Families need more than big apartments to live in inner-city Dublin, writes Frank McDonald.
The Very Rev Victor Griffin, when he was Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, used to complain that one of the biggest problems in the Liberties was that there was hardly anywhere in the area where kids could kick a ball. That's still the case today, despite all the talk about "family-friendly developments".
Sure, there are new community centres like the ones on Marrowbone Lane and Donore Avenue, a creche planned for School Lane and public open spaces such as St Patrick's Park, beside the cathedral. But there's a dearth of children's playgrounds and almost no playing pitches, apart from one beside St Theresa's Gardens.
Now being rebranded as "SoHo", the Liberties area of Dublin has seen a lot of new residential development, notably along Cork Street.
"The message we are sending out to developers and prospective purchasers is that we are determined to achieve high-quality, family- and job-friendly development in the area," says city manager John Fitzgerald.
The current city development plan, adopted last year, is strong on vision but short on specifics.
It aims to ensure that "a wide range of accommodation is available and set within sustainable communities where residents are within easy reach of services and facilities such as shops, education, leisure, community facilities and amenities".
The word "liaise" is mentioned a lot, as in the council's policy to "continue to liaise with other statutory, voluntary and community groups in the provision of key services", or the policy to "continue to liaise with the school authorities in order to help meet the needs for new primary and secondary school provision wherever practicable".
Although Dublin city has 226 primary schools and 89 post-primary schools, many of their buildings are under-utilised due to falling student numbers and limited hours of use. So the council says it will "advocate more innovative and shared use" of these facilities for adult education, sports and recreation, community centres and the like.
But the council has no control over education in the city; that's a matter for the Department of Education.
Numerous inner-city schools have closed over the past 30 years as people moved out to the suburbs. And though this population decline has been reversed, no new schools are planned, other than one in The Coombe.
Thousands of new apartments have been provided in the inner city since 1990.
The first wave was the worst, consisting almost entirely of "shoebox flats" of 35-45sq m with no storage space, laid out on either side of long, artificially lit corridors - not the kind of places that families could even remotely contemplate living in.
Although standards have improved a lot since then, with at least a proportion of "family-sized apartments" included in most schemes in the inner city, there is precious little evidence that families are actually living in them.
Does anyone know of any couple with small children who have moved into the Docklands area, for example?
If the city council and the Docklands Development Authority want people to consider the inner city as an appropriate place to raise kids, they need to specify a range of standards - as Vancouver has done since 1992, when its city council published a remarkable set of guidelines for high-density housing for families with children.
These guidelines say such housing should be located within 800m walking distance of an elementary school, daycare centre and grocery shopping, and within 400m of a children's playground and public transport stop.
The guidelines also say there should be a sufficient number of family units in any scheme to give children peers to play with, to encourage a sense of community and to support the provision of adequate amenities for families with children - located and designed to maximise sunlight, especially in winter.
"Experience with high-density family projects in Vancouver clearly indicates that satisfaction with common outdoor open space increases as residents have control over its use and as outsiders are effectively prevented from entering it uninvited," the guidelines say.
"Gated and locked central courtyards are the preferred design solution."
Architects were told to "design the whole environment with the safety needs of children in mind".
For example, access to schools and amenities would involve providing a walking route which is free from barriers such as the need to cross a major unsignalled traffic junction, and has an environment suitable for young children.
The 17-page document also goes into detail about the facilities that family units should include, such as bedrooms with sufficient floor space for playing, generous hallways with room for toys and equipment, secure indoor storage for bicycles and private outdoor spaces (such as generous balconies) for the exclusive use of each household.
But despite all the talk here about encouraging families to live in city-centre apartments, there is still no equivalent in Dublin or other Irish cities of Vancouver's far-sighted planning standards to make this possible - unless the current review of the 1995 apartment design guidelines takes the needs of children seriously.