Future cities in Ireland

Figel2 · 08-08-2015 6:02pm

If Dublin keeps growing the next biggest town in Ireland will be Portlaoise which has excellent connections to the rest of the country and is one hour by road from Dublin plus has nice cheep houses (compared to Dublin) .

Little wonder it is growing so fast .

newmug · 09-08-2015 12:54am

D.L.R. wrote: »

Dublin is under pressure because of failure to invest in key infrastructure in Dublin. Developing the regions won't fix that.

The only thing that will improve Dublin is to build the infrastructure that Dublin needs.

Feck Dublin. The WHOLE COUNTRY is struggling. Why should we service one quarter of the population with what little we have and forget about the other three quarters?

Part of planning is population control. We need a good long-term population strategy badly. We only have enough agricultural land to feed 1 million people continuously, everybody else is living off the fat of Foreign Direct Investment - and that ain't going to last forever.

We should start with Dublin. Try to get its population below 1 million. At the same time, be upgrading the regions. Eventually, things will start to balance out.

donvito99 · 09-08-2015 3:11pm

newmug wrote: »

Feck Dublin. The WHOLE COUNTRY is struggling. Why should we service one quarter of the population with what little we have and forget about the other three quarters?

Because 1/4 all live very closely together and it is therefore more affordable and efficient to adequately cater to them than it is to build, say, a railway line from, say, Athenry to Sligo. Just as an example, like.

Try to get its population below 1 million

Cúpla concentration camps in the Curragh?

dubhthach · 09-08-2015 5:15pm

newmug wrote: »

Part of planning is population control. We need a good long-term population strategy badly. We only have enough agricultural land to feed 1 million people continuously, everybody else is living off the fat of Foreign Direct Investment - and that ain't going to last forever.

I'm not all together sure where ye coming up with figure of 1 million when it comes to argicultural land, we had no issue sustaning a multiple of that figure 100 years ago for example (4.4million~ in 1911)

Subpopulus · 09-08-2015 6:02pm

Heard a stat a few years ago to the effect that Ireland produces enough food to feed about five or six times our population.

Sam Russell · 09-08-2015 6:34pm

newmug wrote: »

We only have enough agricultural land to feed 1 million people continuously, everybody else is living off the fat of Foreign Direct Investment - and that ain't going to last forever.

We export 90% of our beef, similar amounts of lamb/mutton and milk/cheese. We export potatoes and other produce. If we had to, we could eliminate imports of chicken and eggs. So what exactly do we eat that we cannot supply? Oh, yes - rice.

SpaceTime · 09-08-2015 6:56pm

Sam Russell wrote: »

We export 90% of our beef, similar amounts of lamb/mutton and milk/cheese. We export potatoes and other produce. If we had to, we could eliminate imports of chicken and eggs. So what exactly do we eat that we cannot supply? Oh, yes - rice.

Basically most of the vegetables and grains are imported.

We have some hot housed tomatoes, peppers and berries and we produce mushrooms but that's pretty much it.

Most of our apple production is for cider and we grow very little other fruit.

You'd have a diet of spuds (for a few months a year), porridge and a lot of meat and dairy and a very narrow and hugely expensive range of vegetables and fruit as we don't grow nearly enough to meet local demand.

Growing conditions for wheat are also too wet and cold here so, you could forget bread, cakes, biscuits etc etc too

Sam Russell · 09-08-2015 7:27pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

Basically most of the vegetables and grains are imported.

We have some hot housed tomatoes, peppers and berries and we produce mushrooms but that's pretty much it.

Most of our apple production is for cider and we grow very little other fruit.

You'd have a diet of spuds (for a few months a year), porridge and a lot of meat and dairy and a very narrow and hugely expensive range of vegetables and fruit as we don't grow nearly enough to meet local demand.

Growing conditions for wheat are also too wet and cold here so, you could forget bread, cakes, biscuits etc etc too

We produce (or could produce) all root vegetables, cabbage, apples (particularly cooking apples). We can produce berries (like blueberries and black currants), strawberries, and some other soft fruits. Now if there was demand, we could grow more.

We grow plenty of wheat, oats and barley. We do not grow hard wheat but we can use our wheat for bread, and particularly for soda bread.

We could be self sufficient in chicken if the imports from Asia and South America were properly regulated.

