This is something that’s been doing my head in for a while.
I’ve added two images of the same site on the edge of a town like Wexford. One shows what we’re actually building now. A low-density estate with curved roads, cul-de-sacs, semi-Ds and detached houses, each with a driveway and a bit of garden. It looks orderly from above, but it absolutely eats land for very little return.
The second image (generated using AI) shows what the same site could look like if it was planned differently. Just normal, modern, 4–5 storey apartment blocks. Courtyards instead of endless roads. Shared green space and walkable streets. You could house two, three, even four times as many people on the same land without it feeling cramped at all.
Now is actually the chance to do it differently, while Wexford or other regional towns are still sprawling outward. Instead of locking in another generation of sprawl, we could be building medium-density housing that actually makes sense for a growing town.
What we’re building now promotes sprawl which we’ve been learning since junior cert geography is a problem in Irish cities. Every new estate pushes the town further out. Everything becomes car-dependent by default. Buses stop making sense. Infrastructure costs more per house and we’ll end up with sprawling suburbia like in the US.
The mad thing is this isn’t radical or untested. Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, their regional towns have been building like this for decades. Apartments aren’t seen as a last resort. Families live in them and it’s just normal.
Ireland and the UK are the odd ones out. We keep pretending everyone wants a house with a garden, when in reality people choose from what’s available. And what we make available, over and over again, is the least space-efficient option.
I get why it happens. It’s easier to get approved. It attracts fewer objections. Developers know the model. Councillors don’t get an earful from objections. But it’s short-term thinking.
edit: I should mention that in the second picture, you could put retail units or even a creche on the ground floor so it’s mixed purpose.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1qocgt8
Posted by SteveFrench1991
32 Comments
1. Public Demand
2. Cost
I don’t like it either but it really all boils down to that.
There’s no joined up thinking. A few houses in a site are grand but if you look at the big picture it’s more urban sprawl, people are further away from town centers which means a car is necessary so roads get clogged etc.
Also people are crying out for cheap apartments as a starter home or for a single person who doesn’t want to pay rent all their lives but they’re forced into a 3 bedroom house in the middle of nowhere.
I like your point but there isn’t nearly enough parking in your image, not with how we currently travel
I want a house. I’ve lived in appartments. too many cunts
High density living has a terrible reputation because we’ve done it so badly. It’s hard to swing people away from the ‘1/6 acre with a house and two car drive’ design until the alternative is shown to be good enough to raise a family in, at least for several years.
I’d say both options are unsuitable for such a site. You have a point, but it’s not just high vs. low density. High density can only work with adequate proximity to your daily needs – shops, services, schools, and public transport. How far is it from the town center? Can I walk there easily? Can I cycle there easily? Where does the bus stop? Do I have these options at all? If yes, then higher densities can work. If not, and it’s far away from all of the above, it encourages more car traffic and all the associated problems.
Surely high density like this is better suited to town and city centres?
What is the land zoned for?
Unless it is zoned for high density then there is zero point putting in the application for your idea.
Like Ennis, one of the fastest growing towns in the country, has zero land zoned for high density.
Unless is estates and town houses they dont want to year about them.
Also there is a huge increase in per unit cost 9f apartments compared to houses.
Yeah, it’s the 1950s dream of suburbia, completely ignoring the crisis on hand. Outrageous. People living on the street yet it’s business as usual for all *the lads* involved in this ‘project’.
Ive lived in Continental European apartments and in Houses in Estates in Ireland, and I can tell you Houses in an estate with a front and back garden are far superior for raising a family.
You can have all of the shared community spaces you’d like, but they won’t get used. Your own back garden, and a place to park your car in front of the house is honestly under appreciated once you lose it.
Agreed we should be building dense housing in Urban areas, like between the canals in Dublin, but I wouldn’t want to raise my family there, I’d prefer to live outside the centre and have some space that is for my own exclusive use.
>We keep pretending everyone wants a house with a garden, when in reality people choose from what’s available.
Your entire theory is based off of this premise and it is false.
