So I took this a while ago, it’s on the east side of Barrow St, beside Grand Canal Dock station, and although I knew Dublin had bungalows in its city centre, I was completely blown away to have this view of it and to see it all there. It’s absolutely crazy that in 2022 as a capital city there are rows of bungalows right beside one of its busiest areas! This is in a great location, beside the train station, beside the tech offices, and not far at all from the Aviva Stadium. This neighbourhood should be completely razed to the ground and replaced with a brand new development with high-rise apartments and parks/plazas, it’s absolutely baffling and borderline embarrassing that we have this type of housing in our capital’s centre. I know these are all holdovers from the 19th and 20th century, but one-storey housing should be outright banned in city centres, it’s crazy.
And meanwhile, high rises get turfed out to the suburbs, and fill up with people that need to commute into the city.
It’s infuriating.
Am I alone in thinking these types of buildings are critically important to the character and history of Dublin City?
They’re grand. Ugly high density buildings are great and functional but these bungalows and many others like them are (a small) part of what makes Dublin unique.
The charm and character of Dublin is quickly being replaced by hotels and tech companies surely we should preserve something.
60/30/10 should be a rule for all new buildings 60% should be residential, 30% office and 10% to retail and restaurants and other on the bottom floor
Wow, what a beautiful skyline…
I rent a “cottage” smack bang in the middle of rathmines and ranelagh that were all built back in the late 19th century. I can’t get my heard around how the place isnt levelled to make use of the area and build upwards. Its crazy.
I can see the house I grew up in in this pic ☺️
I agree, they should be built in the same street design not towers but mansion blocks like in London and Paris. Even at 8-10 stories would be enough to increase density, and the people living here would get much bigger homes then they had before.
There is a similar bunch of houses right beside phoenix park that should be redeveloped as well.
If you were starting now you would never build these I agree
But we also cannot keep uprooting people and moving them somewhere that they don’t know it no anyone if they have lived here for 60 odd years,
There are plenty of other derelict spaces in Dublin where this could be done
This isn’t the city center either it’s out near the aviva
Same in Cork, but they’ve started building high density, but have it mostly earmarked for social housing, so workers will still have to commute.
Can’t understand it.
That bit can get pretty cramped in spots, particularly the northsouth roads. Some of them are very small. Greyhound track should be apartments soon. Bus depot and and probably the ESB area too.
So I have a weird question,It seems the general debate pulling apart here is kicking people out of their homes vs development of new apartment blocks to house “more” people.
So here it goes… If you are proposing force buying these, who should get to benefit from the building projects? Do you think we should let it go to the highest bidder i.e. give it off to investment/vulture funds to build and either sell or rent? Should the county council be in charge of designing building, if thats the case would you expect a certain standard?Or dose none of that matter? dose simply adding additional rooms in dublin for people justify any means?
I know …ugh details  But I would be curious if any details would change anyone’s mind over what should be done or if the end result is the only thing that matters
That is certainly low **rise** housing.
Do you know what the **density** is?
Those houses are tiny, so it’s probably higher than you think.
Areas like that are almost heritage sites now and part of the Dublin aesthetic and I actually don’t believe we should level all of them to build high rises.
That being said I still think we needs LOTS of high rises and there is plenty of empty lots and old garages and plenty of areas not considering like those places which could easily.
Trouble is most ppl in gov don’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to housing they don’t know materials or people who will build things for a decent price they only seem to know the top dogs who usually know how to squeeze out the most profit and build less for more rather than what we need which is buildings 15 storeys with multiple apartments per floor and all to quality.