We are a green island and could be more than completely self sufficient in food - no bother, but our diet would need to alter slightly, and our imports of dodgy foods would need controlling. Our fish stocks were given away many years ago. Many of our food imports are from unsustainable sources such as ex-rainforest plantations.

I have never heard anyone say we could not support our population in food supply.

John_Rambo · 09-08-2015 7:39pm

newmug wrote: »

Feck Dublin. The WHOLE COUNTRY is struggling. Why should we service one quarter of the population with what little we have and forget about the other three quarters?

Because Dublin and the cities are supporting and funding the the rest of the country. By doing so, Dublin is certainly not forgetting about the rest of the country! Or saying "Feck the rest of the country" (nice attitude by the way

)

Mahogany · 12-08-2015 1:07am

You'd swear this is a phenomenon that only happens in Ireland, it happens everywhere. In the UK, most of the wealth/resources etc is concentrated in London and the South East. Same goes for France(Paris) and Portugal(Lisbon)

SpaceTime · 12-08-2015 12:01pm

The UK and France are particularly extreme examples though and models to absolutely avoid following!

France in particular is incredibly over centralised. You can hardly even get a train across country that doesn't go through Paris and until relatively recently there were only two area codes 1 for Paris or else 16 for "culchie France" just to drive home how Île de France (island of France = Paris area) dominated everything.

Germany is the other extreme. Berlin is big by not massive like Paris or London and there are a rake of Dublin and smaller sized cities making up the bulk of the population.

It's the same in NL and Beligium really lots of medium cities.

Those countries have much more balance and much better prices for accommodation generally compared to Britain and France.

Ireland moving towards having at least 3 medium cities would be a far nicer solution that allows for a lot more options.

What we need to avoid though is the scatter all investment to the four winds approach. We really do need to focus on a small number of cities.

The idea that we should be creating new cities is absolutely insane though. We've all the necessary infrastructure in Cork, Limerick and Galway and also Waterford.

Motorways to all of them.
Cork Airport serving Cork.
Shannon serving Limerick and Galway.
Reasonabley good rail links for the scale of the place.
Excellent universities - UCC in particular actually ranks internationally and NUI Galway and UL are major research focuses universities too and WIT has grown a lot over the years too.

Cork also has a huge medical significance with CUH being the single largest hospital in the state with a pretty huge catchment and is centre of excellence for a load of specialist medicine,

Galway also fills that role for the West.

Cork City Centre is back in boom mode at the moment too with about €150m of retail investment going ahead already in 2015.

Building new cities from scratch would be utterly daft! Use what we have and develop them!

Sam Russell · 12-08-2015 12:38pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

The UK and France are particularly extreme examples though and models to absolutely avoid following!

France in particular is incredibly over centralised. You can hardly even get a train across country that doesn't go through Paris and until relatively recently there were only two area codes 1 for Paris or else 16 for "culchie France" just to drive home how Île de France (island of France = Paris area) dominated everything.

Germany is the other extreme. Berlin is big by not massive like Paris or London and there are a rake of Dublin and smaller sized cities making up the bulk of the population.

It's the same in NL and Beligium really lots of medium cities.

Those countries have much more balance and much better prices for accommodation generally compared to Britain and France.

Germany is a federal state that was until recently two states. Belgium is a state divided by language. NL is a very crowded country. These factors will all influence how cities grow.

In Ireland, Limerick has been stymied by the way the county and city boundaries are arranged, Galway less so. However Galway has a low population, and fifty years ago had an even lower population. Swords and Tallaght would warrant consideration as cities, but would always be considered part of Dublin.

SpaceTime · 12-08-2015 1:20pm

Swords and Tallaght are just large suburbs though. They're very much part of the Dublin agglomeration and tie into all the same facilities, infrastructure and services though.

New Zealand is very comparable population and size wise. We're just not focusing on creating decent sized regional hubs.

There's no reason why we shouldn't be aiming to have at least one other city over 300,000 and a couple around 150,000-200,000.

1 Auckland 1,413,700
2 Wellington 393,600
3 Christchurch 375,200
4 Hamilton 218,800
5 Napier-Hastings 128,800
6 Tauranga 127,700

The issue we have is we're overloading Dublin's infrastructure : housing is not able to cope, nor is water.

Balancing it with Cork, Limerick and Galway would help it develop much more sustainably.

