Suburb after suburb after suburb...

JupiterKid

I was on the bus on Friday from Blanchardstown to Dublin City centre and what struck me on my journey was just how ridiculously spread out the city is. Travelling through seemingly endless monotonous housing estates and suburbs built in the 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s, the 70s, 60s, 50s, 30s and bam into Victorian high density inner city Dublin.

Ring after ring of endless suburb. Very soul destroying. Now, don't get me wrong. There are quite a few appealing things about suburbs - open space, gardens, old villages etc but generally a lot of land wasted. Houses that all look the same. The newer suburbs are the worst offenders on that issue.

Most cities on the European continent with the same population as Dublin have less than half the built up area. Why can't Dublin have denser, more high rise housing? Must it all be endless commuter housing estates? Estates that look the same from Ongar to Tallaght to Dundrum to Kinnegad.:(

Do you think Dublin is too spread out? The provincial cities aren't as bad - as they're much smaller but Galway city is another urban area that is far more spread out than it should be. Only 78,000 population and some suburbs are 7 to 8km from the city centre which is tiny.

Yourself isit

Yeh. I agree. Dublin has little or no character, coastal areas aside, outside the canals.

KingBrian2

JupiterKid wrote: »

I was on the bus on Friday from Blanchardstown to a Dublin City centre and what struck me on my journey was just how ridiculously spread out the city is. Travelling through seemingly endless monotonous housing estates and suburbs built in the 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s, the 70s, 60s, 50s, 30s and bam into Victorian high density inner city Dublin.

Ring after ring of endless suburb. Very soul destroying. Now, don't get me wrong. There are quite a few appealing things about suburbs - open space, gardens, old villages etc but generally a lot of land wasted. Houses that all look the same. The newer suburbs are the worst offenders on that issue.

Most cities on the European continent with the same population as Dublin have less than half the built up area. Why can't Dublin have denser, more high rise housing? Must it all be endless commuter housing estates? Estates that look the same from Ongar to Tallaght to Dundrum to Kinnegad.:(

Do you think Dublin is too spread out? The provincial cities aren't as bad - as they're much smaller but Galway city is another urban area that is far more spread out than it should be. Only 78,000 population and some suburbs are 7 to 8km from the city centre which is tiny.

Not a fan of the urban sprawl myself although am hesitant on building up.

Ferrari3600

KingBrian2 wrote: »

Not a fan of the urban sprawl myself although am hesitant on building up.

" am hesitant on building up."

Why?

Peregrine

The vast majority of the docklands — brownfield sites right beside the city centre with potential to deliver tens of thousands of residential units and several million square feet of commercial property — is restricted by Dublin City Council to 6 or 7 stories. To preserve the non existant skyline. The docklands which are well outside the historic Georgian and Victorian core.

Don't expect anything to change while DCC and ABP are in charge.

Plus the refusal by successive governments to invest in rail transport. I'll probably be a pensioner by the time DART Underground is built and I'm in my 20s. Buses for everyone!

Ted111

Half the road space in Dublin given to exclusive use of buses.

Buses don't work in low rise urban sprawl.

Irish stupid alchos.

Graces7

Ferrari3600 wrote: »

" am hesitant on building up."

Why?

i lived in Sheffield in the era of the tower blocks, They turned into ghettos and older folk on higher floors were stranded WHEN the lifts were vandalised.

They also moved in the wind.

I seem to remember they demolished them..

Ferrari3600

Peregrine wrote: »

The vast majority of the docklands — brownfield sites right beside the city centre with potential to deliver tens of thousands of residential units and several million square feet of commercial property — is restricted by Dublin City Council to 6 or 7 stories. To preserve the non existant skyline. The docklands which are well outside the historic Georgian and Victorian core.

Don't expect anything to change while DCC and ABP are in charge.

Plus the refusal by successive governments to invest in rail transport. I'll probably be a pensioner by the time DART Underground is built and I'm in my 20s. Buses for everyone!

I know. Madness. I'm in my 40s. Why are you still here, Ireland won't change, or are you still young enough to think that you can change it? (no offense - I'm too old to do anything about it).

Graces7

Yourself isit wrote: »

Yeh. I agree. Dublin has little or no character, coastal areas aside, outside the canals.

it is the same with all cities. I was watching a youtube of the small town near where I am moving to and it could as you drove in be any small Irish town . No real identity, same shops.

Ferrari3600

Ted111 wrote: »

Half the road space in Dublin given to exclusive use of buses.

Buses don't work in low rise urban sprawl.

Irish stupid alchos.

Got rid of a perfectly decent tram network in the 1950s. And then named an apartment complex in the honour of the minister responsible in the 2000s.

Great little country.

Peasants, priests, gombeens, and pixies.

Ferrari3600

Graces7 wrote: »

it is the same with all cities. I was watching a youtube of the small town near where I am moving to and it could as you drove in be any small Irish town . No real identity, same shops.

No, sorry, wrong. Apples and oranges.

Try Melbourne, Sydney, Munich, Berlin even.

