The Local Area Planning Guidelines & Manual are a good reason for not doing an LAP

If ever there was instrument to slow down the planning process, and add cost and bureaucracy its the LAP process as now described in the Guidelines and Manual published by the Dept. of Environment. However the Draft Guidelines fail to ask the most important question. Is doing an LAP the best way of solving problems and resolving issues? Big problems lie in the multi-disciplinary approach advocated. It is an approach that serves the professions and process, but not people and towns. Achieving all this professional representation, changes the conversation. We start talking about road capacities, geometries and traffic models. We focus on SUDs, drainage and water treatment. We focus on Energy Standards, contemporary architecture of our time, and landmark structures.... and loose focus on town planning. Have any of the LAPs set out in the Draft Manual actually worked? Kilkenny, Liberties, Robinstown, Mountjoy? Why are they regarded as good examples if they have not resolved the issues faced? If planning is to be truly evidence based, it should go far beyond basic demographics and land capacity zoning requirements. Evidence means we should learn from past failures. Failures that are dominated by traffic-engineering, and bad architecture that planners continually have to face. We should be learning from Christopher Alexander’s pattern language – an open-source code. An approach that allows plans to evolve over time, with a multitude of design inputs, and not just one comprehensive ‘vision’. This I believe is the great strength of planners. It is scandalous how planners have been relegated to the role of Project Manager in this LAP Draft. We are urban problem solvers, not project managers. Planning risks finding itself labelled as the profession that makes things difficult and complicated, wedded to process for process’s sake. We have already seen the RIAI President’s agenda that architecture should assume the lead role in plan-making. Its an approach that the Draft Guidelines and Manual does not discourage. Why don’t we have a planning-led discussion about how we can do things incrementally and sustainably? The Draft LAP Guidelines are on public display until 27th July.

Retail Planning Guidelines 2012 present opportunity for City and Town Centres, if Local Authorities change their game

The Retail Planning Guidelines 2012 were published on 1 May 2012 with commentary by Minister Phil Hogan on importance of vital and viable town centres for cities and towns. Minister for Planning and Housing Jan O’Sullivan talks about “refocusing towards plan-led development in addressing the needs of the retail sector by determining a proper evidence base of the need for retail development and ensuring a proactive approach in facilitating the meeting of those needs”. A lot of faith is placed in retail strategies, retail hierarchies , and sequential development while at the same time increasing convenience floor space caps in the interest of “both competitiveness in the retail sector and strong city and town centres.” So really nothing new in these principles from previous versions of the Guidelines. In practice this has been a mixed-bag. While the line has been held on some out-of-town convenience and shopping centres (generally by An Bord Pleanala), the amount of floorspace provided for in the retail strategies, according to hierarchy, location and type have had a negative effect on town centres (as far as anyone can tell given that theres no information collected on this – and certainly not in the Forfas report. What is new is the five key policy objectives that must guide planning authorities in addressing retail development issues: 1. Ensuring that retail development is plan-led; 2. Promoting city/town centre vitality through a sequential approach to development; 3. Securing competitiveness in the retail sector by actively enabling good quality development proposals to come forward in suitable locations; 4. Facilitating a shift towards increased access to retailing by public transport, cycling and walking in accordance with the Smarter Travel strategy; and 5. Delivering quality urban design outcomes. These objectives present a much stronger focus on town centres, and Objective 5 in particular really places an onus on the quality of development. Of course, Objective 3 (the Asda/Walmart clause) could be used to go a different direction altogether (in the interest of competitiveness of course). The Guidelines come down heavy on Retail Warehouse Parks, which are struggling, and looking to broaden their use-base to fill units, yet remain grey enough in the categorisation of comparison goods to require testing to An Bord Pleanala and possibly the High Court. Its all very well to talk the talk on Vitality and Viability, but a lot of hard work needs to be done on this. There is a huge information-gap on town centres, on all the important matters referred to Annex 2. This can’t be left to planning consultants to address in Retail Impact Statements. Rather, town centre health checks or indicators need to be removed entirely from the context of development proposals, as an open-source of information for town and city centres to be able to say – this is where we are – and here is an action plan for what we can do. This requires a huge change in mind-set for Local Authorities and Business Associations/Chambers of commerce. It requires a proactive approach and leadership; not the kind where a County Manager comes up with a hobby-hourse initiative or development, but leadership across public and private sectors working in partnership. The Design Guidelines attached to Guidelines are irrelevant, and sum up a problem in mind-set... its all about the big new development, an architectural statement or the big man in town who is going to come to the rescue. This is the opposite of maintenance, management and care. Its down to political will and leadership, and a culture that either wants to aspire to quality living places or play to the lowest common denominator. Some cities and towns will follow the quality route, and many will continue to wowed by the prospect of the next big thing.

