Madam, - The building boom continues; more houses than ever are being built. Politicians boast about the quantity but rarely, if ever, mention quality. Commuting times are becoming longer and more stressful. The Government is selling off large amounts of public land and several historically significant buildings. The National Spatial Strategy was fundamentally weakened by the adoption of ad hoc decentralisation policies. The challenges posed by global warming and climate change are ticking away. Let the future take care of itself, seems to be the guiding philosophy.
Towns and villages close to the main cities and regional centres are expanding without any coherent physical form and with little or no relationship to original historic centres or to the indigenous landscape. Private house-builders and estate agents are largely determining our settlement patterns and the physical shape of future communities, in the absence of an adequate strategic and integrated planning approach.
We know very little about social and community conditions within these expanding settlements. Anecdotal reports suggest that there are inadequate schools and social facilities, few new parks and amenity areas. Retail bases are declining, with local shops being replaced by filling stations on village outskirts and superstores in the larger towns. Many small towns and villages are becoming mere housing estates.
Country roads are becoming more dangerous and difficult to walk or cycle on. Proportionally there are more serious accidents on these roads than on the major national routes. The idea of walking or cycling along country roads to schools, to church, to shop, to play, is just a memory.
At the same time, doctors are emphasising the need for more exercise and for preventive health measures to be part of future planning policies. What are we to do? We have few, if any, dedicated long-distance walkways. We have no system of reasonably safe pedestrian paths or cycleways to connect different towns and villages, or for the new housing areas to connect with the old centres.
There appears to be a total lack of strategic thinking and little, if any, direction from the Government. In 1987 the government of the day summarily closed down An Foras Forbartha (The National Institute for Physical Planning and Research). As a result, despite experiencing the greatest rate of physical growth ever to happen on the island, we have no clear idea of the implications this growth will have for future generations.
We urgently need a planning research body, similar to the Economic and Social Research Institute, which would independently monitor the effects of recent developments, carry out fundamental research, and provide advice to the public and private sector. This lack of direction in our current planning policies should be a major issue for all the political parties in the forthcoming election. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK SHAFFREY, Architect, Lower Ormond quay, Dublin 1.