Urban Planning - retrofitting Suburbia

akkadian

A wonderful example of how it could be:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_suburbia.html

It's very applicable to Ireland, or it certainly may well be in the near future!
I don't think we even make enough use of all the new buildings in the Docklands.

expectationlost

have we got dead malls? we have shopping centres that are very dilapidated (purposefully) and its seems easier to make news ones on the outskirts, but are they dead yet, or just in need of redevelopment? we don't have dead big box stores yet?

i do have concern about the "public spaces" that developers generously grant to the city and then have private security guards ordering people about. and town halls and and libraries you can only reach by going through shopping centres.

Liam Byrne

akkadian wrote: »

It's very applicable to Ireland, or it certainly may well be in the near future!
I don't think we even make enough use of all the new buildings in the Docklands.

Which docklands would those be, I wonder ?

henryporter

I think the philosophy is about how to deal with the problems that exist in suburbia in any country - a lot of misguided planning and profit focused development has created a substantial poverty in quality of life here and the attention needs to switch to how we can regenerate our poorly designed communities.

astrofool

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Which docklands would those be, I wonder ?

The international port of Killinaskully I'd imagine.....

akkadian

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Which docklands would those be, I wonder ?

It goes without saying that other cities such as Limerick have rundown/unused commercial real estate that should be retrofitted or turned into green space or parks.

Liam Byrne

akkadian wrote: »

It goes without saying that other cities such as Limerick have rundown/unused commercial real estate that should be retrofitted or turned into green space or parks.

There was no city mentioned in the first post.

BehindTheScenes

You can discuss this now but the gov. won't spend a penny on it. Sure they are cutting wages, facillities and services. Besides the Dublin docks don't look to bad, if that is in fact where is being referenced.

If you think the docks are run down now wait until the gov. has some money to spend in 15 years time and decides it will be cheaper to rezone and let the developers back in.

Some will say this won't happen again but there were those who thought that we wouldn't go bust twice in 25 years.

Sad state of affairs.:mad:

PeterIanStaker

akkadian wrote: »

A wonderful example of how it could be:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_suburbia.html

It's very applicable to Ireland, or it certainly may well be in the near future!
I don't think we even make enough use of all the new buildings in the Docklands.

This is a cogent, detailed and thought out idea.


So there's not a hope in hell the govt wil go for it.

Chuchoter

As the above poster said, when pigs fly we'll get this.

However it would be amazing for the sprawling housing estates you get around the edges of the city to turn them into communities with facilities as opposed to masses of faceless houses with little to no public transport and in walking distance of nowhere. I think our equivalent of parking lots is giant green spaces but theres nothing done with them so you just get loitering.

expectationlost

well we havn't reconverted any malls i know of, but we have a spurt of 'in fill building', in the suburbs which usually attracts controversy, developers pitch a collossal 6 story block and then residents complain and it either gets at 5ish story redesign and gets built or it missed the celtic tiger boat, definitly something significant to the old age profile of some dublin surburbs

akkadian

crayolastereo wrote: »

As the above poster said, when pigs fly we'll get this.

However it would be amazing for the sprawling housing estates you get around the edges of the city to turn them into communities with facilities as opposed to masses of faceless houses with little to no public transport and in walking distance of nowhere. I think our equivalent of parking lots is giant green spaces but theres nothing done with them so you just get loitering.

This should be NAMA's job! this is what they're supposed to be doing..
Studios and offices could be retrofitted out of disused apartment blocks and rented at a competitive (maybe very competitive is needed given the lack of growth right now) price for businesses.

thebman

akkadian wrote: »

This should be NAMA's job! this is what they're supposed to be doing..
Studios and offices could be retrofitted out of disused apartment blocks and rented at a competitive (maybe very competitive is needed given the lack of growth right now) price for businesses.

Well Nama should be managing its loan book and looking at developers and saying why are you finishing a half built estate you won't be able to sell?

Why not provide community facilities and charge for access? At least that way, they might make some money back.

akkadian

thebman wrote: »

Well Nama should be managing its loan book and looking at developers and saying why are you finishing a half built estate you won't be able to sell?

