Dublin has no houses. I fucking hate it. Episode over. Everyone’s already angry. Done. Dusted. Quick and simple, unlike the construction of new homes. I don’t need to tell you to be angry about the housing shortage, I know you already are. Indeed, I’m one of the “lucky” ones to have a place to stay in suburbia, a paradise filled with big houses, and even bigger cars, fucking the planet one nitrous oxide sneeze at a time. How have we become the carpark of Europe? How does such a small city have such long commutes? How does such a large city have no metro? Where are all the fucking houses? We are the literal textbook definition of urban sprawl, it’s quite ridiculous.
My opening admonition initially included the line,
“Presuming the Irish government gets its finger out of its ass to solve the crisis, new dwellings will be built, and at record numbers.”
I realised that this is far too big a jump to make, when it comes to housing we cannot simply assume any Irish government will be able to meaningfully solve this issue, despite what they might say on a debate stage. Credit given where credit is due [1]. I am still waiting for units to be delivered. It is understandable that everyone is angry at what we don’t have, however I’m equally angry at what we currently have, and want as much energy to be devoted to shaping the city we will inherit as to willing the housing crisis to be solved. However, irrespective of housing shortages, how the necessary units are supplied will change how we interact with our city. So:
- Why haven’t we built more units?
- Why does our current situation suck?
- What can be done?
When considering our housing crisis, the phrase, “If it were easy, it would be done already”, springs to mind. Firstly, this is not an easy problem to address. Secondly, even if it were easy, that doesn’t mean our government could, or would, do shit. But why isn’t it easy just to build new houses? Most answers revolve around space, and planning, with an additional sprinkle of money. Nothing gets built for free, this is simple stuff. People must be paid and people must profit. But in Western countries, whilst there are many people who are happy to profit, there are not enough people who would like to be paid; we have forgotten how to build [2]. Even when there are enough people, materials, and capital to succeed, a second hurdle stands in our way; archaic planning laws. In Dublin, we can’t build upwards [3]. My right to light trumps your right to live. Preservation of our iconic two-storey skyline has been deemed more important than modernisation, ironic given that no one is able to appreciate it from their top floor window! We must both preserve and modernise. Yes, historic centres are worth keeping, but they weren’t always historic, they were built once upon a time, usually on top of something else, only capable of existing thanks to their predecessors’ removal. Dublin is a city to be lived in, not an antique in an museum. If we refuse to build, our city will be confined to history. And yet, even if most people agree, one well-placed judicial review can delay the delivery of many homes. These delays hark back to the first issue; money.
But money doesn’t feel like the biggest issue we face. Indeed, us fortunate sons who occupy Dublin’s housing stock have become veritable millionaires. We lack the space to build. The M50 isn’t Dublin’s biggest carpark, but it certainly bounds it [4]. There is no space left. Our sprawling suburbs subsume us, having turned all the low hanging fruit into housing estates in the 60s. They beckon us, and they push out, out far beyond the pale itself. [I recently learned that despite occupying a spot within the M50, my manor actually would’ve been beyond the pale, which has been a shock to my South Dublin system, apparently we are culchies too. Within the M50, yet beyond the Pale, what a grim existence]. Whenever a plot does open up in paradise, it is usually met by a chorus of NIMBYs, who sing as beautifully as the church choirs that they’re inevitably a part of. If you choke supply whilst demand remains high, you don’t have to be an economist to realise what happens next. New and old alike, all dwellings have become rather appealing investments. The haves and have nots of home ownership has led to a stark inequality in generational wealth [5]. Since when did homes become investments? Are they a place to live or a place to profit? Some say it can be both, I’m sceptical. I’m not against being a member of our #rentinggeneration, but it needs to be affordable, available, social, not privatised, limited, owned by vultures and cuckoos. Humans need homes, birds don’t! What happens when this bubble pops? Last time, we paid to cover their asses, this time we won’t eat just their cake, we’ll eat the whole body too. I digress. NIBYMism has enabled existing house prices to soar whilst refusing to let new people in. We’re priced out, locked out, moved out. The ladders have been pulled up, the drawbridges raised, the ivory towers as insurmountable as ever.
