Ciarán Ferrie - Architect on shaping a living city.
“Fundamentally we want Dublin to be a liveable city. You want it to be a city that people want to live in.”
Ciarán Ferrie
Architect and cyclist activist Ciarán Ferrie says a living city is one that's designed for both children and the elderly, for families and young people, not just for transient populations or tourists to visit.
"Fundamentally we want Dublin to be a liveable city. You want it to be a city that people want to live in. And people of all ages and particularly that it would be a place where young families would be would feel comfortable living in so making making Dublin a city where you know you a seven year old can cycle on the streets. If we can focus on getting the city working in that way and it means reducing the amount of cars in the city and that means improving public transport. But most of all it means making the place more comfortable for people to walk and to cycle. And for people of all ages to walk and cycle around the city"
Ferrie is an architect and one of the co-founders of Fumbally Exchange, the creative co-working community in the Newmarket district in Dublin City. He is also one of the forces behind Ava Housing, formerly the Abhaile Project, a not for profit scheme for older homeowners in residential zones to reshape their home for multi-family units, keeping the elderly in the community and also opening up new rental capacity. Ferrie wears many hats and he is also a passionate advocate for a cycling city and part of I BIKE Dublin, a community of people who cycle and want a safer cycling city for all.
For this episode of This is Where We Live Helen Shaw met up with Ciarán at his open plan offices in Fumbally Exchange near lots of new developments like Teeling Whiskey, overlooking the new hotels and student accommodation in the area - but not much new housing.
You can follow Ciaran on twitter at twitter.com/ccferrie
and for more information on Ava Housing go to www.avahousing.ie
Catch up on our housing and cities conversations on www.thisiswherewelive.ieand please do share the podcasts and consider becoming a supporter through patreon www.patreon.com/tiwwl
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Transcript: Ciarán Ferrie - Architect on Shaping a Living City
The city needs to change. The city needs to become more child friendly. Part of that is transport and part of that is the dominance of the cars. That's kind of a catch 22 situation where we've built these residential areas on the outskirts of our cities which rely on private car. And then that increases traffic in the city centre, which then makes it less attractive for people to live in the city centre and see what this loop, which is pushing people out of the city centre to particularly pushing families out of the city centre. And it's changing the nature of our cities. My name is Ciarán Ferrie and I'm an architect in private practice. I'm also involved the fund exchange creative community and a number of other not for profits and so on AVA housing. And I'm also quite active in cycling advocacy in Dublin.
Ciarán Ferrie is an architect with an eye to the road as much as the built environment. I mean, he's very well known for his passionate advocacy and activism for Cycling Safe City. And Ciarán is one of the founders of what started as Abhaile project and is now AVA housing, the not for profit scheme to allow older home owners to reshape their family sized homes and create new rental space. Ciarán's also a co-founder of Fumbally Exchange. The creative co-working community in Newmarket. Newmarket, a really old quarter of Dublin City undergoing major development with new hotels, student halls and offices popping up. I mean, Teeling whiskey is just around the corner and it's pulling in over 100000 visitors a year. I'm Helen Shaw and you're listening to This is Where We Live. A podcast series about shaping great places to live. And architects have a particular insight into how we do that. So I wanted to hear Ciarán's perspective on all that change happening just outside his window. But Ciarán, before we get to that, tell me a little bit about your own story. Where did you go up and what's your own sense of home?
I grew up in Galway in a village called Menlo, which is about three miles outside Galway City. So it's quite a rural area. When we were growing up with a mix of I mean, we were we were blow ins. So we were kind of probably the beginnings of the suburbanization of that part of the city. So but we were, as I said, only three miles from Galway City. So we were very much connected to that as well. So it was kind of a nice balance of the rural life and the urban experience as well. And then I moved to Dublin in 1990 to study architecture and apart from a few soujourns abroad and a brief stay back in Galway. I've been here ever since. So I'm living in Dublin no longer than I ever have to go away at this stage.