I know it wouldn’t be popular but we are short workers in that industry I would be fine if we had to bring in foreign nationals to get these emergency projects done asap like 100 lads from China to help or wherever we can get them 🤷🏻♂️
Also I hope we stop and consider other projects as we do this like parks, schools, infrastructure, bike lanes, traffic, community!! When go to major cities across Europe the cities are built amazingly trees everywhere with underground and bars and shops like you can be surrounded by 10million people and you don’t feel it, Dublin you have 1.5million and every street you walk and road you drive you know you are in a congested city overflowing we our building a bad reputation every year for being an expensive, dirty, slow, not much to do city
Meanwhile I saw this pic posted in the Toronto subreddit yday. Amazing how allergic we are to development
Terraced housing is hardly “low density”, is it? It’s still better that the sprawling housing estates the suburbs are being filled with.
You’d fit some amount of apartments there.
Great post, no easy answer to this but glad to see debates happening.
Georgian urban planning around the turn of the 19th century saw a far more controlled development of the city. It set out a range of housing types based on proximity to the city centre. Everything from the townhouses surrounding Stephens green and Merrion square, to these terraced bungalows at what was then the perimeter of the city. They can be seen all around the north and south circular roads in places like Stoneybatter and Saint Catherine’s.
They represent a bold plan to organise and structure the growth of the city, and established street widths and densities appropriate for their proximity to local businesses and amenities. I think this is a big part of why they are so protected now, because they’re indicative of a bygone era where we proactively designed our cities future.
The thing is they were originally built on greenfield, peripheral farm land, the kind of outward sprawl we can no longer afford. To harness that same vision and planning for the city we would need to relocate or rehouse a huge portion of city centre residents. We have the design solutions to replace them with nicely detailed, appropriate density, mixed use typologies, but the challenges are more political/economical.
A story comes to mind of a Dutch city Maastricht, where historic but underperforming city centre houses were inhabited by elderly residents and the council wanted to regenerate the area. The existing residents were offered two options, to stay in the area and be housed in the new higher density apartments, or to be relocated further out of the city in equivalent low density houses.
What stood out to me about this story was that the Dutch council took a very involved and communicative approach to solving this problem. They took responsibility for the need for the city to evolve and also to find places for their residents to relocate, so as not to punish them for something bigger than their individual property ownership concerns.
Ireland has such an incessant history of leaving the growth and evolution of our towns and cities in the hands of large corporate developers. Developers who don’t engage with locals, and it’s not their job to worry about where they might be relocated to. And it’s exactly this individualistic approach that leads to nimbyism and resistance to change. A market led approach to urbanism is precarious for all, and because the state refuses to take responsibility for how the city needs to grow we end up at a stand still.
We need leadership and vision akin to that which formed these Georgian blocks. But we don’t need these Georgian blocks, at least the low density ones.
Fuck NIMBYs
Low density? I could fit three families into each of those. 4 if there’s a shed
But the Poolbeg stacks are A-OK.
Everyone is saying what a tragedy it is that there are pleasant, non-dystopic houses to live in in the centre of one of the world’s wealthiest cities. No one has suggested that the solution is not to make dublin overcrowded and dystopic, but to move jobs out of Dublin and decentralise the country’s economy. This is possible today more than ever before, now that the Internet means offices on the opposite side of the country can work together.
the streets where I grew up. This picture brings back so many memories 🙂 since when did D4 become part of the city centre ? The angle this picture is taken at doesn’t even face the city centre lol
Look, we should just raze the whole city, and build a 1km x 1km x 1km cube instead with horizonal and vertical lifts and a park on the roof for like whoever can afford that. Then we can rezone the rest of “Dublin” to raise more beef.
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I mean I’d say a lot of Europe would look like this if WW2 didn’t flatten everything
Let’s first do something about the over 1000 empty/abandoned building and unbuilt land in Dublin hogged by developers and kept empty to hike property before talking about our ‘low density’ houses. The current crisis is NOT because of the lack of building sites.
I just checked the density of this area.
The triangle between Gordon St and Doris St has a population density of 20,879.69 per square Km.
Compare to the area between raglan Rd and Raglan Lane densities of 6,881.55 per square km
Both of similar eras I’m assuming, both very close to the city centre, but if we’re gung ho about demolishing one, could we not demolish the other? And prioritise the least dense, most city centre areas?
