Last week, James Pikeand Sue Roafdebated the question: Are high-rise buildings the future for Dublin? Here is an edited selection of your comments:
High-rise is well overdue - should have started 20 years ago!
- Natalie Saunders, Ireland
The future of Dublin is certainly not in high-rise buildings alone. High-density housing is required, but not necessarily high-rise. If, as Mr Pike suggests, high-rise buildings can be designed to a zero carbon standard, well and good.
I think that factors such as the impact of such buildings on the local environment and, as Ms Roaf suggests, the possible excessive energy costs of keeping them comfortable should be considered when assessing all proposals for high-rise developments. All such developments should be decided on their own merits on a case by case basis.
- Conor, Ireland
Does Sue Roaf really think cities will "go dark" as oil runs out? Does she really think we will just shrug off the disappearance of electricity going "oh well, it is just too hard to produce without oil"? She is effectively forecasting the end of human ingenuity.
- P T, Ireland
So, according to Sue Roaf, the best way to fit 1.5 million people in an ever-growing city, is to put them all in one-storey houses, because of "climate change".
And what do we do when those 1.5 million people have to commute dozens of kilometres every day to work or to shop because of the massive spread of the city? One of the biggest dangers to the environment is the suburbia effect: houses in the middle of nowhere that force owners to travel 20-40km a day to meet their basic needs.
There's no public transport that can cope with that. As a former Irish planner and a resident of Manhattan's Lower East Side for the past 10 years, I see both the merit and folly in Mr Pike's proposal.
Manhattan does not have uniform 20-storey development - in fact, the four- to five-storey neighbourhood in which I live is representative of much of the city's housing stock.
What is key is adjacent space - parks, playgrounds, sports fields (the city is punctuated with Astroturf pitches) - if the city is to become an attractive destination for families.
New York is also suffering from a dearth of family-friendly, three-bedroom apartments, so the new Dublin City Council guidelines are in fact to be welcomed. Finally, I have as many reservations about Poolbeg as I do about the Gasometer (a site I feel has not been properly decontaminated) and believe that residential concentration should instead be focused on the Docklands than further south along the coast.
- de Paor United States
The urban form has historically been about profit taking, not social well-being. Until severe climate change forces emergency measures, no actual social policies will replace free-for-all urbanity.
Large-scale communal architecture must eventually replace individual, small-scale architectural units, which will also incorporate small-scale urban design features.
- Geoffrey Keatin, Ireland
Ireland has always been behind the curve and high-rise is yet another example. Pretty soon we will see more and more high-rise and we will wonder what the hell were we afraid of.
This high-rise phobia is so mind numbing it blows my mind.
High-rise, particularly in the Docklands area, is absolutely the way to go. Rooftop gardens, fitness centres, ferry service up and down the Liffey at regular intervals to offset the carbon otherwise spewing as these people commute from Maynooth or Portlaoise. Since when was overheating by the sun a factor in Ireland?
- K Lynch, United States
It's about time our capital city produces high-rise buildings, because if we continue to build out, it will most definitely lead to more problems.
- David Stapleton, Ireland
Here, that Sue Roaf is having a laugh. She has no other argument than that the buildings will be too hot or cold. Please, are we unable to use our engineering skills to counter this? We're in a era where sustainable methods of design are at the fore.
No one is going to accept poorly-built, expensive to run towers, as Roaf is suggesting. Face it, high-rise is necessary in Dublin. It's becoming more widely understood that high-rise isn't necessarily high-density, but it can go some way to relieving the sprawl which is choking this city to death. Our economic boom is about to end, and we have nothing of architectural note to show for it. The city centre is in many places still tired and run-down.
Adventurous, well-designed buildings in key central sites can rejuvenate the look and fabric of the city centre, as more and more people will live there. Whatever you think about climate change, whatever the real cause is, I'll bet my bottom dollar that pollution from commuting traffic impacts more than skyscrapers.
- Senorkev Guam