And in some ways, you know, you've seen from the 1990s to today that cycle of change. Boom, bust.
And now where we are again, with lots of cranes all over the city and where we are in your offices here in the open plan and in Fumbally exchange when a part of town which has seen such incredible change in the last decade in terms a new market with a new hotel across the road, the aloft student accommodation Teeling's whiskey around the corner. It's rapidly changed. I mean, do you have a sense that this place where you're actually sitting in and based almost tells a story about the changing face of Dublin?
This area is part of the original liberties of Dublin. And so it was always an area of industry. I first started working in this area, actually in the I suppose around the mid 90s as a student, I was working from murray O'laoire architects who are based here. And at the time there were very few other businesses around here and it didn't really feel like part of the city. I mean, it felt, I suppose, the original liberties that it was on the outskirts. That changed. I mean, during the boom times, you know, things picked up here and the place got busier. There was more development. And then suddenly, obviously in and around 2010, everything collapsed again and that was it. That was a point from the exchange started up. So we set up named after Fumbally lane nearby we set up in Fumbally Square. And it was really about helping people deal with the fallout from the crash and creating a space where people could come in and recreate their careers to a degree. But it was there was also a very important part of that was to look at. We recognise that the crash had a huge impact on the local area here and other local businesses that relied on the offices and other businesses here. So we felt that it was this would help to actually bring that commercial life back into this area. And we think, you know, we had some input in doing that. But just early this year, in January, we moved back here. And the place really has transformed in the last five years since we've moved out. And since we moved back again, the place is transformed completely. As you say, there's a large there's a number of student housing developments. There's hotels and thriving businesses around this area. So it's great to see that. It's good to see you having seen as when it wasn't so good. It was great to see that activity here, although I can see that, you know, there are probably some concerns about the nature of the developments that have happened here in that time when there is a huge housing shortage, whether it's student housing built here, this very little new housing built around this area. So that's that's certainly an issue which is of some concern, I think, to particularly to the people. The longer term residents of the area.
Yeah, probably that is the main concern in the areas, is that while we see development, lots of cranes that they're not actually maybe building places where people will settle and live.
Yeah.
I mean, I suppose there are some good examples in the area, the timber yard apartments on Cork Street nearby. And there's been other development in the area which have been quite positive and what they've done. I think the Weavers Park has been a great development, a fantastic design, a fantastic amenity for for the local area and the recent redevelopment of St. Luke's Church as well for offices. But with the landscape area around us, which is open to the public as well. But I think that there's there's there's an issue. And so in some ways, with the way housing is planned or residential is planned in the city, and it's not unique to Dublin in that student housing is is owned. And it's exactly the same zoning as building homes, building long term housing for people. And for me, it's quite a different use. And it's not to say that we don't need student housing, but I think there is a certain amount of of control over the balance between student housing and longer term, more sustainable living, which I don't think has been met in this area and in certain or the other areas in the city as well. And I think there is a case to be made that there should be a separate zoning almost for for student housing. It is a very particular need that needs to be fulfilled. But when you don't have that distinction, when a site is zoned residential and there isn't abstention between whether or whether it should be for student housing or for more sustainable communities, the student housing has got to be more lucrative. So it's the more likely one that's gonna be built. And then you have a situation where you're not getting the more sustainable homes that the area really needs. So I think that that's an issue certainly for planning. I mean, it's it's what's happened is as a result of, I suppose, a developer led approach where a developer looks at the site, its own residential. They look to see what's the best return they can get on that. And at the moment, student housing is delivering on that. So that's what the market is delivering
Because it's also tax incentivised in that sense. So it's not just simply looking at it and saying, where do we get the most profit out of it? Because if you did that at the present, you'd actually say rental because there's such a need for increased rental and that would would help the rental market. But I suppose when we talk about student accommodation and as you say, there's three blocks at least and some really lovely pieces of work like that, the student accommodation at the back of the digital hub and the piece Thomas Street itself, they're fine buildings in that. But but I suppose we do start that conversation by saying that this is policy led it's tax incentivized as a developer to go in and fill that particular aspect within the area. And I suppose it brings up that that aspect around what is a community.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, the quality of the buildings is quite good. A. We're looking at the window here. The buildings designed by Shea Cleary Architects, which is a very fine student housing project. Yeah, it's really a planning issue. It's about whether, you know, when you're looking at this area, is the quantum of student housing here, is that appropriate to the need in the area? Is that balanced against the need for sustainable communities and a more longer term living? So that's where I think we're not quite right at the moment. I mean, there is obviously a need here. We do have Griffith College on the road. We have TUDublin. Kevin Street, and Aungier street nearby as well. So there I mean, there are there obviously is a need for student housing, but it's about ensuring you've got to balance development in an area like this particularly and one that's developing so rapidly.
