Evidence that the multitude of elaborate planning policies introduced in this country in the past fifteen years had any beneficial effect on the quality of Tiger era development is hard to produce. These policies sure were elaborate and their outcomes sure were disappointing: normal democratic procedures were suspended to secure the efficient urbanisation of Dublin’s Docklands - the result is a featureless Mediterranean-resort-grid-iron of low rise streets lacking life or character. The acclaimed Adamstown experiment – the first of our Special Development Zones – feels unnatural and contrived. And hundreds of pages of planning policies couldn’t save Sandyford and Belmayne from becoming the vortices of woe they were to become. Housing developments and retail centres all over the country, the approvals for which took months and even years of deliberating over, second guessing and objecting to are, at their very best, unremarkable. At their worst, they’ve left big scars on cities like Galway and hollowed chunks out of towns like Carlow. If the development which took place in this country since the end of the 90s had happened without the benefit of a planning system, it wouldn’t have made a whole lot of difference.
But while the planning system has had no noticeable effect on the quality of our built environment, it certainly has had a very noticeable effect on our financial situation. There are many ways in which the Irish economy has been weighed down by an unthought-through planning system, but let me suggest just three:
Three negative effects on the economy caused by the Irish planning system and, because planning systems in other countries wouldn’t allow these situations to develop, specific to Ireland.
Which leads me to my question: if X is the degree to which the average western economy is in the hole as a result of the economic recession and Y is the larger degree to which the Irish economy is in the hole, does X – Y = the cost the Irish planning system?