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Irish Times calls for "10 new Ballymuns"

Kermit.de.frog

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/housing-crisis-ireland-needs-five-to-10-new-ballymuns-as-soon-as-possible-1.2321041

??? Any article that mentions Ballymun and the need for social housing in a positive narrative seems a little strange.

There is barely a mention of the hole that Ballymun became.

I wonder would the author of the article and the Irish Times be equally enthusiastic if such proposals were made in Dublin 4? A few Ballymun type tower blocks down there would surely meet with middle class liberal approval?

Oh I forgot they are comfortable in the knowledge that the world can't change there because there is not the space to build and land is too expensive.

Seems a strange reference for a positive article on social housing.

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KomradeBishop

riclad wrote: »

this is simply wrong ,
the new ballymun is built to a very high standard ,
free parking for every tenant ,
trees planted on every street .
New buildings contain the health centre council offices and a new garda
station and an art centre with a theatre .
The residents were consulted as to the layout design of the buildings .
The apartments are better than most private apartments ,
larger, built to a very high standard .
They mean we need a large program of social housing ,
we cant rely on private companys to build low cost housing .
The old blocks were badly designed , but they were built in the 60s .
IT would have cost millions to bring them up to modern standards .
The old towers have been demolished ,
it would have been more accurate to say we need 20k plus social housing
units .
we have a housing crisis .
The old ballymun does not exist ,
calling it a hole is just sheer snobbery .
OR maybe the last time you were there was years ago ,
before the new building started .

i understand high rise large 7 storey block building is out of fashion ,
its funny ,in new york they build a 10 story building and every unit is sold to private investors.
I think its down to the design and standard you build to .

Perhaps, ya - I don't know a lot about the rebuild there, or what it's like now compared to before; I still like the idea of housing co-operatives and proper rental management companies though, as the former can potentially greatly help reduce property booms and excessive prices/rents (if done on a large scale), and the latter can help reform the abysmal rental market.

More social housing is needed in addition to this as well though (and co-operatives can be used for this purpose too, as well as for all-private dwellings).

riclad

ITS 10 times better now than it was in in 2007 .
i,m in favor of housing co ops ,charitys like cluid and theres
also a charity where people can build there own houses on sites provided by the council ,supervised by professional builders ,
ie the ordinary people do 95 per cent of the work .
You sign up to do x amount of hours after that you get a house ,
the rent you pay is based on your income .
i presume its limited to people on a low income .
i don,t think ballymun was a failure in that it provided housing for 1000,s of people on low incomes even before the blocks were knocked own.
Many people lived in ballymun and moved out when they could afford to buy a house .
Theres also new housing there for students .

KomradeBishop

psicic wrote: »

But a lot of political infighting (Dublin City Corporation wasn't happy with how, why and where it was built) meant that the provision of important local services we're either delayed or abandoned. I have vague recollections of DCC refusing street lights for years and they were supposed to build and manage local amenities, like community centres, shopping centres and the like, but only made a half-hearted effort after it was all built. They also refused to do the basic maintenance they were supposed to do, creating long waiting lists for even the most basic repairs. People suffered while different levels of government argued.

Wow, really? What was the in-fighting over? (i.e. why did they have such a problem with Ballymun, to the point of crippling local services)

I've always had the impression that local services on the North side, particularly around the North-West Ballymun/Finglas area, have been abysmal - while plenty of resources get allocated to the South side (though again, less to some parts of the South-West); has made me wonder if there is a level of corruption and/or deliberate snobbery, with regards to allocation of public resources.

I don't like to speak bad of an area either, but you can tell today that the general area (not just Ballymun/Finglas, parts of the whole surrounding area) is incredibly poorly serviced relative to the rest of Dublin (looking like some bits of it haven't seen much work in 3+ decades), and the people living there suffer as a result.

So, given all of that, I'm very curious about the political infighting, what it's about, and how that works?

KlausFlouride

awec wrote: »

Infrastructure (roads, water, sewers etc) is not there to allow for urban sprawl. It increases traffic congestion because it increases the reliability on cars for commuting because transport infrastructure is not there to support it.

