Urban Environment Project Results Published
(18/01/2011)
The results of a four year Urban Environment Project funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published in December 2010 examine the wider urban environmental implications of planning and development in the Greater Dublin Area. The findings which appear in a special edition of the Journal of Irish Urban Studies explore: urban sprawl, air quality, biodiversity, climate change and transport.
The research set out to develop a generic land-use model for the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) which could be applied to other urban areas in Ireland, and compared to international models. The research team included experts from the Urban Institute Ireland at UCD, Trinity College Dublin and NUI Maynooth.
“New Planning and Development legislation introduced in 2010 indicates a firm intention to move away from ad hoc development decision making towards more evidence-based approaches with compliance issues to be addressed in the future,” says Professor John Sweeney, Department of Geography at NUI Maynooth who, together with his colleague Dr. Ronan Foley, co-edited this special issue of the journal.
Research and the examination of evidence-based policy-support tools used in Europe and internationally demonstrate that it is possible in many jurisdictions to develop reliable data analysis and evidence to support policy choices in the planning and development area.
“It is clear that improvements in our flawed planning and development processes need to be followed by immediate and unambiguous conflicts of interest legislation with automatic review and decision mechanisms built into the guidelines to deal with breaches,” states UCD’s School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy, Dr Brendan Williams, who is Director of the Urban Environment Project.
The final report of the Urban Environment Project will be published in early 2011 by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The papers from the special issue of the Journal of Irish Urban Studies entitled ‘Dublin 2026 the Future Urban Environment’ are available to download from the UEP website http://www.uep.ie/news/jius_2112.htm