Anti Dublin Rant on Planning Issues

[alonso]

sorry for the double post, but I think this should've been in the Dublin forum in the first place. my mistake

The link below is to an article on one off-housing and the attitude of dubs to this haphazard polluting nightmare that the countryside is hellbent on imposing on our island. It's a response to a thread on www.archiseek.com, an architecture and planning website, with a fairly decent forum. it had a bit of a laugh about the Irish Rural Dwellers Association, all a bit of harmless banter, taken a bit too seriously by this hack.

Now I'm from Dublin. I'm also employed in this general area of planning. I think many many one-off houses are bloody awful, but I see the need for some, and the need to revitalise many areas of rural ireland, but if this ignorant journo represents rural Ireland, then rural ireland can fck off and drown in it;s SUV fumes and failing septic tanks.

some highlights include
"smart ass city slickers"
"These egg-in-the-mouth scripts smack of the West Brit nonsense so familiar to a certain breed of misnamed professional"
"colonial "
"a few withered brains "
"Regardless of 800 years of domination by outside forces it is still impossible for many Irish people to live in their own area because of the colonial interpretations adopted by many planners"
"What is becoming of our country when diktats are promulgated by people using half-baked ideas?"
"The country once played host to over eight million people. They did not live between blades of grass or in cracks in stone walls. They lived in homes."
"What is happening across the Irish countryside is akin to an ethnic cleansing of rural life"
"no recognition whatsoever of the special position of the island nation of Ireland in respect of our history, culture, traditions, 5,000-year-old rural settlement patterns or the many subtleties and nuances that make our country and our Irish race unique"

Thats enough. you can read the rest of this ill-informed, propagandist, backward, offensive and borderline racist diatribe here

http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option ... &Itemid=38

I'm sure many of you agree with this article, but i'm sure many of you voted for Martin Cullen, Dick Roche, Jackie Healy Rae et al

[Wolverine]

As someone who is from Clare I find myself largely in agreement with you, Alonzo. As you can see I don't vote for anyone you mentioned.

However not being employed in planning myself I don't have all the answers on this issue. Perhaps you could give us a list of reasons why one off housing should be discouraged?

As far as I can see the biggest obstacle is car use.

[ibis]

As someone who is from Clare I find myself largely in agreement with you, Alonzo. As you can see I don't vote for anyone you mentioned.

However not being employed in planning myself I don't have all the answers on this issue. Perhaps you could give us a list of reasons why one off housing should be discouraged?

As far as I can see the biggest obstacle is car use.

Car use. Energy inefficiency. Increased expense of providing services. Increased costs of providing utilities. Dispersed pollution entry to goundwater and surface water systems. Light pollution. Increased impact of pets. Increased fragmentation of animal habitats. Increased visual impact.

These are a few of my favourite things...

[nawbut]

Now I'm from Dublin. I'm also employed in this general area of planning. I think many many one-off houses are bloody awful, but I see the need for some, and the need to revitalise many areas of rural ireland

Good for you! Not all of those who oppose the IRDA are so accomodating.

The Mayo rant is all that you say (including 'borderline racist'), but its also quite funny, in a way. It only becomes a matter for concern when policy is determined by such emotional, ideologically forged rants, without reference to effects - environmental or social.

[PinkoLeftie]

Car use. Energy inefficiency. Increased expense of providing services. Increased costs of providing utilities. Dispersed pollution entry to goundwater and surface water systems. Light pollution. Increased impact of pets. Increased fragmentation of animal habitats. Increased visual impact.

These are a few of my favourite things...

Car use: Plenty of people in cities and towns have access to public transport but don't use it. On the flip side, few people living in rural one-off houses have access to public transport and some use it. Blame the people not the houses!

Energy inefficiency: I am to believe that a detached house in an estate uses less energy than a one off house in the same village?
Does an all electric apartment cost less to heat than a one-off house with a ground heat pump, solar panels, good insulation, etc? I doubt it.

Increased expense of providing services: If the postman/bus is passing by the door anyway what is the problem?

Increased costs of providing utilities: A one-off house owener pays for their sewerage system to be built. They pay for a connection to the ESB grid. What costs are passed on to the state?

Dispersed pollution entry to goundwater and surface water systems.: If you don't have a proper sewerage tank. If you do, is this still a problem?

Increased visual impact & Light pollution: That is subjective. If one-off houses are all ugly why do postcards feature cottages?

Increased impact of pets: People shouldn't be allowed have pets?

Increased fragmentation of animal habitats: Happens in villages, towns and cities too.

Really I feel this "one-off housing is bad" mantra is simplistic nonsense. There should be an onus on every developer of any housing type to build homes which are environmentally friendly. But pointing at one-off houses that have been construced without thought to the environment and then saying this is why all one-off housing should be banned is flawed.

[PinkoLeftie]

BTW, Alonso.

While I'm all for well-designed eco-sensitive one-off housing, I don't agree with the Mayo News rant above. Indeed I found it difficult to read beyond the first sentence with its idiotic reference to "city-slickers".

This debate should not divide urban and rural dwellers. It should not turn into us-versus-them. For one thing, you never know when events in life bring you to move from one group to the other!

[popper]

Seldom that i agree with pinko lefties but excellent post.