Wow, what young people face sounds depressing. You’re right, mum, it is, but I haven’t even got to the best part! Even if the suburban oldies all died off and houses became available, why would anyone want to live here? Dublin sucks, what a dismal inheritance! I find Dublin to be lacking. I also find it to be abundant. Lacking in places I want to live, abundant in places I don’t. As I shall repeat, rather than have an adequate supply of homes, we have sprawling semi-d suburbs which have choked the city of any useable space and whose residents have employed the use of archaic planning laws to prevent further construction, lest they have to make small talk with new neighbours. Suburbs weren’t designed to suck, their crafters weren’t malevolent, though the maze-like structure of certain housing estates would be better suited as a home to Pac-Man. And, for the record, in some places, the expansion into the suburbs was a racist/classist attempt to segregate and impoverish those deemed lesser [6]. However, the suburban expansion was also an attempt by planners to solve the urban problems of their time; overcrowding of city centres, and their associated poverty, crime and public health crises. Dense cities weren’t working. There was a growing desire to combine country and city life. In comparison to the alternative, it’s easy to see why suburbs were, and still are, desirable. Who wouldn’t want a house all to himself (gendered on purpose), free from smog, from disease, from nuisance relatives, where kids could grow up, and you could grow old, a garden to call one’s own, a place over which one could exert absolute power and dominion. But as my friend from China once said to me, why do you all have such big gardens you never use?
The desired combination of country and city life has resulted in Dublin, within the M50 but beyond the Pale. I’m sure it’s exactly what they had in mind: a sprawling mess that require cars whose owners have terrifying commutes, and large houses that are hard to heat (and may become hard to cool). Suburbs are boring, snoring, lifeless communities. Suburbs are expensive, bad for the environment, bad for youth, and arguably bad for the soul. This wasn’t intentional, but all designs have consequences. American suburbia takes this to the extreme. They were designed with the assumption that cities and economies would always grow [7]. Spoiler: they don’t. Suburbs are expensive. The farther we spread out, the more pipes, roads, wires, and cables we need. These cost. American cities are realising this, having forgotten the issue of maintenance during design or rather chosen to ignore it. Land taxes can no longer support the necessary infrastructure. The farther we spread out, the more dependent we are on our cars, and the less we can rely on public transport. More space means larger homes. Together, these two requirements mean suburbs have much higher emissions than their urban counterparts [8]. Suburbs isolate us. We are distant from friends. Single-use zoning means we are further from restaurants, shops, pubs, cafés, all which could be easily integrated into their neighbourhoods rather than being distinct from them. As I said earlier, the only thing to do is boring snoring. There are rows and rows of identical, large houses which only serve one demographic. They exclude anyone who wants to live on their own, or couples. We can’t remain in our communities unless we stay with our parents or share, often with strangers. When we grow old, and think about downsizing, again we will be forced to move.
I won’t claim that Dublin suburbs are equivalent to the American Frankenstein monster, but parallels can be drawn.
So, what city do you want to live in? It’s almost a stupid question, a fairytale, not grounded in reality. It’s not about what city I want to live in, it’s about the city I actually live in, however precariously. But if you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? London? Paris? New York? Tokyo? Like many (I would argue that the mere existence of metropoleis is proof that they are attractive to live in as their size demonstrates that there must be an inherent demand to live there.) I’m attracted to the world’s biggest urban centres: bias identified and confirmed. But I reckon most of you are too. The constant cycle of Irish youthful émigrés further highlights the allure of far flung places. Why do I want to live there? I want to have tons of restaurants a mere walk or cycle away, I want to be able to go anywhere with quick, reliable, cheap transport, I want to be able to play sports and watch sports and go to concerts and galleries (allergies) and museums and hang-out with my friends. Nightclubs, cafes wherever I want, whenever I want. I also want a lifestyle that is sustainable without seeming like a sacrifice. I want to be near my friends, and sigh, apparently they want to be near jobs. Major cities offer this life, Dublin does not. Cities work. They are arguably our greatest invention. They changed how we interact with each other, enabling democracies to flourish and ideas to spread. We live longer in cities. Cities are both bastions of culture and economic output. Specifically, dense cities work. Dense cities (or densities lol) mean shorter commutes, and tighter knit neighbourhoods. Density enables public transport that can compete with cars in terms of convenience, but outcompete them in terms of price and carbon emissions. Smaller housing units have less embodied and operational carbon emissions too [9]. Density means sustainability, which cannot be said for its suburban and rural counterparts. Density makes it cheaper to deliver broadband, roads, sewage, water, electricity, public transport. Density provides the population base needed for restaurants, live events, culture. More people, more things to do. It is a basic tenet of 15 minute cities [10]. We should be angry because, despite its city status, Dublin is failing, flailing, floundering to deliver upon the promise of cities.
How do we change things? If we refuse to densify existing urban areas, then we must spread, sprawl, and crawl, like parasites, into the surrounding nature and farmland. Fortunately, we may avoid this path as the Irish government has recognised the need to densify our communities [11]. That’s easier said than done, but at least it’s been said! How can we densify existing suburbs? This question comes to very root of urbanism’s tragedy, it’s existence is a Gordian Knot. The built environment is almost impossible to replace, at least on a human timescale. What do you do when all the space is full? Demolish and rebuild from the ashes? Or confine and resign oneself to tinkering around the edges to bring about improvements at a slow, sluggish pace? But given the large impact of urban design on our behaviour and, subsequently, our emissions, merely doing bits and bobs will not address our climate impact. Everything you see before you in the built environment, no matter how mundane, had a designer. Each design has an intended use, with some designs being much better than others! Most localities are far too old to have considered the importance of climate change during their design stage. And because urban renewal and redevelopment are so costly in terms of both time and money, behavioural lock-in is almost inevitable.
