Dublin and St Paul’s Cathedral
December 10th, 2010
From the beginning of my search for information on who was building what and to what standard in these islands I came across the Dublin approach time and again. From Metwork who have several projects in Eiré and where I found this article:-
Today, as well as minimum room and apartment sizes, the Irish Department of the Environment (DoE) and Dublin City Council (DCC) require new developments to observe minimum room dimensions and rules on orientation. Single-aspect dwellings just be avoided where possible and no northern or eastern single-aspect dwellings are allowed, thereby requiring new apartments to be dual aspect and eliminating corridor developments at a stroke.Metwork_How-to-make-room-for-housing_AJ_080313.pdf
When they don’t know about aspect they take the trouble to find out, instead of just building the wretched things…
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The Metwork article linked above includes a table that has within it a column for aspect. In no other housing standards table to date have I seen a requirement to list the aspect (single or dual) of a proposed development and my reaction is that this is very progressive. The article also includes an extract from Sustainable Urban Housing published by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in Dublin. I looked that up and found it here:-
2.2 However, even with these increased recommended space standards, it would not be in the interests of sustainable development if all apartments barely met those standards. Accordingly, both planning authorities and developers should take appropriate steps to ensure that a significant proportion of apartments in a proposed scheme exceed the minimum standards.
http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/DevelopmentandHousing/Planning/FileDownLoad%2C15335%2Cen.pdf
I chose that paragraph more or less at random and yet the common sense shines out.
So it is with no surprise that the following news is reported in the AJ online that the Dublin planners are restricting the heights of buildings in that fair city.
Tall buildings restricted in Dublin
10 December, 2010
The height of any new tall buildings in Dublin will be limited to just seven storeys after councillors voted to back the final draft of the City Development Plan 2011-2017. . .
The maximum height measures are even more acute in the city suburbs, where restrictions will mean that both residential and office buildings must not be built above four storeys high.
Under the plans agreed by councillors, buildings around certain city ‘hubs’ such as major rail stations will be allowed to reach six storeys tall.
. . .
Unfortunately the situation is more complicated than it would at first appear. It is not that Dublin has high rise buildings and the planners are seeking to restrict the height of future projects. It is that Dublin is mainly low rise and the planners are seeking to restrict the height of anything built in the future in those low lying areas and this is understandably causing consternation to the residents of areas that may be so affected. This approach is not popular with residents groups who object to what they see as tall buildings in low rise areas:-
Residents’ groups oppose height plans
I sincerely hope that Dublin never faces what’s been needed in London to protect the views of St Pauls.
UPDATE: An interesting comment from another Guardian article about the Dublin suburbs I can’t resist reproducing here in the interests of balance:-
Spoutwell11 July 2009 12:47PM
If you don’t like modern living in tower blocks why not pay a visit to the Irish countryside successfully destroyed in the last 30 years by lax planning laws so that there is practically no countryside left.
After the hunter/gatherer era and the emergence of urban living it became necessary to find realistic ways to accommodate millions of people in cities. Tower blocks happen to be one realistic way of housing people in an urban environment.
Dublin city occupies the same area as Paris with one eighth of its population because Dublin developers and planners were so keen to avoid building tower blocks. The resultant sprawling housing estates have resulted in traffic congestion, poor public transport, social alienation and lack of access to social services.
Having lived in a tower block a couple of miles from Camberwell, I know that the community spirit there was something non-existent in most housing estates.
Harry Phibbs has put forward no solution to the problems of maintaining tower blocks. Rather than running down the ‘filth’ he turns up his nose at, he should check out tower blocks which are run successfully and find out how the maintenence programmes there can be implemented everywhere else.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/11/tower-block-vertical-slums
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With regard to building heights and views I thought it would be instructive to see how London has dealt with the same problem.
In London we have the St Paul’s viewing corridors amply illustrated in this pdf below:-
Click image above for full page
The document in full may be downloaded from >here<
The best exposition I have seen on TV about the St Pauls sightlines has been from Andrew Marr in his series Britain from Above when he devoted a whole section of the programme to the Abercrombie plan for London and to the subject of sightlines.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/buildingbritain/3dmodelling.shtml
The protection of the sightlines to St Pauls from different parts of London are a wonderful thing but the truth is that as the city rises around it, it is necessarily diminished in scale.
There are a series of documents published by the GLA pertaining to the sightlines to St Pauls here:-
http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/planning/vision/supplementary-planning-guidance/view-management
and furthermore an earlier version of the above that I have on the server here:-
London View Management Framework
See also https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=10256