Give me a sense of what grew and what became Abhaile. And in some ways, the thinking around that and how it's evolved to where it is now.
Yeah, well, in 2014 and the Open House festival, the architecture festival in Dublin, the theme that year, it was about housing and informal exchange. We decided we'd do a an exhibition and we invited architects and others to submit proposals to do a kind of quite a broad exhibition sort of discussion and thinking about how we build housing. And the housing crisis was kind of becoming apparent at that stage. And for me, I mean, a lot of the discussion at the time was, you know, we've got a housing crisis building. We need to start building new houses. We need to start building new communities and we need to do it quickly to sort this out.
And because I had been working in these more established suburbs for quite a long time, I had a sense that there was a lot of underused housing in those areas kind of an untapped potential in it. And I did a bit of research on it, which form part of the exhibition and which was looking at particularly those more established suburbs. So the ones that were built between the 1930s and the 1960s. And what I found looking at census figures was that in a lot of those areas between 2006 and 2011, there was actually a falling population where there were the population in the country generally was growing and and the city was growing. And these established suburbs, it was a falling population. There was the highest proportion of people over 65. So with an ageing population and also then there was a high proportion of unencumbered houses. So houses with mortgages paid off. And this was kind of interesting. And I was overlapping these various statistics and then sort of mapping these on the city and the old correspondents. They set this kind of cresent of suburbs from sort of Artane, killester in the north across through Beaumont and coolock and Beaumont and Cabra, and then up the south side from, you know, dundrum and Crumlin and so on. And Rathfarnham And
So the original suburbs, you might say. Particularly from the state that the 50s, the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, where the farm is grown up. in many ways you were left with maybe one person or an elderly couple in what would have been the three bedroomed semi.
Yeah, you might have heard us say that an older person living alone or you might have had, you know, the one sibling who had remained at home. So the parents have passed on and the family have moved out. But there's one sibling who's kind of inherited the home by default. My conclusion, my uncomfortable conclusion here was that there are a lot of single older people living in family size homes. You know, really we should be looking to see if we can get them out. And open up these houses for people to fit more people in them. And that was that was the you know, I wasn't proposing any solutions at the time.
No mass deportation of the elderly.
No. I mean, I mean, the exhibition was just sort of drawing that connection there. I'm just saying there's this potential. I wasn't I had no clear idea at that stage of how do we actually tap into that potential.
But two years later than that, ESRI did a report which was looking at this very same issue. And looking at the numbers of single, older, older people living alone in family size, those houses. And they counted, I think, 160000 across the entire country. And again, they came to this conclusion that we've got to introduce measures to encourage people to downsize or to to sell up in some way and to move out. So they'd free up the space. And it was around that time then that Michelle Moore who is my colleague in housing, which was formerly The Abhaile Project. I suppose she came up with the solution. She said we shouldn't be looking at this from the point of view of housing. We should be looking at this from the point of view of the older person who's living alone in a family home. So she looked at it from a health perspective. So our health policies are all about aging in place and ensuring that people can stay living in their own homes for as long as possible.