I wonder what nearly 21k per sq km cities look like if we compared.
I’m Not saying we should go any one way or another. All I’m saying is I’m not so sure how “low density” housing this is with regards Dublin City.
Living in Madrid, NOTHING is low density. Flats everywhere, public transport is phenomenal. Would love to see more flats built, and a good public transport system would truely shrink the country solving so many counties biggest issues.
These houses should be deemed ‘end of life’ and owners should be allowed develop them to 2 story homes. If the same easing of planning were to occur for corpo house (adding a 3rd floor) we could have owner led higher density quite quickly I believe
Should be a mandatory purchase of that land and redevelopment into a super block ala the netherlands or barcelona. Absolute insanity that we have 1-2 story houses within the city center.
3-4 story apartment blocks could house 2-4x as many people and have more businesses and amenities.
This isn’t low density at all. Dublin City Centre actually has a population density comparable to most European cities. Bout the same as Amsterdam iirc.
I am from America (Los Angeles), and moved to Ireland a few years ago for work. I am not saying that it is a bad thing per se, however I’ve noticed that there is a significant cultural difference between Ireland and the US (and many other European Countries) regarding density in urban areas.
One of the issues with the housing market (amongst many others) is that many people want to live in the Dublin metro area, however there is a general aversion to the two solutions allowing this to be possible. When there is high demand in a specific region, you can either build up (like NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia), or build out (extend the metro area with urban/suburban sprawl (like Los Angeles or Houston).
When you land at Dublin Airport, you see many fields and low density upon your approach, despite only being 5 miles from the city center. There is clearly the space to extend bona-fide suburbs beyond the M50 perimiter. Dublin can obviously build up as well. I understand there may be some obejctions in teh more historic downtown/quay area, however I see no reason why zoning can’t allow for an area with moder high-rise buildings near the city center. Dublin, while gorgeous, doesn’t have a skyline at all and the most distinctive feature when looking at a panoramic photo is that smokestack at the end of the river.
I do not mean this in a critical way, however as an outsider I’ve noticed that compared to the US and GB (where I’ve also lived), people in Ireland tend to have more trivial NIMBY complaints with planning, and the planning system is both far too slow and overly-accomodating to those contesting. While the voices of the community should certainly be taken into consideration, developments (whether residential or commercial) should be able to commence in the face of trivial appeals by a small handful of Karens.
It’s crazy to me that low density here is one story, low density in my town is three stories, with the top story being an attic. I don’t know where my closest one story building is.
Grew up in the area. Near this photo. Can confidently assert that this thread is end to end some of the silliest self-serving nonsense I’ve read in quite a while.
Contrary to what people on here seem to think, this area is still full of locals, multi generational in many cases, who have no interest in your plans and own their houses.
Also, just over on the grand canal dock a vast area was developed in the last decade. What is it now? Wall to wall private rentals for cuckoo funds and empty offices.
Delusional if you think an Irish government can be trusted not to preference developers in any such transaction.
Damn, this would be considered unallowably high density in most of the US
Just because there’s a few odd hectares of bungalows in Dublin and a few skyscrapers in some other European city, does not mean Dublin is a low density city by European standards. The numbers refute this notion. Forcing people to give up their homes should be far down the list of priorities.
Look at that skyline
Going to sound like a cunt here but the flats in the city centre piss me off. Cuffe St is absolutely prime real estate given over to 4 dilapidated floors of council flats and small houses. This is right beside St Stephen’s green.
The opinions of around half the posters in this thread make me doubt that the housing issues will be solved in Ireland anytime soon- there is a total lack of basic logic when it comes to solving these problems and a strong degree of NIMBYism, often towards preserving what are essentially ugly early 20th century utilitarian builds. Meanwhile, most single people have to rent mouldy closets for 1000 euro a month while sharing a bathroom with multiple strangers. It’s a total embarrassment.
