In the meantime many western cities are shrinking and have been forced to reinvent themselves. Dublin, transformed in little more than a decade, is a case in point. Although increasing, the population within the canals remains a fraction of what it was in the 19th century.
Dublin’s experience is replicated in other centres. Despite an increase in population of more than 50% in less than half a century, the 2006 census shows a clear pattern across the republic: the inner city and rural areas are losing out to the suburbs.
Even as the influx of immigrants has brought life and vitality to our city centres — with an estimated 167 languages now in daily use — more and more of us are choosing to settle in suburbia.
This year the Venice Biennale has abandoned glorification of architectural icons in favour of provoking a debate on the way we shape the future of urban society. It is an urgent attempt to re-engage the physical structure of cities — their buildings, spaces and streets, the domain of architects and urban designers — with the social, cultural and economic dimensions of urban life.
Cities: Architecture and Society, curated by Ricky Burdett, a professor at the London School of Economics, examines 16 cities. The largest metropolis he has studied is Tokyo, with a population exceeding 35m, followed by Mexico City, New York and São Paulo, all approaching 20m.
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Even the smaller conurbations under analysis, such as Barcelona and Milan-Turin, have populations roughly comparable with that of the Republic of Ireland — which, at 4.2m, is higher than at any time since 1861.
Why, then, do we never think of the country as a single entity, at least in terms of physical planning? Fragmenting the task across scores of competing authorities has caused us to lose sight of the big picture.
The republic’s population will grow by more than one-third in the next generation — to 5.8m — according to the upper range of projections by the Central Statistics Office. How can such growth be accommodated and what are the implications for the quality of life? Many car commuters, faced with daily journeys of three or four hours, feel the elastic is about to snap. Family life is under pressure, communities are atomised and the countryside’s future is uncertain.
For years Dublin’s suburban expansion has been springing up as far away as Wexford and Cavan. One-third of the homes in the state have been built since 1995. We are building houses at seven times the German rate and four times the EU average.
Satellite photographs show thick brown rings surrounding Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork — an urban growth pattern that is unlike any other country in Europe.
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Irish development issues are unique. Our sprawl is driven by a national obsession with the car — at an annual average of 25,000km per car, we drive more than any other nation, even the US — as well as an innate desire to live on the land. But the oil that sustains us is running out.
Add to this the country’s underdeveloped infrastructure network, the absence of co- ordinated national planning, an overreliance on market forces and the localism and lack of political will engendered by our system of multiseat constituencies, and it is easy to see why Ireland has become a global case study in extreme suburbanisation.
Will we be happy with more of the same between now and 2030? If we need a solution, it is clear it will not come from the top. We must discover it for ourselves — one car at a time, one home after the other.
This is the territory Michelle Fagan, Paul Kelly and Gary Lysaght of FKL Architects — who won the Irish Architecture Foundation’s competition to curate Ireland’s entry to this biennale — has staked out for itself in Venice, to offer alternative visions for the Ireland of 2030. FKL has joined nine leading Irish architects in the task.
It has sought to harness the Irish desire to live in low- to medium-density housing built around a road-based infrastructure. The result will be the creation of a hybrid development model that features the best characteristics of rural and urban life. FKL calls this approach — which values land for its intrinsic qualities, not as a location for a one-off cash crop of housing to replace lost agricultural production — SuperRural.
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In its exhibit, it shows how dispersed housing along the nation’s motorway hinterland could become ecologically friendly through the exploitation of biomass crops that could be turned into fuel to support a local car culture augmented by efficient bus services over longer distances.
Dublin-London is among the world’s busiest air routes. Short-haul flights are fuel inefficient and may not be viable by 2030. To protect Ireland’s globalised economy, Heneghan Peng, rising stars of world architecture, proposes a high-speed rail bridge from Rosslare to Fishguard.
Henchion + Reuter Architects are also fascinated by trains, which rarely work in Ireland because the population is scattered so widely. They argue that if the 1.6m new residents we expect were to settle only within the corridors between the big cities, Ireland could achieve the critical mass needed to support Danish-style high-speed trains (as in the graphic). This would have the effect of shrinking the productive part of the island, cutting the travel time between Dublin and Sligo to 48 minutes, for example.
Fluidcity by Dominic Stevens is a riverborne caravanserai of urban amenities, a moving city that appears overnight then departs to a new location, once a week bringing the buzz of urban life to 250,000 people living beside the Shannon.
While some of the exhibits propose solutions to pressing problems, others pose questions that have scarcely entered our consciousness. Boyd Cody Architects asks what we would do if we could start from scratch with an extra county. By 2030 the vast wetland of Ireland’s Boora Complex, the size of a small county, will be ready for reuse after Bord na Mona’s peat reserves run out.
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De Paor Architects, observing that at current rates of output we will build 500,000 houses in the countryside by 2030 — requiring road frontage four times the length of the Irish coastline — looks at the impact a ban on building on virgin land might have: what if you could only build up, not out? And what if we do nothing at all? ODOS Architects, working with the graphic artist BrenB, present Vertical Sprawl, a cautionary tale told in comic-book style, of what happens when horizontal suburban expansion is no longer possible. None of the scenarios FKL and its team have produced are predictions, however. They are stories whose importance lies in the conversations they will spark and the decisions they inform.
While continuing to celebrate our rugged individualism, Irish society must come to grips with the fact that our futures are interconnected. A new disposition towards the land is needed, ditching the old urban-rural divide in favour of a vision that treats our small island, town and countryside, as an integrated entity. Let the debate begin.
Shane O’Toole is Irish commissioner for the Venice Biennale 10th international architecture exhibition