There must be more coordination between the zoning of land and the "timely availability of adequate infrastructure", the body representing the State's planners warned following the publication of the National Development Plan 2007-2013.
The Irish Planning Institute (IPI) welcomed the emphasis in the new National Development Plan (NDP) on the delivery of the National Spatial Strategy and also the attempts to reduce the problem of "infrastructure deficit".
Henk van der Kamp, IPI
But the body, which represents planners working in public and private practice, said there must be more forward planning and co-ordination between the zoning of land and the timely availability of adequate infrastructure.
It said that otherwise there was a risk that the "worrying pattern of outward sprawl of population in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA), would continue".
"The re-affirmed explicit commitment to the principles contained in the National Spatial Strategy, in particular the concentration on urban centres with a designated gateway status, was crucially important in the light of the earlier indications that we were drifting away from the strategy," said IPI president Henk van der Kamp.
He said such indications were clear from the population figures revealed by the 2006 census and the Government plans to decentralise civil servants to towns without gateway or hub status.
"This new National Development plan gives a clear commitment to the gateway designated urban centres and this is welcomed by the institute," he said.
"It is crucially important that we grasp the opportunity offered by the current high population growth and house building programmes, to deliver the type of Ireland that will best serve current and future generations of Irish people as well as the environment and the economy.
"Uncontrolled dispersed development either in the form of long distance commute- based sprawl in the Greater Dublin Area or one-off housing in rural areas may be regretted in years to come," Mr van der Kamp added.
It ahs long been argued that better planning in the regions could have alleviated the pressure on the GDA and the Western Development Commission today said the plan was a huge opportunity that should not be wasted.
Chief executive Gillian Buckley said the economic prosperity of the depended on a better balance to regional development.
Money allocated under the last NDP for regional development was not all spent and Ms Buckley noted that spending in the Southern and Eastern region increased 67 per cent in the five-year period to 2003 compared 56 per cent in the Border, Midland and West (BMW) region.
She said regional infrastructural investment should be prioritised to "reverse this growing disparity". She expressed particular concern that the Atlantic Road Corridor linking the Northwest from Letterkenny to Waterford in the Southeast via Sligo and Galway was not be completed until after the radial motorways programme from Dublin is completed in 2010.
She welcomed the €300 allocated to the "Gateway Innovation Fund" which aims to bolster the growth of eight urban areas outside the GDA. They are: Cork, Limerick/Shannon, Galway, Waterford, Letterkenny, Sligo, Dundalk, Killarney and the midlands hub of Athlone/Tullamore/Mullingar.
But she expressed concern that the trend of recent of years would continue at the expense of the BMW towns and smaller rural areas.
"This is clearly an issue in the west and northwest of the country, which is predominantly a rural region much of which is located at considerable distances from the designated gateways," Ms Buckley said.