Damien Owens
Director General, Engineers Ireland
Prof Carlos Moreno introduced the 15-Minute City at COP21 in 2015; it quickly gained popularity in urban planning worldwide.
The idea is simple: everyone in a city should be able to access education, healthcare, work and recreation by walking, cycling or public transport — improving quality of life and cutting transport emissions.
Concept of 15-minute cities in Ireland
Despite its significant popularity, the 15-Minute City has been little discussed in the context of Irish public policy, despite a long-standing ambition for more compact urban planning.
A notable exception to this is the City Edge Project, an initiative that aims to reimagine the Naas Road, Ballymount and Park West areas of Dublin as a new urban quarter. Among its objectives are the provision of 40,000 homes and 75,000 jobs in a newly designed urban area that adheres to 15-Minute City principles. Housing is developed with nearby access to social infrastructure, including parks, open spaces, stores, childcare, employment and public transport.
Density is a crucial element to achieving
the compact development necessary
to realise the 15-Minute City concept.
Density in sustainable cities
It must also be borne in mind that density is a crucial element to achieving the compact development necessary to realise the 15-Minute City concept.
Guidelines for Planning Authorities on Residential Density were first issued in September 1999, now replaced by Guidelines for Planning Authorities on Sustainable Residential Development and Compact Settlements, which have continually recommended that these authorities should promote increased residential densities in appropriate locations, including in cities and larger town centres.
Compact development has been promoted as a means of achieving greater affordability in housing, but additionally as a mechanism to curtail CO2 emissions through the reduction of energy consumption and more efficient energy use in the residential and transport sectors.
Building connected cities
Ireland, however, has been slow to adopt higher-density housing. Accordingly, many public transport services are less efficient than they might be. Some, such as underground metropolitan railways, have not been developed at all, despite plans being developed in recent decades.
More concerted efforts must be made to ensure more compact development proliferates in Ireland, with a focus on integrated and proximate amenities, if we are to create more sustainable urban environments and address our present housing crisis. Like with most infrastructure, investment in our cities and towns will never be cheaper than it is today.