Bayberry · 12-08-2015 1:43pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

New Zealand is very comparable population and size wise. We're just not focusing on creating decent sized regional hubs.

There's no reason why we shouldn't be aiming to have at least one other city over 300,000 and a couple around 150,000-200,000.

1 Auckland 1,413,700
2 Wellington 393,600
3 Christchurch 375,200
4 Hamilton 218,800
5 Napier-Hastings 128,800
6 Tauranga 127,700

I've never been to New Zealand, so I just looked this up on Bing maps.
Auckland-Wellington 650km, 7hr 28m driving time
Wellington-Christchurch 435km, 7hr 27m driving time
Auckland-Christchurch 1081km, 14hrs, 47m

Hamilton and Tauranga are only a couple of hours drive from Auckland, so comparable to Limerick and Galway. Napier-Hastings is about half way between Wellington and Auckland - 4 hours drive from each.

Hardly comparable to Ireland.

marmurr1916 · 12-08-2015 2:08pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

Swords and Tallaght are just large suburbs though. They're very much part of the Dublin agglomeration and tie into all the same facilities, infrastructure and services though.

New Zealand is very comparable population and size wise. We're just not focusing on creating decent sized regional hubs.

There's no reason why we shouldn't be aiming to have at least one other city over 300,000 and a couple around 150,000-200,000.

1 Auckland 1,413,700
2 Wellington 393,600
3 Christchurch 375,200
4 Hamilton 218,800
5 Napier-Hastings 128,800
6 Tauranga 127,700

The issue we have is we're overloading Dublin's infrastructure : housing is not able to cope, nor is water.

Balancing it with Cork, Limerick and Galway would help it develop much more sustainably.

The population of Greater Dublin is about 1.3 million. About 150km up the road is Greater Belfast, which has a population of close to 600,000.

Greater Cork is about 190,000; Derry is about 100,000, Limerick about 90,000, Galway about 70,000.

Looked at from an island of Ireland perspective, Ireland's spread of population isn't that unbalanced at all.

GerardKeating · 12-08-2015 3:01pm

Bayberry wrote: »

I've never been to New Zealand, so I just looked this up on Bing maps.
Auckland-Wellington 650km, 7hr 28m driving time
Wellington-Christchurch 435km, 7hr 27m driving time
Auckland-Christchurch 1081km, 14hrs, 47m

Hamilton and Tauranga are only a couple of hours drive from Auckland, so comparable to Limerick and Galway. Napier-Hastings is about half way between Wellington and Auckland - 4 hours drive from each.

Hardly comparable to Ireland.

Plus NZ is actually two separate islands, so could never really have one single centre.

SpaceTime · 12-08-2015 3:12pm

Ah sure it was probably the Brits' fault!

Ireland's always full of reasons why things can't possibly be done right.

cgcsb · 12-08-2015 3:36pm

marmurr1916 wrote: »

The population of Greater Dublin is about 1.3 million. About 150km up the road is Greater Belfast, which has a population of close to 600,000.

Greater Cork is about 190,000; Derry is about 100,000, Limerick about 90,000, Galway about 70,000.

Looked at from an island of Ireland perspective, Ireland's spread of population isn't that unbalanced at all.

How have you derived those figures?

2011 census shows

Greater Dublin: 1,800,000
Greater Belfast: 580,000
Greater Cork: 400,000
Galway and surrounding area: 100,000

The big problem is centralising those populations in the actual city as opposed to semi d land

Bayberry · 12-08-2015 3:58pm

GerardKeating wrote: »

Plus NZ is actually two separate islands, so could never really have one single centre.

Of the 6 example cities given, only one (Christchurch) is on the south Island, so you could ignore the south Island entirely and still find the comparison to Ireland weak. It's 7 more than hours drive between the 2 largest cities on that list - it's hardly surprising that there would be reasonably large settlements between them.

A business on the outskirts of Dublin can get to customers from Mayo to Kerry in 3 hours if it has to. A business in New Zealand would need an office in both of the largest cities to achieve the same coverage, or skip the largest city entirely and base itself in the 5th largest city to be within 4 hours of customers in both of the 2 largest cities.