39 comments
So I took this a while ago, it’s on the east side of Barrow St, beside Grand Canal Dock station, and although I knew Dublin had bungalows in its city centre, I was completely blown away to have this view of it and to see it all there. It’s absolutely crazy that in 2022 as a capital city there are rows of bungalows right beside one of its busiest areas! This is in a great location, beside the train station, beside the tech offices, and not far at all from the Aviva Stadium. This neighbourhood should be completely razed to the ground and replaced with a brand new development with high-rise apartments and parks/plazas, it’s absolutely baffling and borderline embarrassing that we have this type of housing in our capital’s centre. I know these are all holdovers from the 19th and 20th century, but one-storey housing should be outright banned in city centres, it’s crazy.
And meanwhile, high rises get turfed out to the suburbs, and fill up with people that need to commute into the city.
It’s infuriating.
Am I alone in thinking these types of buildings are critically important to the character and history of Dublin City?
They’re grand. Ugly high density buildings are great and functional but these bungalows and many others like them are (a small) part of what makes Dublin unique.
The charm and character of Dublin is quickly being replaced by hotels and tech companies surely we should preserve something.
60/30/10 should be a rule for all new buildings 60% should be residential, 30% office and 10% to retail and restaurants and other on the bottom floor
Wow, what a beautiful skyline…
I rent a “cottage” smack bang in the middle of rathmines and ranelagh that were all built back in the late 19th century. I can’t get my heard around how the place isnt levelled to make use of the area and build upwards. Its crazy.
I can see the house I grew up in in this pic ☺️
I agree, they should be built in the same street design not towers but mansion blocks like in London and Paris. Even at 8-10 stories would be enough to increase density, and the people living here would get much bigger homes then they had before.
There is a similar bunch of houses right beside phoenix park that should be redeveloped as well.
If you were starting now you would never build these I agree
But we also cannot keep uprooting people and moving them somewhere that they don’t know it no anyone if they have lived here for 60 odd years,
There are plenty of other derelict spaces in Dublin where this could be done
This isn’t the city center either it’s out near the aviva
Same in Cork, but they’ve started building high density, but have it mostly earmarked for social housing, so workers will still have to commute.
Can’t understand it.
That bit can get pretty cramped in spots, particularly the northsouth roads. Some of them are very small. Greyhound track should be apartments soon. Bus depot and and probably the ESB area too.
So I have a weird question,It seems the general debate pulling apart here is kicking people out of their homes vs development of new apartment blocks to house “more” people.
So here it goes… If you are proposing force buying these, who should get to benefit from the building projects? Do you think we should let it go to the highest bidder i.e. give it off to investment/vulture funds to build and either sell or rent? Should the county council be in charge of designing building, if thats the case would you expect a certain standard?Or dose none of that matter? dose simply adding additional rooms in dublin for people justify any means?
I know …ugh details  But I would be curious if any details would change anyone’s mind over what should be done or if the end result is the only thing that matters
That is certainly low **rise** housing.
Do you know what the **density** is?
Those houses are tiny, so it’s probably higher than you think.
Areas like that are almost heritage sites now and part of the Dublin aesthetic and I actually don’t believe we should level all of them to build high rises.
That being said I still think we needs LOTS of high rises and there is plenty of empty lots and old garages and plenty of areas not considering like those places which could easily.
Trouble is most ppl in gov don’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to housing they don’t know materials or people who will build things for a decent price they only seem to know the top dogs who usually know how to squeeze out the most profit and build less for more rather than what we need which is buildings 15 storeys with multiple apartments per floor and all to quality.