Ireland needs a pro-city planning strategy not more regional planning

There were some interesting presentations at this years Irish Planning Institute Conference in Kilkenny at the end of April. Hendrik W van der Kamp from the School of Spatial Planning, DIT gave an interesting paper on The City State as an Urban Model – a case study of supply based planning. He highlights some really important analysis on urban trends in Ireland. Firstly, he finds that the National Spatial Strategy (NSS) has been ineffective with regard to designated Gateway towns. In 2011 he finds that “Of 10 counties with gateway towns only 5 row above national average. Of 16 counties without gateway towns only 5 grow below national average”. He also notes an ambiguous trend in urbanisation. The Irish Urban Population in 2011 is 62% (60.7 % in 2006, 59.6% in 2002 and 58.1% in 1996). However, he also quotes Eurostat (March 2012) “In nearly all Member States, it was in urban regions that the population grew most rapidly. Ireland was an exception with growth in its rural population, while the urban population declined.” This reflects, that outside Dublin inner city wards, all other major towns and cities have experienced decline in their cores. The trend of urbanisation growth reflects massive suburbanisation on Greenfield sites. Van der Kamp cites the statistic that thepProportion of people living in cities > 100,000 pop decreased from 31.2% in 1996 to 29.2% in 2006. His conclusions are that we are not achieving compact cities and we are not achieving cities of scale (proportion of population in cities over 100,000 is decreasing). Also see recent Life After Roundabouts post ‘Are Lending Institutions getting it wrong?’ This analysis is hugely important for the Irish economy, and strategic planning policy. This really should be setting the alarm bells ringing in the Customs House. There is a strong body of research from the likes of Geoffrey West, Richard Florida and Edward Glaeser that says city scale and size really matter! The bigger a city is, the richer it is, the more money people make, it attracts better people and companies and the more influential that place is. So where we have a strategic policy framework that positively supports anti-urban development (Rural Housing Guidelines), and we pursue a path of anti-urban economic investment (IDA) , the result is declining cities, declining wealth and an increasingly uncompetitive country. Strong urban places are synonymous with strong economies. While many policy documents including the NSS contain pro-urban statements, its simply not working when applied to County Council administrations. There is an urgent need to go back to the drawing board. This must involve linking a very different Rural Housing Policy with a simplified National Spatial Strategy. Its time to have a big re-think about urban regeneration strategies pursued over the last 15 years, and the tools we use. Even before the recession hit, PPP was an abject failure. Local Area Plans often only add bureaucracy, costs and delays. The national rural agenda pursued by all governments is damaging cities, and damaging Ireland’s economy. I’m not sure about Van der Kamps conclusions that Ireland should essentially adopt a single City State approach to Strategic Planning. There is undoubtedly potential outside the capital. In either case, the Irish economy needs stronger cities. Stronger cities need stronger City Governance and better leadership, focussed on city economies and their citizens. Regional authorities simply don’t do this; its not their mandate. Rather, the mayoral governance model presents a tried and tested approach to city focussed planning.

Roundabout wins Smarth Growth Civic Space ward by EPA in Us. http://www.epa.gov/dced/awards/sg_awards_publication_2011.htm #irony

Mahon and Zoning

The two words are inextricably linked. The Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters & Payments aka The Mahon Tribunal delivered its final report on 22nd March. Now that the dust has settled on the findings of the Tribunal, it’s about the right time to think what good has it done for planning? It is notable that one of the only recommendations Mahon J. came up with, was that there should be an independent planning regulator.

If there is one thing planning is not short-on, its regulations and regulators. But it fails to hit the obvious point. All the controversy surrounding allegations of political corruption and impropriety concern zoning.

Zoning is such a simple concept, that even politicians (not all!), who haven’t a clue or a care about what good planning means for their constituents(present and future), are able to understand it. A local Council decision can change the development rights on a piece of land from grazing cattle to building houses. Apart from capital gains tax, the landowner walks away a lottery winner every time.

