Street View rural Ireland vs. Street View rural Wales: the effects of one-off housing

There is indeed the whole argument of an increased financial and environmental burden placed on society by so much one-off housing. But aside from this what about the simple aesthetic damage? Just how the appearance of the rural landscape has been so altered.

I think this is important as it's possibly something of an alien concept, or at least alternate view, to the Irish mindset. The Irish definition of what constitutes 'countryside' seems to be different from that of the Welsh, Scottish, English, Germans, French, etc. etc.

In these societies and most others I imagine that 'countryside' is very much a visual phenomenon. An area has to look a certain way to qualify as rural: little manmade development, untouched nature; in temperate latitudes, things like fields, rivers, forest; an area set aside from the onward technological march of man's control.

By contrast, the Irish definition of countryside seems to be a political and human construct. It's a place and a philosophy, if you like: Mayo and the county jersey, a political power base, etc. As we've seen in recent decades, an area can be covered in man-made development and still be classed as rural in Ireland. To the Irish mindset, it seems that building ever more one-offs over a valley doesn't diminish its classification as countryside in the slightest.

I think in Wales urban sprawl, ribbon development and one-off housing would be deemed to diminish an area of countryside's very ruralness. But in Ireland, as the countryside is more a place of identity and a philosophy of life in man's mind, man-made physical change doesn't alter it. Paradoxically, the more house building in the countryside the better - it's evidence of more people adopting the rural philosophy/identity.

Hence the great contrast between Irish one-offer's fervent desire for more and more development in the countryside (it's adding members to their caucus, if you like) and the horror that a Welsh farmer would probably feel such an onslaught would represent.

For the Irish, what the place looks like doesn't seem to really come into it.

The above is a bit of a waffle but maybe it could be condensed somewhat: Irish countryside = an identity/philosophy; European countryside = a visual/ physical phenomenon.

The appearance of the countryside does matter... elsewhere!

Mrmoe wrote:

...to have a set goal of no building is grossly unfair IMO.

Surely, given you favour one-off house building, a restriction in the rate of planning permissions would be more unfair than a complete halt. If you believe something to be inherently good then placing a limit on the supply of it can only be unjust. Why do some get to live the one-off dream and others have to wait, possibly for a long time? But then maybe instead of no building you believe in a free for all?

The blanket ban advocated by some that oppose one-offs would, in truth, be the fair option. We'd all be equally restricted.

True, some people could afford to buy out existing one-offs, and others couldn't, but as with scrabbling over antiques containing ivory from another era, such arguments over fairness would become moot if we examined the core of the issue: why a one-off should be desired in the first place? But I want to focus on the whole restrictions thing.

Some one-offers have conceded to some scaling back, but the problem I have with a reduction in the supply of one-offs is that it is a delayed fudge that will still produce the same end result. For those of us that see the countryside as a visual/physical place free from all but the slightest amount of man-made development, building say 5000 one-offs a year instead of 10,000 still gets us to a point in the not too distant future where the very nature of the countryside is diminished, if not severely eroded.

Rome wasn't built in a day, but it was eventually. And so will the ruralopolis that the one-offers are hewing for us along every byway, regardless of whether they are slowed down.

I think that talk of some restrictions on the part of a number of one-off house proponents is more a tactic rather than anything else. Given the ever greater and more noticeable saturation in the countryside, such a move would salve consciences and kick the issue into touch for a bit. What a limit in supply won't do is examine the real issues: if you believe that anyone that wishes to live in a one-off has the right to do so then the process continues indefinitely. And then there’s the ‘why’ of such a view.

A limit on supply is not the same as a limit.

Mrmoe wrote:

...The countryside was never an untouched beauty that many people have a romantic idea of in their minds.

What you've said there highlights the very different thinking of one-off proponents from those of us that wish to preserve countryside.

Beauty might be overstating it, appealing is probably closer to the mark, but a desire for anything will render it attractive. And the untouched nature of the countryside is exactly what those like myself wish to preserve. For us countryside is un-urban, it is undeveloped, it is not suburban. This is not a romantic fancy; it's a definition accepted the world over. But it's interesting that you should use the word because, like a bit of Freudian projection, I suspect a romantic view lies behind much of the one-off outlook.

You see, people like me are dealing in the accepted observations and terms of cold, hard geography. A town is this, a suburb is that, a rural area is something else, and so on. But Ireland's peculiar champions of ‘dispersed living’ are not. For them this isn't about the visual/physical nature of the countryside; in their philosophy 'countryside' primarily means lifestyle/identity. I suspect an image of a unique kind of countryside does encroach somewhat upon this view but it plays second fiddle to what is at heart, I believe, a political outlook. I think issues of identity are usually inseparable from the political.

Romance and visceral emotions often turn scientific logic and reason on its head when it comes to identity. Everything becomes subjective.

A Mullingar solicitor that shops and socialises, as well as works, in the town while building himself a house in an outlying field is seen, by us – and I’m sure anyone from abroad who cares to notice – for what he is. To the romantics of one-off living, he has become a countryman, left the urban behind, and... (and this is where I think politics creeps in) is that bit more of an Irishman.

Romantic myths lie behind one side of this argument and they are the myths of those that water grass with concrete.