I know it wouldn’t be popular but we are short workers in that industry I would be fine if we had to bring in foreign nationals to get these emergency projects done asap like 100 lads from China to help or wherever we can get them 🤷🏻♂️
Also I hope we stop and consider other projects as we do this like parks, schools, infrastructure, bike lanes, traffic, community!! When go to major cities across Europe the cities are built amazingly trees everywhere with underground and bars and shops like you can be surrounded by 10million people and you don’t feel it, Dublin you have 1.5million and every street you walk and road you drive you know you are in a congested city overflowing we our building a bad reputation every year for being an expensive, dirty, slow, not much to do city
Meanwhile I saw this pic posted in the Toronto subreddit yday. Amazing how allergic we are to development
https://ibb.co/jZrFjtZ
Terraced housing is hardly “low density”, is it? It’s still better that the sprawling housing estates the suburbs are being filled with.
You’d fit some amount of apartments there.
Great post, no easy answer to this but glad to see debates happening.
Georgian urban planning around the turn of the 19th century saw a far more controlled development of the city. It set out a range of housing types based on proximity to the city centre. Everything from the townhouses surrounding Stephens green and Merrion square, to these terraced bungalows at what was then the perimeter of the city. They can be seen all around the north and south circular roads in places like Stoneybatter and Saint Catherine’s.
They represent a bold plan to organise and structure the growth of the city, and established street widths and densities appropriate for their proximity to local businesses and amenities. I think this is a big part of why they are so protected now, because they’re indicative of a bygone era where we proactively designed our cities future.
The thing is they were originally built on greenfield, peripheral farm land, the kind of outward sprawl we can no longer afford. To harness that same vision and planning for the city we would need to relocate or rehouse a huge portion of city centre residents. We have the design solutions to replace them with nicely detailed, appropriate density, mixed use typologies, but the challenges are more political/economical.
A story comes to mind of a Dutch city Maastricht, where historic but underperforming city centre houses were inhabited by elderly residents and the council wanted to regenerate the area. The existing residents were offered two options, to stay in the area and be housed in the new higher density apartments, or to be relocated further out of the city in equivalent low density houses.
What stood out to me about this story was that the Dutch council took a very involved and communicative approach to solving this problem. They took responsibility for the need for the city to evolve and also to find places for their residents to relocate, so as not to punish them for something bigger than their individual property ownership concerns.
Ireland has such an incessant history of leaving the growth and evolution of our towns and cities in the hands of large corporate developers. Developers who don’t engage with locals, and it’s not their job to worry about where they might be relocated to. And it’s exactly this individualistic approach that leads to nimbyism and resistance to change. A market led approach to urbanism is precarious for all, and because the state refuses to take responsibility for how the city needs to grow we end up at a stand still.
We need leadership and vision akin to that which formed these Georgian blocks. But we don’t need these Georgian blocks, at least the low density ones.
Fuck NIMBYs
Low density? I could fit three families into each of those. 4 if there’s a shed
But the Poolbeg stacks are A-OK.
Everyone is saying what a tragedy it is that there are pleasant, non-dystopic houses to live in in the centre of one of the world’s wealthiest cities. No one has suggested that the solution is not to make dublin overcrowded and dystopic, but to move jobs out of Dublin and decentralise the country’s economy. This is possible today more than ever before, now that the Internet means offices on the opposite side of the country can work together.
the streets where I grew up. This picture brings back so many memories 🙂 since when did D4 become part of the city centre ? The angle this picture is taken at doesn’t even face the city centre lol
Look, we should just raze the whole city, and build a 1km x 1km x 1km cube instead with horizonal and vertical lifts and a park on the roof for like whoever can afford that. Then we can rezone the rest of “Dublin” to raise more beef.
I have a newsletter if you’re interested in subscribing? I think OP already does.
I mean I’d say a lot of Europe would look like this if WW2 didn’t flatten everything
Let’s first do something about the over 1000 empty/abandoned building and unbuilt land in Dublin hogged by developers and kept empty to hike property before talking about our ‘low density’ houses. The current crisis is NOT because of the lack of building sites.
I just checked the density of this area.
The triangle between Gordon St and Doris St has a population density of 20,879.69 per square Km.
Compare to the area between raglan Rd and Raglan Lane densities of 6,881.55 per square km
Both of similar eras I’m assuming, both very close to the city centre, but if we’re gung ho about demolishing one, could we not demolish the other? And prioritise the least dense, most city centre areas?