The ‘zoning’ of land became such a momentous a decision, that in an overly simplistic construction industry, too much importance has been associated with it, and therefore too much monetary value attributed to it. Zoning created hope value, which created land-banking. It fundamentally skewed the real value of land, what it is worth, and what it can produce (either for farmers or developers). It feeds speculation, not investment.

Land Use Zoning is not a good planning tool. It is an unhappy marriage of post-war modernism and garden-city utopianism. Its clumsy, it doesn’t allow towns to grow organically, street by street or square by square. It is comprehensive and not incremental. It creates mono-use suburban areas, with a paucity of services, variety, interest and beauty, served and segregated by over-engineered distributor roads. This is not a personal opinion. People like Leon Krier, Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, INTBAU , Congress for New Urbanism, Congress for European Urbanism and 'A Vision of Europe' have explained it much better, and in more detail.

The introduction of Core Strategies in the 2010 Planning Act (with de-zoning) and Strategic Environmental Assessment provide for a much improved regulatory environment. However, in many ways Development Plans are still focussing on ‘what use, where?’. When a Council seeks to provide jobs it’s solution has been to zone land for industrial or commercial use – build a business park for the IDA. For urban growth – zone fields for housing and retail parks. Census 2011 shows Ireland is still growing. Zoning doesn’t provide answers to fundamental questions of how a place should grow, how will it look and feel, and who will live there. Government (both central and local) should place zoning to one side. The focus should be on creating an enabling environment for small scale/low cost interventions to take place. Perhaps we need a regulator for de-regulation?

World Heritage site or bungalows......

Sunday’s Irish Independent reported the shocking scandal [irony!] “Locals lose out in ‘dead zone’ of heritage centre -Bru na Boinne visitors bypass Slane — traffic goes straight through” What audience does Indo journalist Jerome Reilly or his editor think they are serving.

Even pump parish politics operates on a much higher plane that this quality of reporting. It’s as if planning was enforced on the community by a foreign state for somebody else’s benefit.

The article does not even mention the World Heritage status of Bru na Boinne, and the rationale for planning restrictions. There is no attempt to consider the importance of heritage for this and future generations as being even an equivocal consideration. Rather it reads as the local farmer versus the heritage centre and the bunch of foreigners it buses in:

"Gabriel Mullen lives in Dowth. He says that the OPW and the other authorities have a stranglehold on the area. His daughter Sarah has been trying for seven years to get planning permission to build on the site beside the family home, without success.

“They are slowly but surely killing off this area. We are being treated as second-class citizens,” he says.

Cllr Wayne Harding says the world heritage status was now toxic in its immediate environment.

“I have met farmers who cannot give their children a site for a house, and community organisations who have to meet with government officials before they apply for very minor planning applications. The villages of Duleek, Donore and Slane get no economic kickback from 230,000 visitors a year that are right on their doorstep.

…. “There is an effort to ethnically cleanse the area,” Gabriel Mullen says."

Could it be that missing Father Ted episode….

Here’s a novel idea. Build on individual house plots in the village, where your children can be near facilities, amenities and their friends, thereby preserving more land for farming, and less pollution of the land through septic-tanks. Problem solved.

Are the lending institutions getting it wrong again?

According to the lending institutions (banks and NAMA) apartments are a non-runner. It is widely known in planning circles that apartment schemes will not get finance, good permissions are not being built-out, and that the institutions are telling local authorities to lower the densities. However, there is a suspicion that this ‘policy’ is based on a hunch rather than sound analysis. 3 sets of information out this week, suggest that this the lenders are getting it wrong. i.e. the Think Dublin Demoraphic Report, Social Housing Waiting lists and the Residential Property Price Index (RPPI).

The ‘Demographic Trends in Dublin’ Report came out this week, launched by the Lord Mayor, Andrew Montague. It is part of the Dublin City Council – Think Dublin! Research Series, by Declan Redmond and Brendan Williams (UCD), Brian Hughes (DIT) & Jamie Cudden, Office of International Relations and Research, Dublin City Council. This report is really important. It’s proper research, based on the latest census results (2011) with some sharp analysis. At risk of copying the entire Executive summary.....

