PLACE-MAKING THROUGH DENSITY, DEMOCRACY AND DESIGN

Ciarán Cuffe, September 2003

Background to Ireland’s approach on planning

In Ireland we like to tell stories. It is often said that we do not have a visual culture, and that we use stories, writing and music to explain, record and pass on our perception of the world around us. Certainly there is a strong legacy of writing through writers such as Joyce and Beckett, and more recently musicians such as the band U2 and Sinead O’Connor bear testimony to our musical strengths. However I would also argue that the visual has played an important part in our development. By visual I refer not only to the work of artists but more specifically to the spatial, that is the way in which we perceive, consider and design the spaces in which we live.

In the Irish countryside small groupings of houses were traditionally carefully arranged and landscaped. Clachán is the Irish word given to a small group of houses built in proximity to each other. In our towns and villages both planned and unplanned, buildings were of similar size and built from similar materials. Streets were carefully considered, and market places were at the heart of the community. Our Georgian towns and cities were planned with a draftsman’s hand, and also reflect common concerns with form and place.

In more recent years, and more particularly in the last ten years, we have gone through a period of spectacular change. Our economy boomed, as a combination of demographics, education, and financial support from the European Union fuelled a rapid increase in employment and confidence. Fiscal incentives from central government encouraged the private sector to build offices and apartments in the heart of our urban centres. Of course there has been a downside to all of this. Dublin has grown rapidly at the expense of the west of Ireland, and urban sprawl, traffic congestion and high house prices have been much talked about in recent years.

In the countryside we have seen a significant rise in the construction of one-off houses, and ribbon development. While some argue that this is an aesthetic problem, I believe that we should be much more concerned about the cost to the state of providing health and transport services to people in these areas as they grow older. There are also significant environmental concerns ranging from groundwater pollution to transport-related carbon dioxide emissions.

In our towns and cities, local communities are fearful of developers’ overblown proposals, and in my own inner city council constituency of Dublin, large banners proclaiming ‘No High Rise’ echo the concerns of many. The tax-breaks on offer to developers led to huge investment over a short space of time in the urban core, threatening archaeology, heritage and communities. My Masters thesis in planning back in 1996 referring to the centre of Dublin asked the question ‘Sustainable city of town-cramming?’ I concluded that we should be concentrating on quality as well as quantity in development in Dublin.

As an architect and more recently as a town planner I have spent much of my ten years as a city councillor on Dublin City Council addressing planning concerns. Over the last year I have been fortunate enough to address these concerns on the national stage following on from my election to Dáil Éireann, the Irish national parliament.

One of the more heartening developments in recent years is the ‘broadening of the bandwidth’ of the remit of planning in Southern Ireland. Traditionally planning was carried out at the county and city level. Within the last three years we have seen new legislation and strategies approved which have resulted in the adoption of a National Spatial Strategy for the State, and the passing of legislation which allows for the preparation of Local Area Plans at the community scale. Planning now has the tools to address national and neighbourhood level. Perhaps the weak spot in all of this is the political will to row behind this. There are financial and other resource based issues involved

The challenge of higher densities

For many years in the South new development was planned at very low densities. This was partially due to a natural antipathy towards higher densities, an attitude that had its roots in the Garden City movement. The phrase ‘nothing to be gained by overcrowding’ still strikes a chord amongst the more senior decision-makers. Government guidance on new housing areas espoused the low-density suburb centred on the semi-detached model up until the 1980’s. The transport model was built up around the private car, with buses for the less fortunate. Myles Wright, and advisor to the Irish Government in the mid-1960’s stated:

"Ireland is coming late into the age of a car for most families. There is every sign that Irishman, as sturdy individualists and democrats will wish to use their cars fully. There is every reason why they should, ...where long stretches of trunk road offer near-perfect motoring conditions, and will do so for long period ahead."

Wright, Myles, The Dublin Region, Advisory Regional Plan and Final Report Part One, 1966, Government of Ireland

However there has been a change in policy in recent year. Residential Density Guidelines for Planning Authorities were published in 1999, and this is leading to apartments being built where once semi-detached houses might have been built. The UK Government’s ‘Towards an Urban Renaissance’ is having an influence in Irish Planning Circles.  Higher densities can dramatically reduce transport demand, by allowing people to live closer to where they live work and relax.

Following a Government policy on urban renewal in the larger towns and cities in the 1990’s that was based on fiscal incentives, which allowed the developer to write off the capital costs of building work against taxes over a ten-year period, incentives were applied to smaller towns more recently. In order to qualify for the newer incentives Integrated Area Plans had to be submitted by the local authorities concerned to the Department of the Environment for approval. Such plans had to evaluate the built fabric of the towns and make detailed proposals for their future development. The complexity of this newer scheme may have contributed to its more limited success, although I suspect that investment in smaller towns is more based on the commitment of the local entrepreneur, rather than on seemingly complex Government support.

Principles for regulating development

Higher densities are working, but without a commensurate increase in design input, there is a danger that mediocre schemes will be built. Ten years ago as a wave of development commenced adjacent to the quays along both sides of the River Liffey I suggested that strong planning principles were needed to control development at these densities.

I set out a list of planning principles that included the following.

-Existing buildings and facades should be retained or re-used, where possible.  