And she was saying, OK, how can we deliver something here which will allow people to stay in their home, but will also allow them to rent out part of their home to other people in a way that they're comfortable doing. So she had done a bit of research on this and she was talked to a number of groups and I suppose found that while older people were generally open to the idea of renting out rooms in their house, they weren't that comfortable, say sharing a breakfast table with a stranger. What Michelle came up with was an idea of how we upgrade the ground floor of the home, make that suitable for one person to live in on their own, have all the facilities in the ground floor, and then they can rent out the upstairs separately. She brought in Dermot Bannan and myself on this to help with architectural advice and to look at various, particularly the statutory difficulties in terms of planning and building control and see how we could work around those and find a solution that could be delivered. And in twenty seventeen, we entered a competition called Homes for Smart Ageing Universal Design Challenge. And there were, I think, over 60 entries of various projects looking at how to help people stay in their homes. And I'm very about. Aging communities and how to deal with this demographic issue. And we were short list for the last five and eventually went on to win it outright. And with that we got some funding which allowed us to do a pilot project. So late last year we finished our pilot project in clondalkin. So we have a lady there who, that's very same situation. She's in a three bedroom, semi-detached house. She had been looking after her elderly mother who since passed away and she was the only sibling left living in the house. And she was looking at downsizing in the area. She lives right next to clondalkin village and couldn't find anywhere that she was happy with and really wasn't that keen on leaving the house anyway. This is a house that had been their family home for years. She'd grown up in it, you know. It was filled with a lot of memories. She had heard us talking about the project on the radio and got in touch and very bravely decided that she'd put her name forward for the pilot. We looked at how we could modify the ground floor of the home, to, so that we turn one of the living rooms into a bedroom, put in an accessible bathroom, widened the doors, lowered the light switches to current standards. So you've got a situation where you're trying to upgrade the existing house as closely as possible to modern accessibility standards to make sure it's adaptable for someone as they grow old. And then upstairs, very simply, I mean, if you can imagine a three bedroom semi-detached house of which there are tens of thousands across the city, you've generally got at the front of the house, you've got a bedroom and a box room and then you've got a bedroom to the rear and a bathroom. So the budget, the rear in the bathroom are left on, changed the bedroom to the front and the box room. We knock them into one room, put a small kitchen in the box room, and then we have a kitchen living dining area for a renter. So now with this there is a renter living upstairs in the house basically that they can live autonomously on that floor, that there's no way they can interact as little or as much as they want to the homeowner. But, you know, it's almost as good as their own private apartment. They share the front door with the homeowner. So it's still a single family home. The whole thing is entirely reversible.
So consider revert to a family home if needs be. But what it does is it means that the older person living on the ground floor has that comfort of having somebody else in the house with them no living alone has that extra income. So if you've got someone who's on the state pension, they've suddenly got a bit of extra income, which can be their, you know, their travel fund or whatever it is. And you're increasing the density of the area because you have houses that were built for families of six or seven. You're now bringing more people into the area. You're redressing that demographic imbalance, the age imbalance. But one of the interesting things about it as well is that when we were looking at those looking at these these suburbs of these suburbs are all very well served with and local amenities.So, you know, there are two established suburbs.
schools, shopping, transport.
Exactly. So they got all these things. So instead of having to set up. But I suppose when you're looking at the responses to the housing crisis which were about building new communities, though you're building new communities, you have to build all that infrastructure as well. And that's a huge cost. Whereas here we have existing suburbs which are underused and which already have all these amenities in them and which have very good transport connections. And if the demographic balance, an imbalance in those areas is not redressed, then you're going to have a problem where these services are surplus to requirements.
So that sounds great. And that's your pilot and. How was it funded?