They should be building 30/40/50 story high apartment buildings in the city so that people who want to or need to live in the city can, instead of living miles outside the city and having to commute in.

There just isn't room for a plethora of 3 and 4 bed houses with gardens or else we'll eventually see parts of Dublin City in Kildare and Wicklow!

Yes, but build and plan for the infrastructure in conjunction with housing needs. "We don't have the infrastructure so we can't build the houses" makes no sense to me as an argument, & I'm not having a go, I just don't understand why we cannot ever as a country plan anything.

With enough density, you can have park and ride facilities, maybe an underground system. Commuting from Kildare and Wicklow is doable, compared to Tiger era commutes. And move civil service jobs out from the city, but do it in a planned way so that you would have a sufficiently large
centre (200-300k population)

Maybe 30-50 apartment blocks have their place, but they haven't worked in Ireland (yet), and the original article was saying these would be "affordable", which is a nice way of saying let's stack all these ****ing poor people into places we wouldn't live ourselves.

hatrickpatrick

People can correct me if I'm wrong here, but after doing a lot of research I've come to the conclusion that the primary reason developments such as Ballymun, O'Devaney, St Michael's etc were such unmitigated disasters wasn't because they were high rise or high density, but because they were built (at the time, when the city was a lot smaller) in the middle of nowhere and had no local conveniences, facilities, transport or employment prospects.

I mean there are blocks of council flats all over the city itself (a bunch of ones I enjoy walking past on Cuffe St, due to the cool outdoor "stairwell round towers" they have) and those didn't turn into the hotbeds of misery and deprivation which many others did. The ones which were true disasters were the ones which were tucked away in desolate parts of the city's outskirts, where the inhabitants had nothing to do, nowhere to do their basic living such as shopping, doctors' visits, restaurants etc.

Read anything about Ballymun and the most commented upon failure is the fact that people loved them when they were first moved from the tenements to the flats, and it was only when they realised "f*ck, we're miles from the city, we have no transport, no schools for our kids and we need to buy food etc somewhere" that it kind of fell apart. The drugs, crime etc all followed this initial problem, and easily took hold of communities which had nothing else going for them.

This an accurate portrayal? If so, then there's nothing wrong with future tower block style projects as long as they include an actual proper village or are close to the city, instead of massive residential complexes with absolutely no commercial developments within walking distance.

Smidge

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

One big tower would be easier to police

This is the biggest problem with building anything like this.

Before even a block has been layed, the people who will be living in it are judged and are already deemed scum.

riclad

When ballymun was built there was a lack of shops,
i, think after a few years school,s and the shopping centre was built.
There were local small shops all over the place too .
it had a tesco or dunne store s in the shopping centre .
dublin is still short of schools in some area,s .
There were 100,s of ordinary houses built too .
Calling it a disaster is wrong.
There,s drugs avaidable in every town and city in ireland .
if that,s what you want .
I think a lot of the comments here are by people who never lived there ,
or read a few articles in the papers 5 years ago .
They have no relevance to the current situation there
WE have no transport , wtf ?
theres always been a good bus service ,
not everyone has to go to the city centre every day .

harry Bailey esq

awec wrote: »

There are no real high rise buildings in Dublin, Docklands included. I don't think you're allowed to build anything over 60m with current planning laws.

In fairness,60 metres is a 17-20 story building.By Irish standards thats high rise,especially if you take into account that the towers in Ballymun where 14 stories,and were approximately 55 metres high.Thats just the towers though,which only accounted for a small percentage of the total amount of flats,most of the flats in ballymun were/are a mere 25-30 metres high,and many would consider even that to be high rise.The social problems in Ballymun were not caused by people 'living in the sky' per se,although it didn't help.The main reason in my opinion was dumping a large volume of people into a sparcely populated,rural area virtually overnight,and not having the services in place to deal with the influx.By all accounts it was a social experiment that went tits up.The stupid thing is,instead of learning from it,the same thing happened again in the late 90s and early 00s albeit without the high rise.Places like lusk,enfield,portarlington and balbriggan would be good examples.

