Dublin city needs its green spaces to enjoy, writes Oisín Quinn
Last month the new Dublin City Council made a number of important changes to the draft development plan for the city. In a recent opinion piece (October 4th) Mr Kevin Nowlan, a partner in a property consultancy firm, argued that one particular change to the plan would significantly restrict the amount of housing that could be built during the next six years.
As a new city councillor who supported and argued for the change, I would like to offer the alternative view that the main challenge faced by the city is not to overdevelop remaining green space but to create incentives for the building of more houses on the significant banks of land already zoned for development and to rebuild on the many "brownfield" sites in the city that are inefficiently used.
Mr Nowlan argued that the "green" land in Dublin owned by institutions needed to be made available for residential development if the city was to develop in a sustainable way and that limiting residential development to social and affordable housing would not work.
He claimed that the amendment to the plan would mean that "all the green land in Dublin that one sees when taking off or landing from Dublin Airport will still be green in years' time". He accused the councillors of ignoring advice and behaving in an ad-hoc manner. This latter criticism is far from accurate. The Labour Party group, the biggest on the council, not only took into account the advice of the planners but also independent legal and planning advice.
The need for more housing was one of the key considerations behind all the decisions we made in relation to the draft development plan. However, the issue needs to be put in some perspective.
Mr Nowlan compared Dublin to Paris and bemoaned the fact that we only have one-eighth of its population for the same area; thereby, in his view, condemning our one million citizens to an inefficient public transport system.
Unfortunately we weren't making a development plan for Paris, and there was no basis for contemplating the kind of population surge required to make it worth while planning for Mr Nowlan's Parisian idyll!
Contrary to the suggestion that we acted in an ad-hoc way, we carefully considered the information available on Dublin's likely population growth and housing needs.
The council's own professional planner's advice was that more than 41,000 residential units could be built on land currently zoned for residential development in the draft plan. This compares to the current regional planning guidelines for the Greater Dublin Area which predict a total housing requirement of 40,000 units.
What's more, none of the land earmarked by the planners for the 41,000 housing units was zoned for long-term institutional and community use and therefore has not been affected by the change.
However, that is only part of the story. First, simply zoning land for residential development does not guarantee that houses will be built. A significant amount of land already zoned for development in the Greater Dublin Area has been hoarded in land banks and released slowly by developers. This is due, in part, to the Government taking insufficient action to create a disincentive for this practice.
Second, while Mr Nowlan argued for more development on green space, he failed to address the challenge posed by the inefficient use of huge tracts of land already built on. If Dublin is to develop into a city with sustainable communities living close to the city centre then we have to look seriously at the way existing sites are used.
It is clear that a vast amount of housing can be generated by redeveloping brownfield sites, and this is a policy which the city council is committed to in the draft plan. For example, the Docklands can, on the city planners' estimate, generate up to 7,000 housing units during the course of the plan. This figure is 10 times more than the estimate for the number of housing units that might be built on institutional land throughout the entire south side of the city.
What's more, the change that Mr Nowlan complains of does not prevent residential development on institutional land earmarked for future development. The amendment only affects institutional land zoned for long-term community and institutional uses. Even then, because that land is intended and needed for long-term community use, it was considered appropriate to allow social and affordable housing as an option.
However, in drawing up the development plan for the city for the next six years we would have abandoned our responsibilities as elected representatives if we had simply offered up all the green space of the city to developers. While some of the city officials might be unhappy it is our job to set the policy of the council.
A sustainable city is not just about housing; it is also about homes in communities. This means taking account of population changes in certain parts of the city and making sure that, for example, where the number of families is on the increase, proper provision is made for recreational and amenity space. That is why certain land is needed for long-term community use and that is why the new city council changed the plan.
While Mr Nowlan sounded horrified at the prospect of flying into Dublin in 10 years' time and seeing all the green space still there, hopefully, if the plan stays in place, he will be able to enjoy living in the city when he lands.
Oisín Quinn is a Labour Party councillor on Dublin City Council