Well, we've been given funding by the government for by the Department of Housing for five more houses this year, which we're hoping to complete by the end of the year. But the long term intention is what we're hoping is that the government will introduce a grant scheme to fund this kind of work. So in the same way that there are grants for adapting a home for someone who has particular needs. What we're arguing is that this is really a preemptive version of that. We're trying to adapt people's homes before they need and we're upgrading the existing housing stock in the same way that, for example, the Sustainable Energy Ireland Grants upgrade the energy performance of the existing housing stock. So it's not just about giving money to people to do their homes. We would propose that that grant would be mean test means tested as well. So it's not you know, again, you're not giving money to people who can who can already afford to do this.
I can see the enormous benefits and rationale behind it. On the other hand, if the house then is sold in the open market, you could have somebody who wants to be converted back to a large family home. And you then have, you know, such a loss in that. Is there any scenario or discussion around the fact that if the state investment in this that there will be guarantees of the length of period upon which it remains a multi-family unit?
Well, we've yeah, we've set up an agreement between AVA housing and the homeowner, which ties the homeowner into a minimum of three years. And we've made it clear as well that this this should be a owner occupied scheme. There are obviously some concerns that this could be exploited and you end up, you know, subdividing houses all over the city and you'd have the whole air bnb thing again. So the notion that it's reversible is very important. But it's important to note as well that most of what we're doing is actually improvements to the house that you wouldn't need to reverse.
What's your ideal outcome for that thinking that you and Michelle have shared around? What has started in Abhaile and is now AVA.
We've never been too precious, I think, about the idea. And if if this is something that other people pick up on it and it expands into that, you know, as I said, there is a hundred and sixty thousand old people living alone in family houses. There's a massive market here. Not everyone is gonna want to do this. But we think that there's there's potential for this to be hugely significant in terms of improving housing stock and creating that additional capacity in the housing. We're quite happy to to scale up and take on as much of that as we can. It again, not being too precious about that. If there are other companies that come in and decide to do the same thing.
In thinking about the bigger aspect around the city and how your project fits into it. You've probably had a sense of thinking about a whole range of ways in which we think about a city and making it work, particularly in a way, a city where you might have a confined limit to it.
I mean, we're in an environment where so much of our development is happening, not just in the sprawl of County Dublin, but in County Meath and county killdare and County meath. I think, you know, 25 percent of all new house building that was listed in the recent stats are all in green fields around. Really closer to drogheda than Dublin.
Yeah.
So in some ways, every time I see that drive, should I'm struck by the enormous effort we create then in building resources, schools, transport beyond the fact that most those people, whether we like it or not, are going to be car commuters in the current environment. Back in Dublin and this kind of catch 22 that we've created around the city where those those workers, those people need to get in here and often there isn't transport.
Yeah. I mean, I was thinking as you were talking there about galway in particular when I was growing up, when I was in secondary school in Galway City, a lot of my friends lived in the city they lived in. You know, in terraced houses with no front gardens right in the middle of the city, or they live quite close to the city. And I get the sense that that is reduced. I think that the population of people in particularly population of young families living in cities is reduced. I think there's a fundamental issue here about making our cities attractive to families. And, you know, the mayor of Bogota describes children as an indicator species, he says. And if children can play in the city, if you see children in the city, that's an indication that your city is working and you don't see it in Dublin, you don't see it very often. There are very few places in the city centre where you'd be comfortable letting go of your child's hands walking down the street. You know, there are parks which are great, but to get people living in the city, the city needs to change. The city needs to become more child friendly. Part of that is transport. And part of that is the dominance of the car. So it's kind of a catch 22 situation where we've built these residential areas on the outskirts of our cities which rely on private car. And then that increases traffic in the city centre, which then makes it less attractive for people to live in the city centre to see what this loop, which is pushing people out of the city centre, particularly pushing families out of the city centre. And it's changing the nature then of our cities. I'm very lucky to be living in rathmines where all the amenities are within walking distance. And most of our neighbors and most of the people that we know that my children's friends in school, they walk everywhere. So you bump into people and you have these, you know, accidental interactions with people that you don't have in a situation or in a society where everyone is driving from A to B. So in a place that you can walk and you can cycle safely, you're not just going from A to B, you're having all these other interactions or social interactions along the route as well. And it's also, you know, it's it's not just meeting all the people. It's creating other possibilities for. You know, you're you're walking down the streets. Oh, I must go into this shop. You know, it's not something you do when you're driving.