-Developments that respect the existing plot sizes and block pattern shall be encouraged.    

-Pastiche or mock period facades should be avoided.

- To encourage on-street activity throughout the day a mixture of uses shall be sought in all blocks, and within individual buildings. To this end, entrances to upper floors from the quayside shall be encouraged.   

-The street frontage of new buildings should respect the ‘foot-print’ of pre-existing buildings on the site, and shall avoid chamfered or rounded street corners.   

-Appropriate public space shall be provided, relative to the size of the proposed development.   

I would suggest that these guidelines are still appropriate today in setting out broad place-making principles for development. The Quays along the river Liffey in Dublin have undergone massive development over the last decade, with mixed results. Critics would point to the over-emphasis on pastiche at the expense of good architecture. Why build massive chimneys, when there are no fireplaces in the entire building? The scheme at a prominent site at Bachelors Walk adjacent to O’Connell Street was designed without the assistance of an architect. An attractive infill development at Ormond Quay in Dublin retained a three-storey seventeenth century building and was designed by Patrick Shaffrey.

There is a dangerous middle ground visible in some recent developments that are built at higher densities. If local authorities insist on a large amount of parking and if there is not a requirement to place the bulk of the parking underground, then the outside spaces can be dominated by the needs of the car. The traffic engineers must be kept under control. The middle ground between making blocks of relatively high density and making single buildings that are unattached or semi-detached is fraught with danger. The design of outside areas and the relationship between buildings is crucial to creating good places.

Ildefons Cerda, in his plans for Barcelona in the nineteenth century was clear in his defence of the block, and his high-density solutions have stood the test of time. In his initial plans, the interior of the blocks were left free for communal gardens, but development pressures led to their utilisation for factories and other uses.

Ensuring democratic input into development

Increasing the input of communities into the planning process can be a worthy exercise. It is however difficult to get the balance right, and it is always important that the designer’s vision does not get submerged in a sea of consultation. All too often we get bogged down in the degrees of tokenism that exist in the middle ground between citizen power and non-participation.

In 1971 the sociologist Arnstein published ‘Eight rungs of citizen participation. It still provides a good shorthand test of whether we are engaged in tokenism.

Two years ago I undertook the negotiating of the form and activities that would take place in a proposed centre in a community of 5,000 people in a disadvantage suburb of Dublin. It was useful to make a model of the entire neighbourhood. Each of the two storey terraced houses within the district was photographed, and then photocopied onto a block model so that people could recognise their home by seeing their net curtains or car on the large model.

Simple block models of the components of the proposed centre were given to people at community meetings. These ranged from a terrace of apartments over shops, a medical centre and a pub, and participants at this ‘planning for real’ workshop could decide what to include, and to arrange the individual uses as they saw fit. The meetings were heated, but physically handling the model provided a good opportunity for a wide variety of opinions to be voiced.

The importance of design

In the United States recent years have seen the growth of the ‘New Urbanism’ movement. This movement encourages high densities, a careful analysis of typology, and strives to create mixed-use walkable neighbourhoods. Alexander Duany, one of the founders of that movement suggests that there is no need to reinvent the wheel, and that good place making in America can be traced back to early settlements a hundred years ago.

I feel the same is true in Ireland or England. Our forefathers excelled in creating streets, squares, parks and playgrounds that were high on design and diversity. In Ireland in the 1940’s the State built villages for the workers who harvested peat or turf.   A plan for two storey-terraced housing in the midlands of Ireland by Frank Gibney addresses the public road, and creates an organic green at the centre of the development. These settlements planned and built in the 1940’s and fifties were probably Ireland’s answer to the Garden city movement.

Plans for a new mixed-use settlement at the northwestern edge of Dublin City were sketched by Jim Pike and include a town square adjacent to a commuter rail station.

Temple Bar in the heart of Dublin is well know to many, although I suspect not necessarily by virtue of its planning principles. A broad-brush Action Plan had existed for the area for many years. However a competition was run by the State company Temple Bar Properties for an architectural framework plan. The competition was won by ‘Group 91’, which comprised of several young architectural firms well known for their design skills that came together to plan this city quarter. The winning masterplan was characterised by architectural conservation, and the making of clear urban squares. The area is a success, but the rapid expansion of licensed premises can detract or add to the experience, depending on your perspective.

A quayside scheme in Temple bar designed by Gilroy McMahon sits comfortably alongside a curious older Lever Brothers building. Both buildings enhance this stretch of the river, and at night the apartment dwellers can be seen in their kitchens through the modern glazing, adding to the vibrancy of this bustling neighbourhood.

More recently the Dublin Spire designed by Ian Ritchie was erected at the former site of Nelson’s pillar on O’Connell Street in Dublin’s city centre. The IRA blew up the original pillar in 1966, leaving a visual and real gap in Dubliners’ perception of their city. This slim 120 metre high and 3 metre wide stainless steel needle sits comfortably one of Dublin’s wider thoroughfares, and shows us that place-making is not confined to the making of streets and buildings.

Making good places is the art of the possible. It requires density, democracy and design. As competition between cities and regions intensifies in northern Europe, places that are characterised by a good ‘quality of life’ are becoming the winners. I am convinced that the making of good places can contribute substantially to improving the quality of everyone’s lives.