This is something that’s been doing my head in for a while.

I’ve added two images of the same site on the edge of a town like Wexford. One shows what we’re actually building now. A low-density estate with curved roads, cul-de-sacs, semi-Ds and detached houses, each with a driveway and a bit of garden. It looks orderly from above, but it absolutely eats land for very little return.

The second image (generated using AI) shows what the same site could look like if it was planned differently. Just normal, modern, 4–5 storey apartment blocks. Courtyards instead of endless roads. Shared green space and walkable streets. You could house two, three, even four times as many people on the same land without it feeling cramped at all.

Now is actually the chance to do it differently, while Wexford or other regional towns are still sprawling outward. Instead of locking in another generation of sprawl, we could be building medium-density housing that actually makes sense for a growing town.

What we’re building now promotes sprawl which we've been learning since junior cert geography is a problem in Irish cities. Every new estate pushes the town further out. Everything becomes car-dependent by default. Buses stop making sense. Infrastructure costs more per house and we'll end up with sprawling suburbia like in the US.

The mad thing is this isn’t radical or untested. Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, their regional towns have been building like this for decades. Apartments aren’t seen as a last resort. Families live in them and it’s just normal.

Ireland and the UK are the odd ones out. We keep pretending everyone wants a house with a garden, when in reality people choose from what’s available. And what we make available, over and over again, is the least space-efficient option.

I get why it happens. It’s easier to get approved. It attracts fewer objections. Developers know the model. Councillors don’t get an earful from objections. But it’s short-term thinking.



—
SteveFrench1991

19 comments

  1. 1. Public Demand

    2. Cost

    I don’t like it either but it really all boils down to that.

  2. There’s no joined up thinking. A few houses in a site are grand but if you look at the big picture it’s more urban sprawl, people are further away from town centers which means a car is necessary so roads get clogged etc.

    Also people are crying out for cheap apartments as a starter home or for a single person who doesn’t want to pay rent all their lives but they’re forced into a 3 bedroom house in the middle of nowhere.

  4. I like your point but there isn’t nearly enough parking in your image, not with how we currently travel

  5. I want a house. I’ve lived in appartments. too many cunts

  6. High density living has a terrible reputation because we’ve done it so badly. It’s hard to swing people away from the ‘1/6 acre with a house and two car drive’ design until the alternative is shown to be good enough to raise a family in, at least for several years.

  7. I’d say both options are unsuitable for such a site. You have a point, but it’s not just high vs. low density. High density can only work with adequate proximity to your daily needs – shops, services, schools, and public transport. How far is it from the town center? Can I walk there easily? Can I cycle there easily? Where does the bus stop? Do I have these options at all? If yes, then higher densities can work. If not, and it’s far away from all of the above, it encourages more car traffic and all the associated problems.

  8. People would rather not live on top of each other with no private outdoor space, shocking.

  9. Surely high density like this is better suited to town and city centres?

  10. What is the land zoned for?

    Unless it is zoned for high density then there is zero point putting in the application for your idea.

    Like Ennis, one of the fastest growing towns in the country, has zero land zoned for high density.

    Unless is estates and town houses they dont want to year about them.

    Also there is a huge increase in per unit cost 9f apartments compared to houses.

  11. Yeah, it’s the 1950s dream of suburbia, completely ignoring the crisis on hand. Outrageous. People living on the street yet it’s business as usual for all *the lads* involved in this ‘project’.

  12. Ive lived in Continental European apartments and in Houses in Estates in Ireland, and I can tell you Houses in an estate with a front and back garden are far superior for raising a family.

    You can have all of the shared community spaces you’d like, but they won’t get used. Your own back garden, and a place to park your car in front of the house is honestly under appreciated once you lose it.

    Agreed we should be building dense housing in Urban areas, like between the canals in Dublin, but I wouldn’t want to raise my family there, I’d prefer to live outside the centre and have some space that is for my own exclusive use.

  14. Apart from the obvious lack of parking spaces in the second picture, it would be absolutely impossible to get planning permission for this.

  15. >We keep pretending everyone wants a house with a garden, when in reality people choose from what’s available. 

    Your entire theory is based off of this premise and it is false.

    We build houses because that’s what people want. We build houses with gardens because that’s what people want. Developers tried to reduce the minimum size for gardens a few years ago to increase density and there was a lot of whinging about it.

    It is mind-numbing how often we have to hear stuff like “did you know in Austria we do this” or “in France they do that”. Ok, but we don’t give a fuck. It is infuriating how people default to Ireland is wrong and everyone else is right, is it some sort of inferiority complex?

    In Ireland there is no real culture of apartment living for families. People do not want to raise their families in apartments. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just the reality. We build houses because people want to live in houses, the same as what they grew up in.

    High density in city centres? Sure, it makes sense. High density housing in suburbia, or even outside suburbia. It’s literally the worst of both worlds and there would be very little appetite for it here.

  16. People don’t want to live in apartments because it’s shite. People want their own outdoor space and privacy, my experience renting apartments over the years turned me off them completely and I bought a house instead.

  17. That second image is a Ballymun waiting to happen. One bad family is all it takes and there’s no escape.

  18. A big issue is people would have to pay more to live in those apartments than in the houses so developers would lose out to competitors selling houses.

    It’s mad that apartments cost so much to build but apparently that’s the way it is.

  19. Apartments are actually more expensive to deliver per unit than semi-Ds so they are only really suitable in urban settings.

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