You keep the shops alive. Yes. You go to the local butchers.
That allows you to do that. And, you know, we've I mean, we haven't done a weekly shop in years. And I know we're fortunate because of where we live. But there is there has to be a point at which at which I suppose our behaviour as a society changes and we break away from the reliance on the motorcar because it isn't sustainable in all sorts of ways.
And unfortunately, I don't think Ireland has quite got that. Just, you know, we're still talking about, you know, spending 650 million euro to build a bypass around Galway, which is expected to solve the traffic problems, as you know. And anyone who would look at it in any detail would see that it's actually going to create more traffic problems. It's opening up more land for development, building more roads that attract more cars. It's not actually going to free up the city. And at the same time, there's very little investment in public transport. There's very little investment in cycling infrastructure. And these are the things I think to to do those things. I mean, to to build the cycling infrastructure and to prioritize public transport means taking road space away from cars. And until we reach the point where that becomes accepted, I think we're never really going to solve this problem. And it's I think it's beginning to change in Dublin. I think the discussion of a bus connects has been interesting. It's been very frustrating in that the the MTA have proposed to widen roads and it's caused all sorts of problems and kickback. in local areas, because they're they're taking away mature trees. They're taking away front gardens. And the reason that they're proposing to widen the roads is that they can so that they can maintain car access as it is now and also provide public transport and cycleways.
Really, the solution has to be we reduce the car access. We provide the both access. We provide the. Access to safe cycling infrastructure. We don't need to take away more space to give to transport within the city. We just need to use the space that we have more efficiently and more effectively.
And Ciarán, you've worked abroad. You've talked about some of the places where you were working as an architect and where you've also lived. I mean, one of the things that we've been looking us in the discussion around Dublin and other Irish cities, is almost looking out and seeing what's everybody else doing.
Yeah. I mean, you know, that's what the Netherlands is, is that is the most obvious example. And it's in the Netherlands. It's interesting because it's a very similar climate to what we have here in Ireland. And they made the decision. I mean, the Netherlands was exactly the same as we were, you know, 30, 40 years ago. They were they had car clogged streets. They made a decision that they were gonna take the cars out and replace it and put in proper segregated, safe cycling infrastructure. So cycling infrastructure that a seven year old can cycle on safely, that you could let them go in cycling to school. And they have huge numbers of people cycling in the it is the main mode of transport in most of the cities there. And Copenhagen is on something similar as well. And they do have public transport and they do have cars. They just don't use the cars as much.
So in thinking about the city, because, you know, part of the challenge of the whole debate, this chicken and egg, the proverbial chicken and egg, because when you look at policy led decisions and we can have debates about what the National Transport Authority has done in terms of bus connect in trying to accommodate both cars and public transport. But the reality of where we are is that as long as we get back to the point of as long as we're pushing people into quote unquote, starter homes in county meath and there's no train services, there's maybe an hourly bus service, people are going to drive.
And when you do that, then we have an environment where, you know, it's very difficult to almost resolve this as long as we continue to push people and have the sprawl philosophy, sprawl policy on housing, where, you know, developers in so many of those areas are simply given the fields build.
There's no thought about well, actually, all evidence and all research will tell us is that possibly two thirds of those households will be both the members of the couple are driving back in and out of the city. And that, to me seems the difficulty of where we are now is that, you know, you know, that there are things we could resolve very quickly in transport, in thinking and in a shift in doing it.
But the more we push people into this, you know, idea that the only place you want to buy a house for 250000 is practically drogheda out beyond Maynooth.
