Das ist etwas, was mir schon seit einiger Zeit im Kopf herumschwirrt.
Ich habe zwei Bilder desselben Ortes am Rande einer Stadt wie Wexford hinzugefügt. Das eine zeigt, was wir gerade bauen. Ein Anwesen mit geringer Bebauungsdichte mit kurvigen Straßen, Sackgassen, Doppelhäusern und Einfamilienhäusern, jedes mit einer Auffahrt und einem kleinen Garten. Von oben sieht es ordentlich aus, aber es frisst absolut Land für sehr wenig Ertrag.
Das zweite Bild (mit KI erstellt) zeigt, wie derselbe Standort aussehen könnte, wenn er anders geplant wäre. Ganz normale, moderne, 4–5-stöckige Wohnblöcke. Höfe statt endloser Straßen. Gemeinsame Grünflächen und begehbare Straßen. Man könnte zwei, drei oder sogar viermal so viele Menschen auf demselben Grundstück unterbringen, ohne dass es überhaupt beengt wirkt.
Jetzt bietet sich tatsächlich die Chance, es anders zu machen, während Wexford oder andere Städte in der Region sich immer noch ausbreiten. Anstatt eine weitere Generation der Zersiedelung einzudämmen, könnten wir Wohnungen mittlerer Dichte bauen, die für eine wachsende Stadt tatsächlich sinnvoll sind.
Was wir jetzt bauen, fördert die Zersiedelung, was wir seit der Junior-Zertifizierungsphase gelernt haben. Geographie ist in irischen Städten ein Problem. Jede neue Siedlung verdrängt die Stadt weiter. Alles wird standardmäßig autoabhängig. Busse machen keinen Sinn mehr. Die Infrastruktur kostet pro Haus mehr und wir werden mit ausgedehnten Vorstädten wie in den USA enden.
Das Verrückte ist, dass dies weder radikal noch ungetestet ist. Österreich, Deutschland, die Niederlande, Frankreich, Spanien und ihre regionalen Städte bauen seit Jahrzehnten so. Wohnungen gelten nicht als letzter Ausweg. In ihnen leben Familien und das ist ganz normal.
Irland und das Vereinigte Königreich sind die Sonderlinge. Wir tun immer so, als ob jeder ein Haus mit Garten haben möchte, während die Menschen in Wirklichkeit aus dem auswählen, was verfügbar ist. Und was wir immer wieder zur Verfügung stellen, ist die am wenigsten platzsparende Option.
Ich verstehe, warum es passiert. Es ist einfacher, eine Genehmigung zu erhalten. Es stößt auf weniger Einwände. Entwickler kennen das Modell. Stadträte hören nicht auf Einwände. Aber es ist kurzfristiges Denken.
Bearbeiten: Ich sollte erwähnen, dass man im zweiten Bild Einzelhandelseinheiten oder sogar eine Kinderkrippe im Erdgeschoss unterbringen könnte, sodass es einen gemischten Zweck hat.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1qocgt8
Von SteveFrench1991
33 Kommentare
1. Public Demand
2. Cost
I don’t like it either but it really all boils down to that.
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.
stopped reading after generated using AI
I like your point but there isn’t nearly enough parking in your image, not with how we currently travel
I want a house. I’ve lived in appartments. too many cunts
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.
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.
People would rather not live on top of each other with no private outdoor space, shocking.
Surely high density like this is better suited to town and city centres?
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.
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‘.
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.
It costs more to build apartments.
Apart from the obvious lack of parking spaces in the second picture, it would be absolutely impossible to get planning permission for this.
>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.
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.
That second image is a Ballymun waiting to happen. One bad family is all it takes and there’s no escape.
You don’t start with density.
It goes
……Single home…….single home……
Then
…home…home…home…home…
Then
ApartmentbuildingApartmentbuilding
This idea of instaurban density from the get go is just asking for the kind of social strife that drives the far right to power.
You cannot box people en masse. End of. Build houses or keep it in your pants so the next generation has housing.
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.
Apartments are actually more expensive to deliver per unit than semi-Ds so they are only really suitable in urban settings.
Developers don’t like building apartments because the costs can be higher than building semi-D’s
>Why?
Becuase middle class, educated, €100K+ household incomes want to live the same lifestyle that they grew up as a kid and they don’t want to live in an apartment.