SpaceTime · 12-08-2015 4:21pm

Tallaght to Dingle : 3h59min

Tallaght to Castletownbear, West Cork : 4h08 (373 km)

However, under the proposals on this thread, both of those towns will be demolished and their residents moved to new high density apartments somewhere in West Dublin, so there won't actually be any need to go there anyway.

marmurr1916 · 12-08-2015 4:29pm

cgcsb wrote: »

How have you derived those figures?

2011 census shows

Greater Dublin: 1,800,000
Greater Belfast: 580,000
Greater Cork: 400,000
Galway and surrounding area: 100,000

The big problem is centralising those populations in the actual city as opposed to semi d land

I'm using the continuous built-up area figures for Dublin, Cork and Galway, not adding the populations of towns, villages and rural areas that are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50km from those cities, unless there's a continuous built-up area in between.

One of the definitions of Greater Cork includes towns like Mallow and Youghal which are about 30 - 40+ km from Cork city centre and which are separated from Cork city by km after km of open countryside.

On the other hand, there are places like Glanmire, Douglas, Ballincollig, Little Island and Glounthane which are effectively suburbs of Cork and part of one continuous built-up area with either very little or no open countryside between them and Cork city.

I think that's a lot more sensible a definition than including places that are far distant from the cities and separated by miles of open countryside from the cities.

The problem for Ireland isn't the lack of cities or supposed population imbalances between cities.

It's the suburbanisation of the countryside, especially in rural areas close to major cities and towns, which is often littered with hundreds of one-off houses that would never have got planning permission in a country that truly appreciated its rural landscapes.

Scotland is a very good example of a country where there's an imbalance in the geographical spread of the population.

The total population of Scotland is about 5.2 million. Of those, 3.5 million or so live in the Central Belt, the narrow bit of Scotland between Glasgow and its surrounding towns and Edinburgh and its surrounding towns. Of the rest of the population, the majority are concentrated in a narrow coastal strip along the east coast, running from around Inverness, across and down the coast towards Aberdeen and south to Dundee and into Fife.

North of Faslane, the west coast of Scotland is generally very sparsely populated as are the highlands and islands, all the way east towards the east coast and south towards Perth.

Within that area (excluding the Central Belt and the eastern coastal areas mentioned above), the biggest town is Perth, which is about the size of Waterford and that's at the southern edge of the area. North of Perth, excluding the east coast cities (Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness) and their hinterlands, the biggest towns are relatively small - the likes of Oban, Fort William, Ullapool and Stornoway on Lewis and Lerwick on Shetland.

Compared to Scotland, the population of the island of Ireland is actually fairly well spread out in a manner that's much more geographically balanced than Scotland's population.

marmurr1916 · 12-08-2015 4:52pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

Ah sure it was probably the Brits' fault!

Ireland's always full of reasons why things can't possibly be done right.

What needs to be "done right" in your opinion?

Does Ireland need to be divided into some imaginary grid where equal numbers of people live within each grid square?

I don't see anything wrong with the spread of Ireland's urban population centres.

The main problem with Ireland is the suburbanistion of formerly rural areas with the spread of one-off houses across the landscape.

That's the outcome of complex factors, including the relatively late development of urban areas due to Ireland's not being incorporated into the Roman Empire.

That's a historical fact which, along with the romanticisation of rural living and culture and a strong desire among many Irish people to avoid urban living, combined with a lax planning system, has led to the proliferation of one-off housing in rural areas of Ireland and means that Ireland still has a high percentage of its population living in rural areas.

Nothing to do with the Brits - it's all the fault of the fecking Romans for not invading! :P

SpaceTime · 12-08-2015 4:53pm

The spread, even in the greater Dublin area, and the extensive ribbon development (if you look at most of the cities, there's a myth of density outside because people "feel" areas like Kildare are built up. They're anything but, it's all ribbons along roads.

It makes providing services like broadband (which tends to depend on radials from a node) very, very difficult.

All I'm saying is that we need to focus on developing the existing cities, this whole thread is about creating NEW cities which is just another example of people looking to scatter more resources to the four winds.

Developing small towns inappropriately, or creating new towns like Shannon for example, while starving cities like Limerick of development makes absolutely no sense, unless you're the local TD.

My point is that we already have cities, with significant infrastructure : motorways, ring roads, hospitals, universities, ports, airports, city centres with major retail chains, restaurants, public transit infrastructure etc etc.

You need to build on that, not start moving the focus from Limerick to Ennis or Galway to some small town in Mayo - Knock Airport springs to mind...