Conall Cernach

One and two bed high rise apartments designed for young professionals would free up a fair few 3 bed semis for families.

Dyr

riclad wrote: »

Ballymun has been totally rebuilt with modern hi spec apartments ,
and houses .
They knocked down the high rise blocks .
All new buildings built with high insulation and sound insulation ,
better than 90 per cent of apartments built in the boom .
.

lollerpops

MadsL

People who handwring over Dublin having no highrise remind me of someone peering over at the next urinal. Just because other countries have it bigger doesn't mean that Ireland is inadequate, cities that have managed to keep a low skyline are in fact lucky to have escaped the architectural expression of penis envy.

There are plenty of ways to increase density without highrise, Dublin is like a swiss cheese - full of brown field sites that could contribute infill mixed use social housing.

[Deleted User]

harry Bailey esq wrote: »

The main reason in my opinion was dumping a large volume of people into a sparcely populated,rural area virtually overnight,and not having the services in place to deal with the influx.

That's often given as a reason, but we can't just ignore that these people had previously lived in tenements, and probably just packed up their problems in boxes and brought them with them from the slums. Where previously you had these individuals with their problems dispersed around Dublin city centre, and many of them known personally to good, community police, suddenly they were all concentrated on one huge estate.

So now you've dumped all these people with dysfunctional lives all together, where the police no longer know people by their name and family, and soon after, drugs like heroin start to make their way into the country, giving dealers a huge, accessible market. It must have been a confluence of disasters, a perfect storm.

Dyr

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

That's often given as a reason, but we can't just ignore that these people had previously lived in tenements, and probably just packed up their problems in boxes and brought them with them from the slums. Where previously you had these individuals with their problems dispersed around Dublin city centre, and many of them known personally to good, community police, suddenly they were all concentrated on one huge estate..

Like I was saying

Bambi wrote: »

The phenomenon of the people-who know-whats-best-for-the-great-unwashed is what's unique in Ireland and England

Jimoslimos

MadsL wrote: »

People who handwring over Dublin having no highrise remind me of someone peering over at the next urinal. Just because other countries have it bigger doesn't mean that Ireland is inadequate, cities that have managed to keep a low skyline are in fact lucky to have escaped the architectural expression of penis envy.

There are plenty of ways to increase density without highrise, Dublin is like a swiss cheese - full of brown field sites that could contribute infill mixed use social housing.

You are completely missing the point. We simply don't have the transport infrastructure to build on brownfield sites - what happens then is everyone needs cars (and car parks) and the roads get congested, which is fine if you live in the US, with large tracts of land to expand into.

High rise should aim to provide the city with easy access to businesses and people, meaning resources can be concentrated into a smaller area, instead of trying to provide everybody with a semi-d, garden and two car parking spaces.

Also while I'm all for preserving aspects of Dublin Georgian architecture people need to realise that cities change, evolve and grow. Managing that can be difficult but the default answer can't be "this is how it looked in 1800 and it shall for ever more"

Dyr

MadsL wrote: »

People who handwring over Dublin having no highrise remind me of someone peering over at the next urinal. Just because other countries have it bigger doesn't mean that Ireland is inadequate, cities that have managed to keep a low skyline are in fact lucky to have escaped the architectural expression of penis envy.

This is the driving force for much of what happens in Ireland, in trying to impress the big boys by showing we can keep up with them, we usually copy what they do right around the time big boys realize that it was a massive mistake

As for what went wrong in ballymun originally i could give chapter and verse on it but it's not really relevant to fixing the current housing crisis.

I'm confident we'll just repeat the same mistakes again and then add a few new ones for good measure, all wrapped up in the "half a job for twice the price" (to quote our finest politician) gombeenism that permeates any attempt to deliver major infrastructure in Ireland

harry Bailey esq

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

That's often given as a reason, but we can't just ignore that these people had previously lived in tenements, and probably just packed up their problems in boxes and brought them with them from the slums.

suddenly they were all concentrated on one huge estate.