[https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/number-of-empty-homes-surging-in-three-key-areas-of-melbourne-20251121-p5nhgn.html](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/number-of-empty-homes-surging-in-three-key-areas-of-melbourne-20251121-p5nhgn.html)
Looks like an American suburb
Ah come off it. People do not want to live in apartments in rural towns in Ireland.
Wexford town is over 100km from the nearest major city (Cork or Dublin). You go 100km away from any major city in any of the countries you mentioned and you won’t be finding apartments. It will be one off houses or small housing estates like this.
No one is ‚pretending they want a house with a garden‘. People want a house with a garden. It’s a desirable thing to have.
We need to stop framing having a house as some luxury.
We have a very low population density, having a house outside of the major cities should be completely normal and achievable.
A developer is able to make a few shillings from option 1.
The conversation is over. There is no more conversation, who are you talking to? There’s nobody here. We’ve reached the end of the story, there’s nothing more to talk about.
I’m sorry, are you STILL here? Was there something unclear about line one?
The DEVELOPER. Can MAKE SOME MONEY. From option 1. Annnnnnd we’re done.
omg it takes lot of land all those semi detached house possible fit into 12 floor tower apartments.
Our private sector is not geared to do this
-They don’t have the experience and do what they know
-They most importantly, do not have mass indepth planning needed for high density, they just build what land they have. They build mass apartments with current planning, will be a disaster like outer french Banlieus/Ballymun, no connection with places of work, commerce, transport or social spaces
-Inflation plus a nation of gougers , every process of building high denisty will be expensive, which is not what we need. We need things built so uniform and practical, by efficiency prices to buy go down, but that will be low return for the investor
-We still have naysayers about apartments
A Public lead urbanism approach is needed. Make a public construction firm, cut planning red tape , and make apprenticeship wage slightly above minimum . Choose one medium city , (i’d recommend limerick due to street layouts and flatness) , and destroy it as a construction site for a few years, high rise apartments with a good tram network / uniform style bike lanes with thought of where living spaces are in relation to people’s needs , public emminities like parks, carspace on the outskirts near tram terminals, train to nearest airport .., bla bla, use one city as a proof of pudding, that’ll shut people up when people realise, wow i can get from a to b in 15 mins, can walk by nice local shops from the tram stop after work, and there’s a nice public to eat your sandwhich. Proof of pudding , the city is set up to scale for large new comers, people can sieve off Dublin so pricing gies down there, that you can affordably fix that mess of anti-urbanism
Not everyone wants to live life like a sardine.
The Netherlands do it with very few apartments too. Just terraced houses, often 3 story, smaller gardens, and small or driveways.
We started these type of developments in the 60’s and it has been a disaster. It’s one of the reasons we have such expensive electricity, such bad public transport and we’re not reaching our climate targets.
Just because you want to live in an apartment doesn’t mean we all have to.
>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.
Under the towns and suburbs category in the drop down menu the rate of people in the Netherlands living in apartments is slightly lower than Ireland.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/interactive-publications/housing/2025/02/index.html
It would also not be normal for families to live in apartments there. 20% of the population and 37% of households (according to their census) translates to an average household in this category as not much higher than 1 person per household (it’s reported elsewhere that about 40% of households in NL are single people households).
There isn’t the same level of demand for apartments in smaller towns than there is in major cities, this is the case in much of the rest of Europe likewise,
I agree 100%. Coming from Italy, it shocked me that Ireland has so many houses and almost no apartments.
I have lived in apartments my whole life and in a house only for about 2 years now. I can see the advantages of a house for a family with little kids but whenever my parents or my inlaws come to visit, stairs are a problem for them. And when it’s just me and my husband, a house is too big and lots of space is unused.
A balcony is something I do need, a garden is just another place I need to keep tidy.
I don’t know about Wexford, but having lived in Limerick I think a larger number of well built apartments would suit a growing population very well.
It is what politicians, planning officials, builders, developers, architects and people understand. Very much a case of what will approved and what people won’t object to. It is terrible and there are some many people to blame. But it is the way planning has always been done in Ireland.
Lack of urban planning enforcement and a suburban and colonial mindset towards urban development.
If An Bord Pleanala and other planning agencies made it obligatory to have a well planned and organised proposal, in terms of design, before approval, things like this wouldn’t happen.
Another thing would be modifying the appeals system so that people couldn’t appeal to their culs de sac being connected to new developments.