The strategy in the Limerick/Shannon/Ennis area for example is utterly daft for example with Limerick City being played off against Ennis and Shannon.

Every time I see any kind of strategy within a few months, it's got local ministers trying to pull things into their favourite town and to hell with any kind of logic.

We've already managed to cause vast amounts of totally unnecessary retail space (glass boxes etc) to be built all around small towns in the Northwest and midlands that will absolutely never be used because of some kind of insane 'if you build it they will come' strategy for example.

marmurr1916 · 12-08-2015 4:56pm

Bayberry wrote: »

I've never been to New Zealand, so I just looked this up on Bing maps.
Auckland-Wellington 650km, 7hr 28m driving time
Wellington-Christchurch 435km, 7hr 27m driving time
Auckland-Christchurch 1081km, 14hrs, 47m

Hamilton and Tauranga are only a couple of hours drive from Auckland, so comparable to Limerick and Galway. Napier-Hastings is about half way between Wellington and Auckland - 4 hours drive from each.

Hardly comparable to Ireland.

New Zealand has a land area which is roughly the size of Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) but a population about the size of the republic's, significantly smaller than the population of the island of Ireland.

It's not a valid comparison really since New Zealand is so much bigger and more sparsely populated than Ireland.

marmurr1916 · 12-08-2015 5:02pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

The spread, even in the greater Dublin area, and the extensive ribbon development (if you look at most of the cities, there's a myth of density outside because people "feel" areas like Kildare are built up. They're anything but, it's all ribbons along roads.

It makes providing services like broadband (which tends to depend on radials from a node) very, very difficult.

All I'm saying is that we need to focus on developing the existing cities, this whole thread is about creating NEW cities which is just another example of people looking to scatter more resources to the four winds.

Developing small towns, or creating new towns like Shannon for example, while starving cities like Limerick of development makes absolutely no sense, unless you're the local TD.

I agree with most of that but you're not going to persuade enough people from rural Mayo to move to Galway. Better to encourage the development of towns in Mayo, aiding the densification of their populations, than hoping that people will move to Galway city.

You can't overcome human nature which for most people means an attachment to their locality, but you can use decent planning policies to stop the proliferation of one-off housing and to encourage people to live in their nearest small town or village rather than miles out in the countryside away from the villages and towns.

Bayberry · 12-08-2015 5:02pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

They're anything but, it's all ribbons along roads.

It's not an accident that the Irish word for "village" is "sráidbhaile" - literally a "street town"

SpaceTime · 12-08-2015 5:12pm

Bayberry wrote: »

It's not an accident that the Irish word for "village" is "sráidbhaile" - literally a "street town"

There are still 500,000 homes in Ireland with "non unique" addresses i.e.

Mary Blogs
Townland
Co. Offaly

... i.e. medieval addresses.

We've a major issue with the concept of organisation / towns / cities really and a notion that people can just plonk houses in the middle of nowhere and expect full levels of service comparable to Singapore. I've literally seen people compare broadband in some one-off house in the outer, outer, outer Dublin commuter belt (which they will describe as "urban) with Singapore...

So, basically nothing surprises me about the level of chaotic planning tolerated here.

markpb · 12-08-2015 6:51pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

Tallaght to Dingle : 3h59min

Tallaght to Castletownbear, West Cork : 4h08 (373 km)

However, under the proposals on this thread, both of those towns will be demolished and their residents moved to new high density apartments somewhere in West Dublin, so there won't actually be any need to go there anyway.

It's great to be able to make a point subtly and without any hyperbole.

syklops · 12-08-2015 6:52pm

Aard wrote: »

International planning cooperation is commonplace in mainland Europe. No reason why it can't take place between Ireland and the UK (or part thereof). Indeed it already does to a certain extent.

We dont seem to be able to get inter-administrative co-operation between so called "Administrative counties" in Ireland. International planning seems some ways off, if you ask me.

Sam Russell · 12-08-2015 7:29pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

Tallaght to Dingle : 3h59min

Tallaght to Castletownbear, West Cork : 4h08 (373 km)

However, under the proposals on this thread, both of those towns will be demolished and their residents moved to new high density apartments somewhere in West Dublin, so there won't actually be any need to go there anyway.