And that's I suppose part of it is, as you said, it's a chicken and egg situation where in order for the public transport system to improve, we need to provide more road space for public transport system, in particular for buses. And in order to do that, we need to restrict cars.
If you had the ear of those making decisions, what would you be saying, do you think, to to what you might say is the system?
Well, I suppose I think one of the big issues we have to face is our local government system, which I think is and I think it's been documented that it is the most centralised in all of Europe. So most of the power lies with central government. Local government has very little real power, in particular, local elected representatives afraid of little real power. They don't have huge budgets. And there's another issue which which is is maybe less popular. But I think that we we have a problem and does our local governments, county boundaries are based on these, I suppose, arbitrary historically counties. You know, let's call on the GAA countries which don't really bare any reference to demographics or or even geography in a lot of cases. So I would be certainly in favor of a radical overhaul of our local governments system.
You know, while, we make that case. And while we look at the case for having the intrinsic decision making and increased powers at local level, one of the realities we're in is that local authorities across Ireland, not just in Dublin, have had the power to invest in existing budgets, in housing for the traveller community. Yet we look. Practically, universally across the scale, and this is that in some cases spending nothing to sums, in cases spending a little. So the challenge of democracy at front face with the elected councillors and in a sense that challenge would also be there with her elected mayor, is that we become even more open to what you might see as as not in my backyard. And the idea that, you know, what doesn't suit a small community on one small corner of perhaps affluent Dublin will mean decisions aren't made for a disadvantaged community, which is what we've seen in south Dublin and Dun Laoghaire, rathdown. So I get the whole idea of democracy at local level, but sometimes I put it back and say in the places where we've given power with elected reps is that they have been in many cases afraid to use it. And, you know, we look with this with almost particular horror at the most disadvantaged parts of our society, like the traffic community.
Mm mm mm. Yeah. I think you know that's coming as much from and from national politicians that it's from local politicians mean some of those decisions that were made to leave on for example were were driven by TDs, not necessarily by local councillors. So that's always gonna be the case. But I think if you devolve power to local government, I think people will then take more interest in who they're electing at local government level as well. I think that's an issue that there may be a bit of complacency about local elections in the turnout in some of the areas was extremely low,
not just low. It was terrifying. I mean, in Finglas in north Dublin, we were told the turnout in the local election was 15 percent in some areas.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I actually think that that's in many ways the largest and most significant red flag that we have a real crisis in local government. If only 15 percent of people in my area that needs so much.
Yeah.
If they did not feel it was relevant or, you know, in their interest to turn out, I mean I actually am surprised almost that that just has faded against the background at the local the local turnout because you think it suits vested interests, that people's own turnout and in some ways you think you know. From the perspective of the poorest communities, we have the lowest turnout and therefore, I think communicating with us that we feel. Local elections, local government and local authorities have absolutely no impact on us.
Well, I think that's it. I think they just see what's the point? If they know if they're not delivering for the local community, they're not there. If they're ineffective, you know, their people are disengaged them from the process.
So just coming back to the city. And the challenge of the city. So if you had to put that postcard in to the minister or several ministers since the brief would cross over a few of them, not just housing, what would be a postcard to Leinster House?
