Sir, - The considerations raised by the chair of An Taisce, Michael Smith (Opinion, June 6th ) are sociological and philosophical, not merely environmental. People aspire to more individualism and privacy; they don't want to live cheek by jowl with others not of their choosing and they use the car and the Internet to create a nexus and keep in communication with other like-minded people. Physical or geographical propinquity is no longer necessary for social intercourse or cohesion. The day of the "cluster" of people forced to live collectively in villages, towns and cities is past.
What Michael Smith wants to do is romantic social engineering to maintain society in a time-vacuum, by legally imposing outmoded life-styles.
What we should be doing is finding ways in which transport, public and private, the disposal of human detritus, telephony and the Internet are made environmentally and healthily safer, more accessible and cheaper. It can be done; science can accommodate our desires and ambitions, whereas people like An Taisce, claiming to be merely conservationists, are really political and social conservatives.
Let's find ways to live like we want, extend the measure by which we cut our cloth, rather than fit into hand-me-downs. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN O'DONOGHUE,
Rathmichael,
Co Dublin.