Wasn't Castletownbear moved to Clontarf for the purposes of claiming travelling expenses - or did I dream that?

cgcsb · 13-08-2015 9:52am

SpaceTime wrote: »

Tallaght to Dingle : 3h59min

Tallaght to Castletownbear, West Cork : 4h08 (373 km)

However, under the proposals on this thread, both of those towns will be demolished and their residents moved to new high density apartments somewhere in West Dublin, so there won't actually be any need to go there anyway.

rather the young residents will move to their nearest City for education and employment. Over time the population will urbanise.

cgcsb · 13-08-2015 9:56am

marmurr1916 wrote: »

I'm using the continuous built-up area figures for Dublin, Cork and Galway, not adding the populations of towns, villages and rural areas that are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50km from those cities, unless there's a continuous built-up area in between.

One of the definitions of Greater Cork includes towns like Mallow and Youghal which are about 30 - 40+ km from Cork city centre and which are separated from Cork city by km after km of open countryside.

On the other hand, there are places like Glanmire, Douglas, Ballincollig, Little Island and Glounthane which are effectively suburbs of Cork and part of one continuous built-up area with either very little or no open countryside between them and Cork city.

I think that's a lot more sensible a definition than including places that are far distant from the cities and separated by miles of open countryside from the cities.

You're talking about the Urban area population not the "Greater area" population. You also were mixing the greater Belfast area "600,000" which includes commuter towns and rural areas some distance from the City and in the same post quoting only Cork's immediately urban population "190,000".

Belfast's urban population would be more like 230,000

SpaceTime · 13-08-2015 10:23am

Also, Dublin's continuous built up area is largely so because they ignored the greenbelt and just built over it due to planning "laxness" in the 1990s.

A lot of West Dublin was developed totally chaotically and should really have been a proper satellite town with facilities.

Both Cork and Belfast actually adhered much more strongly to their respective development plans and have a city, green belt and distinct satellite town approach, so just using urban sprawl as a definition of population count isn't really a good one.

For example, there will continue to be a green belt between Cork City and Carrigaline, Ballincollig, Blarney Midleton becuase it's actually a planning decision to keep one there, not because of lack of population. There is a deliberate policy of creating and growing those towns while keeping the city fairly tight. That's largely (but not entirely see: Carrigaline) been supported with good road infrastructure, but there's a LONG way to go on public transport.

I do find though that a lot of people seem to take the maximum greater, greater Dublin area population which for some reason sometimes seems to include the entire 'Pale' almost and then take the narrowest possible definition of the city they're comparing it with.

I'm not saying that Dublin isn't a lot bigger than the other cities in Ireland (including Belfast), but I've seen people trying to compare Dublin to London and Paris which is absolutely ludicrous.

Officially defining 5 metro areas in Ireland would help a lot in terms of policy making & discussion.

i.e.
Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.

monument · 13-08-2015 2:15pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

A lot of West Dublin was developed totally chaotically and should really have been a proper satellite town with facilities.

Both Cork and Belfast actually adhered much more strongly to their respective development plans and have a city, green belt and distinct satellite town approach, so just using urban sprawl as a definition of population count isn't really a good one.

West Dublin overall in area is much like the expansion of Amsterdam to areas such as Amstelveen and Amsterdam Zuid-Oost.

The issue is more around the planning, layout, and services.

SpaceTime wrote: »

The spread, even in the greater Dublin area, and the extensive ribbon development (if you look at most of the cities, there's a myth of density outside because people "feel" areas like Kildare are built up. They're anything but, it's all ribbons along roads.

It makes providing services like broadband (which tends to depend on radials from a node) very, very difficult.

You're simplifying things a bit. The simplified counter point is that: Some very high density parts of London have issues with broadband.

SpaceTime wrote: »

Developing small towns inappropriately, or creating new towns like Shannon for example, while starving cities like Limerick of development makes absolutely no sense, unless you're the local TD.

Are you trying to claim that you can't develop towns appropriately and also not starve cities of resources?

Statements like yours harm the chances of proper planning and development in counties like Mayo -- there's people up against it fighting against one-off houses and ribbon development, but your statement just pisses on that work and gives the 'we should be allow to build on our land' people ammo against decent local planning.

SpaceTime wrote: »

You need to build on that, not start moving the focus from Limerick to Ennis or Galway to some small town in Mayo - Knock Airport springs to mind...

Knock airport serves Sligo, Galway, Mayo, etc, not any one town or area...

