Sir, – The recent call by John O'Connor of the Government's Housing Agency for a reconsideration of the apartment sizes set out in Dublin City Council's development plan ("Housing Agency calls for smaller apartments in Dublin", October 4th) opens an interesting debate which could, in my view, be extended to cover a review of all the national standards that affect residential development.
As an architect and one of the consultants on the first government guidelines on residential density in 1999, I support the concept of higher density and more sustainable compact towns and cities. However there are many ways in which higher densities can be achieved without constructing tall buildings. In my view, the model we need to move towards, in the main, is low rise, higher density, except in the centre of towns and cities where the scale of building should be substantially higher.
In Dublin, we cite successful neighbourhoods such as Portobello, Phibsborough, etc, as ideal examples of residential design incorporating low-rise, family-friendly places to live. We need to examine why this is so and how it has been achieved.
The density in these areas is quite high and comparable with many high-rise schemes, but dwelling sizes tend to be smaller, gardens more compact, public open space limited and car parking kept to a minimum but with good access to public transport. The result seems to be vibrant places in which people like to live.
The standards set out in most of our current plans for new development require much greater areas of land to be kept free at ground level to facilitate gardens, open spaces and car parking than is provided in the neighbourhoods mentioned above. This inevitably results in pushing buildings “up in the air” in order to achieve sustainable densities.
In many cases this has often created unsatisfactory ground-level areas of unsightly surface car parking and large but soulless windswept open spaces. Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate these standards and see if they are militating against achieving low-rise, higher-density solutions, particularly for edge of town and suburban locations where residents could live closer to ground level and have access to smaller, but better designed, more usable open spaces. A wider range of smaller dwelling sizes also needs to be looked at, which responds better to our current demographics and depends on access to public transport; car parking requirements, particularly directly outside the front door, need to be restricted.
This might allow us then to have “streets” in the true meaning of the word, as uncluttered places where people can walk, cycle or even play in safety. It is only from there that we can begin to move towards creating neighbourhoods, establishing a sense of place and building communities. – Yours, etc,
BRYAN O’ROURKE,
Rathgar, Dublin 6.