Population growth in Dublin City over the period 1991 to 2011 has lagged significantly behind national population growth and growth in the other GDA local authorities. In the State the population increased by 30 per cent from 1991 to 2011, but by only 9.8 per cent in Dublin City. These figures reflect the rapid outward expansion of population and housing during the period of the residential property boom.

Dublin City’s share of the Dublin region’s population declined from 47 to 41 per cent between 1991 and 2011. By contrast, however, Fingal has seen its share of the region’s population increase from 15 to 22 per cent over the same period. South Dublin’s share of the population has remained static at 21 per cent while Dún Laoghaire Rathdown’s share has fallen from 18 to 16 per cent.

In contrast to the sprawl and dispersion of population described above, the inner city of Dublin has seen strong population growth. Between 1991 and 2011 the population of Dublin City increased by just 9.8 per cent. However, in the inner city there was an increase of 62% in the same period. This increase reflects the high level of apartment building in the inner city from the late 1980s onwards.

In the rest of the city there was a decrease of 1.2% between 1991 and 2011, with many electoral divisions seeing a loss of population. “ Given strong national and regional increases in population in this period, this loss of population is remarkable”.

In 2006 the average household size in Dublin City was 2.50 compared with 2.8 for the GDA. Average household size has fallen consistently since 1991. Average household size in the state has fallen from 3.14 in 1996 to 2.81 in 2006 (This was predicted long-ago in the DTI Strategy).

Almost 30% of households in Dublin City are one person households as compared with 17% in Fingal and 16% in South Dublin. By contrast, Dublin City has a much lower rate of households comprised of husband and wife with children. Only 19% of households in Dublin City were husband and wife with children compared with 33% in Dun Laoghaire, 36% in Fingal and South Dublin and almost 40% in Meath and Wicklow.

The Report notes that Eurostat projects the Irish population is to increase from 4.5 million to 6.5 million between 2010 and 2060, a 47% increase. The UK is projected to increase from 62 million in 2010 to 79 million over the same period, an increase of 27%. The German population, by contrast, is expected to fall by 15.3 million between 2010 and 2060, a decrease of 19%.

Given the severity of the recession many commentators had predicted that net emigration had returned. However, the preliminary 2011 Census figures show that there was net positive in-migration of 118, 650 in the period 2006-2011. This does not, of course, mean that there was no emigration out of the country but that more people moved into Ireland than left it.

So in contrast to many common perceptions, sprawl and dispersion have continued and the older suburbs have declined, but the inner city has done well.

Social Housing
On Tuesday the Irish Times reported that The National Asset Management Agency has drawn up a list of just over 2,000 houses and apartments which it will make available for social housing over the coming months..http://bit.ly/zDocbv.
It is notable that just 18 apartments, or less than 1 per cent of the overall total, have been identified as suitable properties in the South Dublin County Council area (reflecting their Council policy to restrict apartments below national guidance levels). By contrast, it noted 484 apartments or almost 25 per cent of the total are based in the Dublin City Council area. Fingal and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown account for a further 408 houses and apartments, or 20 per cent of the total housing units. The big shock is the statement that the “Latest data shows the number of households requiring social housing reached a record 98,000 in 2011, up from 58,000 three years ago. All indications are that the numbers are continuing to rise”

RPPI
The Residential Property Price Index this week headlined that house prices in Dublin are 55% lower than at their height in early 2007, and apartments 59% lower.
However, this doesn’t tell the full story. The RPPI shows that the only area that experienced growth in 2011 (albeit minor) was in the apartment sector. There was 0.6% growth in the 3 months up to December. In Dublin there was 3.7% growth in the 3 months up to December and 2.4% growth in the 3 months up to January 2012.
The conclusion from this is that there is very little difference between the market performance of houses and apartments, and if anything apartments may possibly have turned a corner.

Waiting lists of the order of 100,000 units is not about some down-trodden minority that should only be catered for by subsidised housing. It suggests that the wrong type or the wrong tenure of housing has been built.

If the population needs averages households off 2.5 persons, and where the only population growth has been in the city centre apartment market (or sprawl) why is there an insistence on the good old semi-D? Does it reflect the age and status of people making these decisions or a lack of information? The whole idea of the original residential density guidelines was to make housing more affordable. This is a challenge for the market not the public sector. At the moment, it seems that the lending institutions are ignoring these important macro and micro trends and signals, and telling the market, what they think it needs.