basic national template; what differences exist relate largely to scale. It is a template under which land is used liberally, public space is configured poorly and the knit of new development to old receives little attention. Exceptions exist but are rare. The dominant template leaves low environmental-impact modes of transport little chance to keep pace with employment or population growth.

A change of location offers scope for a fresh start. But if the template remains the same, fresh makes way for stale.