So now you've dumped all these people with dysfunctional lives all together

Well thats what I was getting at.The services needed to be already in place, but that's not what happened.I kinda disagree with the first part I quoted there though,whilst many ballymunners came from town,many chose to move to Ballymun from older,more established corpo estates in places like Finglas,Cabra and Crumlin.These places had gardens,front and back,and indoor plumbing.Whatever people feel about those areas now is their own business,but back then,slums they certainly were not.Those people chose to embrace high rise living,it was the string pullers who f#@*d up for the most part.

crockholm

We are assuming that this is a problem that we can somehow fix,add a certain amount of social housing tennants to a quart of finely built homes and then multiply it by x amount of stories and that is the recipe for success.
I have lived in a few highrises on the Continent,one we moved from because the area was going downhill fast.Another was very well run,but expensive enough-it used to average out at 1 in 6 of the appts. per floor was paid for by the city,and if the tennents were any way anti-social they were moved on.
I doubt it would work in Ireland as many people have a negative image of living in a Highrise,also the 1/6 would probably be closer to 5/6 and the anti social families would be left there.

So after that stream of conciousness,I reckon that we should build them and build them high,build them so there is density,density can lead to infrastructure,both transport and social.
No country has avoided Ghetto's/no go areas, so lets quit thinking that we can avoid it and lets just,at best,be able to manage it.

psicic

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Wow, really? What was the in-fighting over? (i.e. why did they have such a problem with Ballymun, to the point of crippling local services)

I've always had the impression that local services on the North side, particularly around the North-West Ballymun/Finglas area, have been abysmal - while plenty of resources get allocated to the South side (though again, less to some parts of the South-West); has made me wonder if there is a level of corruption and/or deliberate snobbery, with regards to allocation of public resources.

I don't like to speak bad of an area either, but you can tell today that the general area (not just Ballymun/Finglas, parts of the whole surrounding area) is incredibly poorly serviced relative to the rest of Dublin (looking like some bits of it haven't seen much work in 3+ decades), and the people living there suffer as a result.

So, given all of that, I'm very curious about the political infighting, what it's about, and how that works?

I don't have a huge overview of all the players (so anyone more in the know can correct me), but my understanding is you had:
1. A minister determined to make their mark
2. A relatively new state agency full of architects and planners (Foras Forbartha, I think... National Building Agency) who were also determined to leave a mark designed the project with minimal input from others
3. Department of Local Government who were keen on the idea, but not hugely keen on the expert advice.
4. Dublin County Council who refused to have anything to do with the project because they weren't in charge and they felt they were being exported a 'problem'. Originally they were onboard, but took offence at something (I think their views weren't taken onboard during planning, then they were told they wouldn't be getting the funding/staff they felt they needed)
5. Dublin Corporation which eventually did agree to assume responsibility, but through gritted teeth as it didn't want to spend it's cash reserves on delivering on the project either. When they agreed to take over, they (from their view) never agreed to the 'extras' - i.e. the social planning elements. Hence the low priority and delays to building any of the promised amenities others mentioned (there were supposed to be shops, a pool, church and other amenities in place BEFORE the first people moved in to the towerblocks.
6. Various other Departments and bodies that committed at the planning phase to provide part funding for various amenities , but either pulled out due to the lapse of time, change in personnel or a perceived lack of interest from the Corporation. (for instance, and my recollection is fuzzy on this, but I think Education & Science withheld funding for building the schools in the area because of confusion between the Building Agency the County Council and the Corporation. Each had a separate reason for wanting to not be the one signing off on the school even though funding was available)

That's a lot of different players with a lot of different viewpoints, but it's about all I can remember. There were supposed to be entertainment venues, business space and leisure facilities built, but everyone seemed to baulk at the idea that they could end up funding these long term if private tenants couldn't be found.