[ibis]

Car use. Energy inefficiency. Increased expense of providing services. Increased costs of providing utilities. Dispersed pollution entry to goundwater and surface water systems. Light pollution. Increased impact of pets. Increased fragmentation of animal habitats. Increased visual impact.

These are a few of my favourite things...

Car use: Plenty of people in cities and towns have access to public transport but don't use it. On the flip side, few people living in rural one-off houses have access to public transport and some use it. Blame the people not the houses!

True - but there are also plenty who would use public transport if it was available, but it is not feasible to run it to dispersed housing.

Energy inefficiency: I am to believe that a detached house in an estate uses less energy than a one off house in the same village?
Does an all electric apartment cost less to heat than a one-off house with a ground heat pump, solar panels, good insulation, etc? I doubt it.

Energy losses in transmission to the house. Extra energy loss through wind chill.True that it's remediable.

Increased expense of providing services: If the postman/bus is passing by the door anyway what is the problem?

Schools, post offices, services for the elderly, health services etc. No, the postman is not passing by every door - route efficiency does not mean visiting every yard of every lane.

Increased costs of providing utilities: A one-off house owener pays for their sewerage system to be built. They pay for a connection to the ESB grid. What costs are passed on to the state?

Transmission losses - and many people do not pay for connections, from my experience.

Dispersed pollution entry to goundwater and surface water systems.: If you don't have a proper sewerage tank. If you do, is this still a problem?

Nearly all septic tank systems do leak - you are confusing theoretical perfection with the reality. Septic tanks, even if 100% built to current standards, are still pollution sources.

Increased visual impact - That is subjective. If one-off houses are all ugly why do postcards feature cottages?

The majority are not cottages, they are modern bungalows, and they certainly don't feature on postcards. Mostly, ugly or not, they are houses, and one on every single hill is one on every single hill.

Good planning restrictions on height, material, placement etc mitigate the visual impact of one-off housing - counties like Carlow get it right, and most places (Cavan, for example) get it wrong.

Light pollution: That is subjective.

Light pollution is not subjective.

Increased impact of pets: People shouldn't be allowed have pets?

Both dogs and cats are killers, as far as local small animals and birds go. Cats are worse. Both have a range within which they operate. When you disperse cats across the countryside, you are effectively blanketing the country with well-cared for predators.

Increased fragmentation of animal habitats: Happens in villages, towns and cities too.

Not so. Urban areas destroy natural habitats, but the destruction is limited to the urban area.

Really I feel this "one-off housing is bad" mantra is simplistic nonsense. There should be an onus on every developer of any housing type to build homes which are environmentally friendly. But pointing at one-off houses that have been construced without thought to the environment and then saying this is why all one-off housing should be banned is flawed.

I haven't said it is - I have outlined some of the impacts, because that's what Wolverine asked. With good planning, many of these impacts can be mitigated (although some cannot).

Simply defending one-off housing by claiming none of these impacts are real will not lead to good planning - it will perpetuate the current situation.

To a large extent, this is why the debate has become polarised - those who do not wish to be burdened with planning restrictions find it easy to claim that any criticism of the impacts of one-off housing is the same as an attack on one-off housing per se, as you have done here.

[Wolverine]

Car use: Plenty of people in cities and towns have access to public transport but don't use it. On the flip side, few people living in rural one-off houses have access to public transport and some use it. Blame the people not the houses!

Pinko, the problem is not emissions as much as simple sustainability. If you live close to where you work (i.e. within cycling distance) then there's no big problem. But if you drive to work, then read on...

At the moment oil, as we all know, is running out. All signs point to a peak in global oil production in the next decade or so. When that does, oil is going to become very expensive, and thus so will petrol. You may be talking €10 per litre of petrol, maybe more. It will certainly be multiples of current prices.

You are correct in that, in urban Ireland at the moment, people don't use public transport very much. But, if it becomes too expensive to drive, then it is feasable to service urban areas with public transport, because of the high population density. It isn't feasable to service dispersed rural areas for the same reason.

In a nutshell, if petrol becomes too expensive then the bus becomes a more attractive option. If you live in a one off house and need to drive, and when petrol gets very expensive, you're stuck.

At the moment people are spending lots of money building houses - fair enough, since property prices are so stupidly high. But if these houses become very expensive to live in, their value will drop. At just the same time that you find it too expensive to live in.

So not only will it be too expensive to live in, but nobody will buy it off you. You'll be left with an albatross around your neck.

[PinkoLeftie]

I haven't said it is - I have outlined some of the impacts, because that's what Wolverine asked. With good planning, many of these impacts can be mitigated (although some cannot).

Thanks for the detailed reply. Some of your points I agree with, some I don't. I don't have the time to reply to each one now, and it would serve little purpose anyway, once we both understand the main thrust of each other's arguments.

Simply defending one-off housing by claiming none of these impacts are real will not lead to good planning - it will perpetuate the current situation.

I'm not defending one-off housing, so much as defending good planning and castigating bad planning. Bad planning is not something which manifests itself solely in one-off houses. Apartment blocks and estates of houses suffer many of the problems that you say are associated with one-off houses.

To a large extent, this is why the debate has become polarised - those who do not wish to be burdened with planning restrictions..

I think you'll find I don't defend those.

.. find it easy to claim that any criticism of the impacts of one-off housing is the same as an attack on one-off housing per se, as you have done here.

That is not the viewpoint expressed in the opening post.