I wonder what nearly 21k per sq km cities look like if we compared.
I’m Not saying we should go any one way or another. All I’m saying is I’m not so sure how “low density” housing this is with regards Dublin City.
Living in Madrid, NOTHING is low density. Flats everywhere, public transport is phenomenal. Would love to see more flats built, and a good public transport system would truely shrink the country solving so many counties biggest issues.
These houses should be deemed ‘end of life’ and owners should be allowed develop them to 2 story homes. If the same easing of planning were to occur for corpo house (adding a 3rd floor) we could have owner led higher density quite quickly I believe
Should be a mandatory purchase of that land and redevelopment into a super block ala the netherlands or barcelona. Absolute insanity that we have 1-2 story houses within the city center.
3-4 story apartment blocks could house 2-4x as many people and have more businesses and amenities.
This isn’t low density at all. Dublin City Centre actually has a population density comparable to most European cities. Bout the same as Amsterdam iirc.
I am from America (Los Angeles), and moved to Ireland a few years ago for work. I am not saying that it is a bad thing per se, however I’ve noticed that there is a significant cultural difference between Ireland and the US (and many other European Countries) regarding density in urban areas.
One of the issues with the housing market (amongst many others) is that many people want to live in the Dublin metro area, however there is a general aversion to the two solutions allowing this to be possible. When there is high demand in a specific region, you can either build up (like NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia), or build out (extend the metro area with urban/suburban sprawl (like Los Angeles or Houston).
When you land at Dublin Airport, you see many fields and low density upon your approach, despite only being 5 miles from the city center. There is clearly the space to extend bona-fide suburbs beyond the M50 perimiter. Dublin can obviously build up as well. I understand there may be some obejctions in teh more historic downtown/quay area, however I see no reason why zoning can’t allow for an area with moder high-rise buildings near the city center. Dublin, while gorgeous, doesn’t have a skyline at all and the most distinctive feature when looking at a panoramic photo is that smokestack at the end of the river.
I do not mean this in a critical way, however as an outsider I’ve noticed that compared to the US and GB (where I’ve also lived), people in Ireland tend to have more trivial NIMBY complaints with planning, and the planning system is both far too slow and overly-accomodating to those contesting. While the voices of the community should certainly be taken into consideration, developments (whether residential or commercial) should be able to commence in the face of trivial appeals by a small handful of Karens.
It’s crazy to me that low density here is one story, low density in my town is three stories, with the top story being an attic. I don’t know where my closest one story building is.
Grew up in the area. Near this photo. Can confidently assert that this thread is end to end some of the silliest self-serving nonsense I’ve read in quite a while.
Contrary to what people on here seem to think, this area is still full of locals, multi generational in many cases, who have no interest in your plans and own their houses.
Also, just over on the grand canal dock a vast area was developed in the last decade. What is it now? Wall to wall private rentals for cuckoo funds and empty offices.
Delusional if you think an Irish government can be trusted not to preference developers in any such transaction.
Damn, this would be considered unallowably high density in most of the US
Just because there’s a few odd hectares of bungalows in Dublin and a few skyscrapers in some other European city, does not mean Dublin is a low density city by European standards. The numbers refute this notion. Forcing people to give up their homes should be far down the list of priorities.
Look at that skyline
Going to sound like a cunt here but the flats in the city centre piss me off. Cuffe St is absolutely prime real estate given over to 4 dilapidated floors of council flats and small houses. This is right beside St Stephen’s green.
The opinions of around half the posters in this thread make me doubt that the housing issues will be solved in Ireland anytime soon- there is a total lack of basic logic when it comes to solving these problems and a strong degree of NIMBYism, often towards preserving what are essentially ugly early 20th century utilitarian builds. Meanwhile, most single people have to rent mouldy closets for 1000 euro a month while sharing a bathroom with multiple strangers. It’s a total embarrassment.