In Dublin, we simultaneously find ourselves being both locked in and locked out. Our space was not designed to optimise carbon, and arguably not happiness either. But things can still be done. We first need to modernise planning law. Then we can add density by adding additional floors to existing buildings, by converting empty offices to dwellings, by knocking down bungalows to builds skyscrapers, by building in our back yards. We also shouldn’t rely on purely private housing. We’ve already had one Celtic Tiger pop, and now we have a severe housing crisis, we should face reality that our current system isn’t working. I have lived in affordable social housing in a far-flung metropolis, and it was brilliant. Social housing doesn’t deserve to be stigmatised, because, at the end of the day, homes are for living. Different home ownership models exist, we need only look to Vienna, or Singapore. For density to work, we also need to accept that apartments are acceptable [12]. We needn’t fantasise, but if we want Dublin to be a city we are proud to call home, then we have to be prepared to work for it, quite literally in the construction sector.
How often do you think about the Roman Empire? Every month? Every week? Every waking hour? I can’t say it’s one of my regular hobbies, but if I am to think about Rome, it’s with a certain level of sadness that all its progress could be lost. Civilisation on hold. Specifically, there is a palpable sadness to the loss of cities. What makes a society last? What makes Ancient Rome captivate the minds of TikTok? Was it ever truly lost? At the rate we’re going I sincerely doubt Dublin will be on the minds of future netizens.
Fin.
[1] Between drafts, the government did do something: The Planning and Development Act, 2024
This 906 page monstrosity has a table of contents 26 pages long, now that’s certainly something! Its Explanatory Memorandum is 124 pages. It is an attempt to streamline planning, and apparently will reduce timescales for the completion of housing and infrastructure. The Opposition disagrees, lol.
[2] We will require an additional 120,000 construction industry workers by 2030 and yet we are currently facing shortages in tradespeople, engineers, and apprentices. Irish Green Building Council
[3] “Dublin City Council acknowledges the intrinsic quality of Dublin as a low-rise city and considers that it should remain predominantly so.” For fuck’s sake. Most of the city is limited to between 16m and 28m.
[4] Dublin is the world’s second most congested city. People who commute by car to the city centre lose 158 hours to traffic every year. The city, itself, is a carpark at rush hours. One thing to note about this study is that car-centric US cities actually perform well. We mustn’t mistake this for having a successful transport system, which I will explain in a later episode.
[5] Homeowners have 97% of Irish wealth, renters have 3%. This wealth is almost entirely linked to the home as an asset. Young people predominantly rent. Enough said.
[6] “City Planning: A Very Short Introduction”, Carl Abbott
Within the US, suburban expansion was deployed on many occasions to exclude Black people and other minorities. After it was ruled unconstitutional to refuse entry to a neighbourhood based on race, economic measures were employed such as redlining.
[7] Not Just Bikes is quite possibly my favourite YouTube channel. All their videos are amazing, but these two I particularly like.
[8] “Triumph of the City”, Edward Glaser
This is a great read on all things urbanism, and along with Not Just Bikes, has informed most of my thinking on the topic.
[9] That size plays a role in carbon emissions is quite intuitive. A bigger house has more space that needs to be heated, and requires more materials to be used in construction. What’s more interesting is that dwelling type has such a large influence on embodied carbon emissions. For example, per square metre semi-detached homes have 33% more embodied carbon than apartments or terraced housing. It’s important to note here that the figure has been normalised on a per area basis. When we consider that semi-detached houses are also, on average, larger than terraces or apartments this difference only rises.
Drewniok, M., P., et al. (2022). Mapping Material Use and Embodied Carbon in UK Construction.
[10] “The 15-Minute City”, Carlos Moreno
Don’t bother with the book, the concept can be summed up in a couple of sentences. Here we go. If all your basic needs can be met by a 15-minute walk or less, you will save time, have less emissions, and will benefit from the joys of living in a vibrant neighbourhood. This can be achieved through a combination of density and human-oriented planning. And no, 15-Minute cities aren’t an attempt to restrict your movements to 15 minute radius of your home.
[12] English speaking countries are suffering the worst from a rise in housing prices whilst supply stagnates, and are most likely to find living in apartments and apartments being built beside them as unacceptable. Coincide? The FT thinks not.
The Angry Generation 
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