Blog 15_ Housing Plan B
I like your affordable housing proposals says one correspondent, but you'll never get planning permission for that. All those whose views of the sea are impacted plus the usual NIMBY brigade, he suggests, will band together and try to put a stop to it so you better have a Plan B ready
Actually, I am confident that planning permission would be granted because it is in everyone's interest to build a large quantity of affordable homes for sale. We are in the middle of a Housing "disaster" (President Higgin's word) with a whole generation stuck in their family-home bedrooms or paying eye-watering rents and unable to buy a home of their own.
Many local residents who might think of objecting are already living on land reclaimed from the sea in the past . Furthermore, all of them will have adult children/grandchildren (or will have friends/neighbours who have adult children/grandchildren) who would like to buy a home near where they grew up but can't find anything affordable.
The question they have to ask themselves is: do they want their adult children/grandchildren living a hundred kilometres away, where they rarely see them and are unable to offer assistance should a family emergency occur, or, would they put up with a little local inconvenience, and instead have them living nearby where they can see them frequently?
On the other hand, I am an Engineer, so, just in case, I can offer a Plan B but, it will mean going higher and denser. The diameter of the inlet varies along its length from 300m at the Fairview Park end to 900m further out. Plan B would involve reclaiming a strip of land on the industrial/port side but still leaving 250m minimum of Bay area unaffected.
Just a stones throw away on East Wall road, on the banks of the Tolka River, a new development is under construction: the East Wharf scheme. It comprises a mix of a hotel, some retail and commercial plus a large number of apartments (all Build To Rent). The hotel is 15 stories tall which sets a planning precident for the area. By raising each new apartment block to 15 stories and placing them closer together it will still be possible to construct 20,000 studio apartments on the smaller site.
A corollary of this change would be that, while the new apartments will be secured from the impact of future climate induced storm surges and sea rise, there will be no additional protection for the north city generally.