Why not provide community facilities and charge for access? At least that way, they might make some money back.

yeas, it should be handled professionally.

HavingCrack

Essentially Irish cities have followed the North American model of urbanisation as opposed to the European one. The former entails massive sprawl as bets seen in Los Angeles and is dependent of cars for its transport while the latter prefers higher density apartment block living. The American model of LA acutally does work relatively well as it has the roads (8 lane highways etc) to cope with it. But in Ireland we don;t have the roads to use this type of model which has led to the horrible sprawl best examplified by west Dublins housing estates. I can't really see an easy solution to it.

thebman

HavingCrack wrote: »

Essentially Irish cities have followed the North American model of urbanisation as opposed to the European one. The former entails massive sprawl as bets seen in Los Angeles and is dependent of cars for its transport while the latter prefers higher density apartment block living. The American model of LA acutally does work relatively well as it has the roads (8 lane highways etc) to cope with it. But in Ireland we don;t have the roads to use this type of model which has led to the horrible sprawl best examplified by west Dublins housing estates. I can't really see an easy solution to it.

Agree completely and was exactly what I thought when I was in LA is this is just like Dublin, an endless sprawl.

I also was amazed at their highway system.

The only way to solve the problem in Ireland is to use another European solution to people needing to get places, public transport. Our problem is Irish people don't like to walk so at the moment we have Dublin Bus with a stop every 100M not able to get anywhere in a reasonable time on roads clogged with traffic.

We need to remove the cars, get the public transport working for the people and convince people that is worth walking the 5 minutes to the stop to avoid looking for a parking spot for 30 minutes when you arrive at your destination.

Some people will never give up their cars and that is fair enough IMO but they should be cleaner fueled cars for those people. Once public transport isn't a chore to use, people will use it.

If you keep it as it is (and I haven't even begun to mention the other problems Dublin Bus/Irish Rail/others have), nobody will every use no matter how cheap it is compared to the alternatives because you feel like you were treated like an animal when you get out the far side.

expectationlost

you could say we did do part of what the vid suggested rebuild on city centre brown field sites with the apartments and office in docklands and east wall, but we also built masses of houses in north dublin fringe,so we did both, why... cos we overheated our economy...

Cool Mo D

L.A. is actually not a typical American sprawl. It started out that way, but now is a quite dense urban area, but without any good public transport infrastructure. This means that it's huge freeways are constantly clogged, as the city is too dense for even massive 16 lane roads to be adequate to move people. L.A. has a population density about the same as New York, a very public transport oriented city.
A real American sprawling city is nearly always found in the American South. Take Houston as a typical example - with a quarter of the density.

These are densities including suburbs outside the city limits.
New York metro area, pop 19,069,796 , density 1,096/km²
Los Angeles metro area, pop. 15,250,000, density: 1024.7/km²
Houston metro area, pop. 5,867,489, density: 243.4/km2

as comparison...

County Dublin, pop 1,186,821, density: 1288/km2

As it happens, Irish cities are a LOT more like other European cities than American sprawls. As an example a typical Houston suburban house would be built on 1/4 acre. A generous Irish house would be one fifth the size.

The problem with Dublin is not that the type of house is a sprawl, it is a lack of planning. Estates were allowed to be built willy-nilly everywhere, throughout Leinster to serve people working in Dublin. There was no infrastructure in place. Even if the same types of suburban estates were built (I'm not including the one-off mock Tudor monstrosities in that), if they were properly planned and situated correctly, with suitable infrastructure, the sprawl would not have been an issue. Density would help, but building in the right place is what matters.

As another example - take a look at this Dutch suburb, near Amsterdam. The Netherlands are always noted as the home of strict, tight planning due to their limited land but look - their suburbs are not so different to our semi-ds.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Dublin,+County+Fingal,+Ireland&ll=52.304074,5.045927&spn=0,0.005085&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=52.304072,5.045926&panoid=z6hV31H_ppxu3ULmhAetjg&cbp=12,138.78,,0,16.3