Well, I think I suppose fundamentally we want Dublin to be a liveable city. You wanted to be a city that people want to live in. And people of all ages, and particularly that it would be a place where young families would be would feel comfortable living. And so making making Dublin a city where, you know, you, a 7 year old, can cycle on the streets. A city that has lots of publicly accessible greenspace play areas for kids and for teenagers, that it has public spaces. I mean, we don't really have large public squares in Dublin. I know the college green proposal is on the cards, but we don't have those kind of spaces. And that's that's what we need to see, I think, is to see if we can focus on getting the city working in that way. And it means reducing the amount of cars in the city. It means improving public transport. But most of all, it means it means making the place more comfortable for people to walk and to cycle and for people of all ages to walk and to cycle around the city. And that's you know, a lot of that is quite simple, a lot of that, you know, even things like changing the time periods on on pedestrian crossings, putting in seating. I mean, we're seeing it in small areas, isolated areas around the city. But if we can apply that thinking to the city as a whole, you know, I think that that will change the dynamic. It will change how people perceive the city. I think there's still a certain a certain idea that, you know, families should live in the suburbs. They shouldn't live in the city centre. I think that's wrong. I think, you know, any mature European city doesn't think like that. You've got, you asked about my experience living abroad and I've you know, I spent a number of months living in Berlin. And, you know, it's it's a it is a city which has all those facilities, which I mean, it's not perfect in all respects, but it has that really strong demographic mix within the cities itself. Feels like a really living city.
And when we talk about housing, partly we've been talking about like the quality life within that. We are in an environment where rental is rocketing. You know, the idea that a family and a couple with one or two children can think about renting, let alone buying in Dublin on average wages, it's just not going to happen. I mean, in some ways, when you look at the housing scenario beyond what we've been talking about, do you have a sense of what might be a blueprint out of it?
I've you know, I've studied this question a lot and I've I've listened to what a lot people have to say about it. I know it is. I mean, it's there's no one answer to this. It's, uh, certainly think that we need to build more public housing. I think there is a there's a lot of land in the city which is still in public ownership. And we need to ensure that it remains in public ownership. We need to ensure that is developed in a way that it can provide homes that people can afford to live in and afford to rent and afford to buy. I'm not convinced that the local authority has the appetite to do that. I'm not convinced that the Department of Housing. Has the appetite for the local authority to do that either one of the hats I'm wearing, I'm involved in the Rathmines initiative, which is a local community group. We're currently looking at a site which is known as the Gholston Waste Depot, which is in behind the town hall lines. It's part of a consolidation exercise that city council consider consolidating their waste depots and various services into one central area, which means it got this land becoming available and it's owned by the council. And what they want to do initially, what the council wants to do or say, what the council executive wanted to do was to sell this land to help fund their consolidation program. Thankfully, the local councillors have one of the few powers they have is they can decide whether it can be disposed of or not. And they have said that they're not happy for this land to be disposed of, at least not until there's a very clear plan as to what's to happen with it. So we're working with the council at the moment to see how that can be developed in a sustainable manner with probably housing that would deliver on demand in the area, that would work within the existing context of rathmines, which would contribute something towards trying to make affordable housing, I suppose, essentially. You know, we've seen recently weren't the council's been looking at the Vienna model, which is the low cost rental. And there are other solutions like community land trusts or co-housing, which is not the same as the co-living, which is that, you know, which is a community led housing development. So we're very interested to see how in each of those could apply in this area to see could we come up with a solution, which isn't just a developer coming in and getting as much as many units he can on the site and then flipping them for or selling them on to a vulture fund. We want to see what are their solutions there, which can actually deliver something which is going to be sustainable, which is going to be affordable. Part of that may be that, you know, particularly just going back to the discussion about the housing in Rathmines, where you've got older people who are living in large family homes, houses in the area, that this might be where you could provide smaller houses for them, that they could downsize but still remain in the local area.
And that's the architect and cycling activist Ciarán Ferrie there. And you can follow, Ciarán, on Twitter where he talks housing, cities and transport. You can find out more about AVA housing at a AVA housing dot ie. I'm Helen Shaw and you've been listening to This is Where We Live, a podcast series from Tina Media with over 20 conversations now in this series. So find out more on the project on This is where we live. Dot ie. And if you liked the idea of what we're doing, do please share the podcast and consider becoming a supporter to Patreon. Just click on Support US. Our thanks to our sponsors. Happy scribe. A great new tool for automatically transcribing audio. It really saves hours and hours of work. And to the Dublin Housing Observatory at Dublin City Council. Thanks again. Talk to you soon.