Peregrine

Graces7 wrote: »

i lived in Sheffield in the era of the tower blocks, They turned into ghettos and older folk on higher floors were stranded WHEN the lifts were vandalised.

They also moved in the wind.

I seem to remember they demolished them..

Nobody is proposing brutalist segregated high-rise social housing projects. This kind of scaremongering helps no one.

Graces7

Ferrari3600 wrote: »

No, sorry, wrong. Apples and oranges.

Try Melbourne, Sydney, Munich, Berlin even.

Opps//omitted the word IRISH before cities... apologies..

_Jamie_

Ferrari3600 wrote: »

No, sorry, wrong. Apples and oranges.

Try Melbourne, Sydney, Munich, Berlin even.

Sydney is a massively sprawling city. Much bigger population than Dublin of course but correspondingly large sprawl.

JupiterKid

Graces7 wrote: »

i lived in Sheffield in the era of the tower blocks, They turned into ghettos and older folk on higher floors were stranded WHEN the lifts were vandalised.

They also moved in the wind.

I seem to remember they demolished them..

When I talk about high density, high rise housing I'm not advocating a return to the failed housing policies of the 1960s. Im talking about recreating the older suburbs where housing was 3 or 4 storeys in height, terraced, closely packed together with good amenities nearby such as parks, schools, shops, public transport etc. Also, you can build good quality high rise apartments these days but despite plans to do so in the docklands and around Heuston station, nothing has happened in that regard.

Instead the city sprawls ever outward and tiny villages way outside the city are transformed into commuter towns overnight with no amenities or public transport. A recipe for disaster. Dublin needs to consolidate not spread further.

Graces7

JupiterKid wrote: »

When I talk about high density, high rise housing I'm not advocating a return to the failed housing policies of the 1960s. Im talking about recreating the older suburbs where housing was 3 or 4 storeys in height, terraced, closely packed together with good amenities nearby such as parks, schools, shops, public transport etc. Also, you can build good quality high rise apartments these days but despite plans to do so in the docklands and around Heuston station, nothing has happened in that regard.

Instead the city sprawls ever outward and tiny villages way outside the city are transformed into commuter towns overnight with no amenities or public transport. A recipe for disaster. Dublin needs to consolidate not spread further.

Very glad they have learned by mistakes. I lived a while in a three story complex with a green area and a playground in the centre. A mix of single bedroom and double.Worked well.

seamus

Of course we need to go high-rise. They should be allowed build up to ten stories right at the canal cordon, with that limit increasing as you get closer to the river.

There is nothing inherently appealing or unappealing about low-rise or high-rise, it's all about what you actually build.

Though I disagree about Dublin's suburbs being soulless and boring. There are certain pockets of stuff built during the Celtic tiger - mostly Lucan and Blanch, that are intensely dull and and endless, but most of the rest has enough variety and character to be interesting. Time is one of the things missing - a suburb filled with mature trees and mature communities has a better aesthetic than a brand new one. Give it another ten years and the celtic tiger areas will be far more grown up and appealing.

Johnboner

seamus wrote: »

Of course we need to go high-rise. They should be allowed build up to ten stories right at the canal cordon, with that limit increasing as you get closer to the river.

There is nothing inherently appealing or unappealing about low-rise or high-rise, it's all about what you actually build.

Though I disagree about Dublin's suburbs being soulless and boring. There are certain pockets of stuff built during the Celtic tiger - mostly Lucan and Blanch, that are intensely dull and and endless, but most of the rest has enough variety and character to be interesting. Time is one of the things missing - a suburb filled with mature trees and mature communities has a better aesthetic than a brand new one. Give it another ten years and the celtic tiger areas will be far more grown up and appealing.

10 storeys? Won't help much. There should be no limit, there should be 100 storey buildings if required the reason for not allowing to build tall buildings is absolutely ridiculous.

tomwaterford

Maybe people like having gardens if they've got children for them to run about in???

On the other hand you have the utter morons in Cork planning that allowed the Elysian tower over City Hall...

seamus

Johnboner wrote: »

10 storeys? Won't help much. There should be no limit, there should be 100 storey buildings if required the reason for not allowing to build tall buildings is absolutely ridiculous.

10 storeys at the canals, but no real limit at the centre.

My main concern with going high-rise would be people trying to put huge 50-storey monstrosities in the middle of Ballycoolin; maximum income for minimum land cost.

So planning would need to ensure that the highest rises are focussed in the centre. Once city centre densities have increased, then you can look at raising the height limit further out.

Shenshen

tomwaterford wrote: »

Maybe people like having gardens if they've got children for them to run about in???

People like a lot of things - warm weather and sunshine, brand new cars, not having to work - that doesn't mean that those are available or that anyone is obliged to make them available to everyone who wants them.

I think if you want to live in a city like Dublin, you'll have to make some allowances. And one of them might be that you can't have your own garden for your children and that your children will have to play on a shared playground with other children.

seamus

tomwaterford wrote: »

Maybe people like having gardens if they've got children for them to run about in???

I think you'd be surprised, and I say that as someone who prefers a garden.

I know a guy who moved from a house with gardens to a city centre apartment with his wife and 3 kids, all adolescents (the kids, his wife is an adult ).