SpaceTime wrote: »

The strategy in the Limerick/Shannon/Ennis area for example is utterly daft for example with Limerick City being played off against Ennis and Shannon.

Every time I see any kind of strategy within a few months, it's got local ministers trying to pull things into their favourite town and to hell with any kind of logic.

Is that a problem with the strategy in the Limerick/Shannon/Ennis or problem with local ministers interfering?

Btw I agree Shannon town was a poor idea to start with.

SpaceTime · 13-08-2015 2:54pm

I have no issue with developing towns in Mayo. What I've an issue with is where someone decides to stick a major piece of infrastructure that requires urban areas near by to make any sense in the middle of nowhere : Knock Airport springs to mind.

Bayberry · 13-08-2015 3:30pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

I have no issue with developing towns in Mayo. What I've an issue with is where someone decides to stick a major piece of infrastructure that requires urban areas near by to make any sense in the middle of nowhere : Knock Airport springs to mind.

As Ryanair has demonstrated, the only infrastructure that an airport needs is a decent road to a destination that people want to get to. The problem with Knock isn't the lack of local urban areas, it's that the destination that it allows access to hasn't proved to be as popular as other Marian shrines (Lourdes, Medjugorje, etc. Though the weather might also be a factor :-)

Godge · 20-08-2015 10:50am

SpaceTime wrote: »

The UK and France are particularly extreme examples though and models to absolutely avoid following!

France in particular is incredibly over centralised. You can hardly even get a train across country that doesn't go through Paris and until relatively recently there were only two area codes 1 for Paris or else 16 for "culchie France" just to drive home how Île de France (island of France = Paris area) dominated everything.

Germany is the other extreme. Berlin is big by not massive like Paris or London and there are a rake of Dublin and smaller sized cities making up the bulk of the population.

It's the same in NL and Beligium really lots of medium cities.

Those countries have much more balance and much better prices for accommodation generally compared to Britain and France.

Ireland moving towards having at least 3 medium cities would be a far nicer solution that allows for a lot more options.

What we need to avoid though is the scatter all investment to the four winds approach. We really do need to focus on a small number of cities.

The idea that we should be creating new cities is absolutely insane though. We've all the necessary infrastructure in Cork, Limerick and Galway and also Waterford.

Motorways to all of them.
Cork Airport serving Cork.
Shannon serving Limerick and Galway.
Reasonabley good rail links for the scale of the place.
Excellent universities - UCC in particular actually ranks internationally and NUI Galway and UL are major research focuses universities too and WIT has grown a lot over the years too.

Cork also has a huge medical significance with CUH being the single largest hospital in the state with a pretty huge catchment and is centre of excellence for a load of specialist medicine,

Galway also fills that role for the West.

Cork City Centre is back in boom mode at the moment too with about €150m of retail investment going ahead already in 2015.

Building new cities from scratch would be utterly daft! Use what we have and develop them!

Excellent post and I agree with all that you have said.

The National Spatial Strategy, a typical gombeen FF publication was the biggest mistake of the last 20 years promising hubs in nearly every county.

The trend worldwide is for increased urbanisation and Ireland is lagging behind. Dublin, Cork and Limerick should be the focus of development (Galway has access issues and Waterford has scale and third-level education issues).

jd · 20-08-2015 11:13am

Godge wrote: »

Dublin, Cork and Limerick should be the focus of development

More or less what Buchanan proposed 40+ years ago. And the same political sh!tstorm followed by a fudge would be the result if it was proposed again

al22 · 20-08-2015 11:20am

From where money will come for that?

cgcsb · 20-08-2015 12:24pm

Every village wants status. isn't Tullamore a 'gateway town' i.e. it means f all in practice because everywhere is one.

jd · 20-08-2015 1:01pm

al22 wrote: »

From where money will come for that?

Dublin

Schadenfreudia · 22-08-2015 9:30pm

Godge wrote: »

The trend worldwide is for increased urbanisation and Ireland is lagging behind. Dublin, Cork and Limerick should be the focus of development (Galway has access issues and Waterford has scale and third-level education issues).

I think a 5 city plan including Galway and Waterford would be better - it isn't spreading the development too widely.

Also think Derry/Letterkenny could be a sixth if it weren't for the unfortunate border.

But that's it.....

Future cities in Ireland

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