Analysis: Our current approach to planning won't deliver the infrastructure required for a future country of over seven million people
Today, accommodation in Ireland is in critically short supply. By 2050, our population is projected to have grown by two million people. Clearly, we need to plan for where future generations will live tomorrow. Building a new city, like Futureville, is a rational suggestion. A city built from scratch, based on new thinking and the latest ideas is hugely attractive, and entirely possible, but delivering Futureville will itself require new thinking and a change of culture.
We could do better
Ireland has it all: fertile land, a temperate climate sheltered from the worst extremes of climate change, a stable government and economy. Population growth is inevitable. Our challenge is, where and how should we grow.
Since achieving independence over 100 years ago, Ireland doesn’t have a great history of new town construction. Instead, we have followed an incremental approach to growth. Picture repetitive two-storey housing estates sprawling out from a historic village or town centre. Facilities and amenities are bolted on later. The town centre becomes neglected as people and wealth drift to the suburbs. Factories and warehouses annex more space from nature and farming. Public transport systems are patchy or non-existent. That depiction is unduly bleak, but at best Ireland scores a 'could do better’ grade for urban development.
A new vision
The Futureville concept is different. It encourages fresh thinking. Rather than discussing zoning, regulation and impacts, it embraces opportunity, novelty, and possibility. It encourages new discussion about the best way to use land. It seeks to maximise quality of life and public health. The planners in Futureville trust in technology to make our lives better. If we are to follow through on Futureville – whether in a re-imagined Athlone or anywhere else - we need a planning system that can deliver on the concept. Can our current model meet the challenge?
A change of approach to planning
Right now, we train planners to be referees, balancing the competing demands of existing communities versus new development. Planners broker compromise between growth on one hand and conservation on the other. Planners learn to navigate complex regulatory systems rather than challenge them.
Our process for making development plans is unwieldy – more of a marathon than an inspirational 1,500 metres race. The spark of creativity isn’t given enough oxygen to thrive - visionaries need not apply. We have the perfect system for gradual, consensus-driven, incremental growth. That approach has got us where we are today. But it is not the approach that will deliver the development in national infrastructure that is needed for a country of over 7 million people, 25 years from now.
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From RTÉ Brainstorm, Shannon was the first town to be designed and built from scratch in Ireland in almost 300 years
Making exception
There is a fantastic clip in the RTE archives featuring a young journalist named Charlie Bird reporting from a rundown Dublin dockside in 1986. He probes how innovative new legislation will enable the rapid redevelopment of the Custom House Docks. Normal processes were to be bypassed. Though it upset some planners in Dublin Corporation at the time, this political intervention by Charlie Haughey’s government was a success. Not all of the promises were delivered, but it kick-started the successful Irish Financial Services Centre. This in turn inspired the redevelopment of the entire Docklands. Success when everyone pulls together.
On the back of that intervention, Strategic Development Zones (SDZs) were introduced in the early 2000s to enable rapid, effective urban growth in selected areas. Once the government designates an SDZ, all public bodies are required to collaborate to make the new urban zone a success. A strong urban design blueprint guides the process. Transport services, schools and parks are developed in tandem with housing.
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From RTÉ Archives, Charlie Bird reports from the Dublin docks in a news report broadcast on 17 November 1986
The first SDZs are performing well. Despite temporary set-backs during the global financial crisis, Adamstown in South Dublin is becoming an attractive town, and Cherrywood in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown is now poised for success. The dynamic new Grangegorman Campus in Dublin City – home to Technological University Dublin – is transforming of a former psychiatric hospital into an attractive city quarter including healthcare facilities and schools. These are not overnight transformations. But where there is a strong vision and political tenacity, the model works.
So we have the solution. Or do we? The new Planning and Development Act of 2024 has rebranded SDZs to ‘Urban Development Zones’ and integrated them more closely with the process of making a City or County Development Plan. There are more checks and balances in the selection of the target area designated for growth. It’s all much more measured and orderly, but I fear that we are drifting back towards the sluggish system that Haughey and his team short-circuited in 1986. Nevertheless, we have a system that could be used to plan and deliver a futuristic city or a visionary urban expansion.
From RTÉ, what would Futureville Ireland look like?
Think differently, now
It would be interesting to challenge ourselves to develop a new greenfield city in Ireland. What could we get right, if we started from scratch? What building materials would we use? How tall would we build? How would we foster a sense of community, where people connect in person rather than online? How would we connect with nature?
Futureville offers glimpses of urban self-sufficiency for energy and food production. This might be fantasy, but we won’t know unless we explore the possibility of building a new form of attractive urban centre of scale. The starting point is a blank piece of paper and a challenge to everyone – including our planners, architects and engineers - to ‘go plan’.
Futureville Ireland starts Tuesday, 11 November at 7pm on RTÉ One & RTÉ Player and continues on Wednesday and Thursday at the same time.
Science Week on RTÉ is supported by Research Ireland/Taighde Éireann. For more information about Science Week on RTÉ, see www.rte.ie/scienceweek and go to www.scienceweek.ie for more events and information.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