Said the gardens were nothing but a headache - once they were older than 6, the kids never used them anymore, they went to their mates' houses or the park anyway. He was able to sell the house and outright buy a large 3-bed apartment literally seconds away from everything - work, parks, gyms, shops, pubs, etc.
The apartment is large enough that storage isn't really an issue - most of what you stick in a shed is garden equipment anyway - and he had a couple of large balconies for sitting out on the odd nice summer evening.

While I love having a garden, I expect that the Irish love affair with the garden comes from habit rather than real practicality.

Having gone house-hunting in 2015, one thing that struck was how ugly most people left their gardens - either paving over them completely or just having a square patch of grass with narrow paths around them. Most may as well have just had a balcony for all the good they were getting out of their garden.

CelticRambler

If boards.ie had been around twenty-five years ago, I would have posted this same observation! At the time, I thought it'd make sense to define a virtual "wall" around the city - pretty much where the M50 is - beyond which there would be no new development, and to allow/encourage the creative re-development of the many derelict brownfield sites within the city.

That didn't happen, but most of the brownfield sites got re-developped anyway.

I'm in favour of high-rise, but don't understand this notion of "preserving the skyline" and trying to find a way of having high-rise in the city centre. It's the same here on the continent, with rules about how high/how close you can be to historic buildings, and not obstructing the view from 100km away :rolleyes: And then they offer "amazing panoramic views" from the bell tower of the cathedral/castle/whatever when the only thing you can see is a mass of boring rooftiles on the surrounding low-rise buildings, and what you really want to see is the cathedral rising out of that landscape.

But back to the virtual wall: most towns in France have something similar and what's actually happened is the historic centres have died anyway, developers have built highish-rise flats as the edge of the urban area (because they're not allowed build them in the centres) and all the commercial development is sprawled outside that. The approach to just about any decent-sized town in France now is a sprawling, boring, homogenous mess of low-rise car-showrooms, swimming-pool showrooms, Decathlon and Gémo stores, McDo, KFC & Quickburger eateries, cheap hotels and hypermarkets.

Dravokivich

Shenshen wrote: »

People like a lot of things - warm weather and sunshine, brand new cars, not having to work - that doesn't mean that those are available or that anyone is obliged to make them available to everyone who wants them.

I think if you want to live in a city like Dublin, you'll have to make some allowances. And one of them might be that you can't have your own garden for your children and that your children will have to play on a shared playground with other children.

These sprawling "Suburbs" where villages in their own right. And 30 years ago were intended to be feeder towns into the City. Now the City limits almost reach out to the M50. So that just got pushed out to Kildare and Meath.

Anyone in those suburbs had no intention on living in the City.

murpho999

I don't get the complaint here, every city I have been in has urban sprawl and suburbs. Dublin is no different and no where near as spread as other cities. Look at the size of London or Paris in comparison.

tomwaterford

Shenshen wrote: »

People like a lot of things - warm weather and sunshine, brand new cars, not having to work - that doesn't mean that those are available or that anyone is obliged to make them available to everyone who wants them.

I think if you want to live in a city like Dublin, you'll have to make some allowances. And one of them might be that you can't have your own garden for your children and that your children will have to play on a shared playground with other children.

Don't be getting ahead of yaselfs....Dublin is not that big of a city??


Ireland is not even closely to densely populated....as far as I can see the government isn't great at providing facilities (see the high rise flats they developed)
And to think that they will suddenly overnight cop on and develop these parks and playgrounds is surly naive at best??

Chinasea

We already have several high-rise apartments blocks privately owned that haven't turned into free for all drug infested no go areas. Differences being they are properly managed and tenant agreements for the most adhered to and enforced.

Totally agree also that planting trees and adequate managed and tendered communal green areas are a must. There is a serious lack of tree planting in urban areas, our cities and indeed our privately owned/social housing sought after "gardens". Take a walk around Crumlin as an example. Not so much as a daffodil. Grim.

Yourself isit

murpho999 wrote: »

I donb't get the complaint here, every city I have been in has urban sprawl and suburbs. Dublin is no different and no where near as spread as other cities. Look at the size of London or Paris in comparison.

Eh. Paris is much smaller in footprint relative to population.

Yourself isit

tomwaterford wrote: »

Don't be getting ahead of yaselfs....Dublin is not that big of a city??


Ireland is not even closely to densely populated....as far as I can see the government isn't great at providing facilities (see the high rise flats they developed)
And to think that they will suddenly overnight cop on and develop these parks and playgrounds is surly naive at best??

Ireland (Dublin really) not being densely populated but non-densely populated is the issue.

Matt_Trakker

Isn't the reason Dublin doesn't have many high buildings because the bedrock is weak?
I could swear I read that somewhere.

Basically the rock under Dublin isn't strong enough to allow the building of really tall buildings on top of it.

Which is a good thing in my opinion, means Dublin doen'st look the same as anywhere else.
All the central European cities look the same, city square, old inner city, nice buildings and obligatory former-Jewish quarter and then nasty legoland blocks as far as the eye can see