Eugene Norman

Shenshen wrote: »

While I would cautiously agree that, yes, the solution to the housing crisis is not to extend Dublin housing estates all the way to Drogheda and beyond, I think we need to first examine why it was that Ballymun did turn into such a hole (as another poster put it) in the first place.

Many other countries have tackled housing problems by building apartments and flats rather sucessfully. So what are they doing right that the UK and Ireland seem to be doing wrong? Why does it work there any not here?
Until that question has been addressed, I'd be very cautious about wasting money building new highrises that might have to get torn down again a few years from now.

People make ghettoes. By and large.

OneArt

riclad wrote: »

Ballymun has been totally rebuilt with modern hi spec apartments ,
and houses .
They knocked down the high rise blocks .
All new buildings built with high insulation and sound insulation

Are you only referring to the social housing or all new buildings in Ballymun?

Rented two apartments there (not at the same time though...), one across from the Gateway Student Village and the other near the Days Hotel. Both certainly looked clean and modern but insulation and sound proofing were nonexistent. Typical shoddy Celtic Tiger work.

Then again, I could've been incredibly unlucky!

[Deleted User]

I'm looking forward to the Irish Times article in favour of nuclear power 'Ireland needs two or three Chernobyls'

steddyeddy

Well high rise isn't a bad thing IMHO. Creating ghettos is a bad thing.

defrule

It's one of the things I miss from Hong Kong, the sheer efficiency. It feels like development in Dublin simply said, we're not going to bother with efficiency because we have the land. Hong Kong doesn't have the land and if you go there you will appreciate how they maximise use of every square inch.

It really makes life much easier when public transport expansive and efficient.

I recommend people watch Begin Japanology: Apartments & Condomiums. High rises can be built extremely well, you just need to do it right.

KomradeBishop

Eugene Norman wrote: »

People make ghettoes. By and large.

People plus lack of future prospects mostly - that's one reason why unemployment is such a huge blight on society, and why there should be a policy of having full employment permanently (with reduced standard of living in economic hard times, shared among the whole of society, to help fund the uptick in the public jobs program).

A policy of permanent full employment = everyone has the opportunity to work their way forward in life; could put people to work building the infrastructure projects these areas need, for starters, or even just helping to tidy up the local community and provide other necessary amenities.

gandalf

BLOCK WAR !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qolk_rDA9xU

wakka12

I hope these will be built in the many MASSIVE empty/derelict plots scattered around dublin CITY CENTRE and not a hundred miles away creating eerie desolate commuter towns and turning dublin into an even larger sprawling dump than it already is

Herpes Cineplex

smash wrote: »

it doesn't mean all high rise accommodation will turn an area into a hole.

But in Dublin/Ireland they most certainly will.

crockholm

wakka12 wrote: »

I hope these will be built in the many MASSIVE empty/derelict plots scattered around dublin CITY CENTRE and not a hundred miles away creating eerie desolate commuter towns and turning dublin into an even larger sprawling dump than it already is

Price of land in dublin will ensure that any such project will be far from the city centre.However,if there is a high enough density and the inhabitants actually pay the commute fare,there would be the possibility of a decent service going into the city.

riclad

There,s 4-5 storey apartments near the point depot ,they seem well built as far as i can see .
does the government have the money or the desire to build
20-30 thousand units for social housing .
theres a small amount of apartments built for students ,
maybe they were built to a lower standard .
I think you can build a high standard 5 storey building ,
if its built and maintained to a high spec people will live there .
I know a woman lives in a 4 storey block, on the top floor ,
she is very happy to live there .
building is a high spec building run by cluid, a housing charity .
Theres about 4 units on each floor .
free parking for each tenant .

ringadingding

If they used swords as a base for social housing, and put a frequent & affordable train and bus service to swords it would work.

Swords has a decent community feel to it, has a lot of room for expansion.
Land is cheap, close to the m50 etc.

I would happily live in swords in social housing if it was better connected to the city.

I've lived in a few European cities, all of them had social housing areas on the outskirts of the city, decent sized, affordable housing.

It works.