We build houses because that’s what people want. We build houses with gardens because that’s what people want. Developers tried to reduce the minimum size for gardens a few years ago to increase density and there was a lot of whinging about it.
It is mind-numbing how often we have to hear stuff like “did you know in Austria we do this” or “in France they do that”. Ok, but we don’t give a fuck. It is infuriating how people default to Ireland is wrong and everyone else is right, is it some sort of inferiority complex?
In Ireland there is no real culture of apartment living for families. People do not want to raise their families in apartments. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just the reality. We build houses because people want to live in houses, the same as what they grew up in.
High density in city centres? Sure, it makes sense. High density housing in suburbia, or even outside suburbia. It’s literally the worst of both worlds and there would be very little appetite for it here.
People don’t want to live in apartments because it’s shite. People want their own outdoor space and privacy, my experience renting apartments over the years turned me off them completely and I bought a house instead.
A big issue is people would have to pay more to live in those apartments than in the houses so developers would lose out to competitors selling houses.
It’s mad that apartments cost so much to build but apparently that’s the way it is.
Apartments are actually more expensive to deliver per unit than semi-Ds so they are only really suitable in urban settings.
Developers don’t like building apartments because the costs can be higher than building semi-D’s
>Why?
Becuase middle class, educated, €100K+ household incomes want to live the same lifestyle that they grew up as a kid and they don’t want to live in an apartment.
[https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/number-of-empty-homes-surging-in-three-key-areas-of-melbourne-20251121-p5nhgn.html](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/number-of-empty-homes-surging-in-three-key-areas-of-melbourne-20251121-p5nhgn.html)
Looks like an American suburb
Ah come off it. People do not want to live in apartments in rural towns in Ireland.
Wexford town is over 100km from the nearest major city (Cork or Dublin). You go 100km away from any major city in any of the countries you mentioned and you won’t be finding apartments. It will be one off houses or small housing estates like this.
No one is ‘pretending they want a house with a garden’. People want a house with a garden. It’s a desirable thing to have.
We need to stop framing having a house as some luxury.
We have a very low population density, having a house outside of the major cities should be completely normal and achievable.
A developer is able to make a few shillings from option 1.
The conversation is over. There is no more conversation, who are you talking to? There’s nobody here. We’ve reached the end of the story, there’s nothing more to talk about.
I’m sorry, are you STILL here? Was there something unclear about line one?
The DEVELOPER. Can MAKE SOME MONEY. From option 1. Annnnnnd we’re done.
omg it takes lot of land all those semi detached house possible fit into 12 floor tower apartments.
Our private sector is not geared to do this
-They don’t have the experience and do what they know
-They most importantly, do not have mass indepth planning needed for high density, they just build what land they have. They build mass apartments with current planning, will be a disaster like outer french Banlieus/Ballymun, no connection with places of work, commerce, transport or social spaces
-Inflation plus a nation of gougers , every process of building high denisty will be expensive, which is not what we need. We need things built so uniform and practical, by efficiency prices to buy go down, but that will be low return for the investor
-We still have naysayers about apartments
A Public lead urbanism approach is needed. Make a public construction firm, cut planning red tape , and make apprenticeship wage slightly above minimum . Choose one medium city , (i’d recommend limerick due to street layouts and flatness) , and destroy it as a construction site for a few years, high rise apartments with a good tram network / uniform style bike lanes with thought of where living spaces are in relation to people’s needs , public emminities like parks, carspace on the outskirts near tram terminals, train to nearest airport .., bla bla, use one city as a proof of pudding, that’ll shut people up when people realise, wow i can get from a to b in 15 mins, can walk by nice local shops from the tram stop after work, and there’s a nice public to eat your sandwhich. Proof of pudding , the city is set up to scale for large new comers, people can sieve off Dublin so pricing gies down there, that you can affordably fix that mess of anti-urbanism
Not everyone wants to live life like a sardine.
The Netherlands do it with very few apartments too. Just terraced houses, often 3 story, smaller gardens, and small or driveways.
We started these type of developments in the 60’s and it has been a disaster. It’s one of the reasons we have such expensive electricity, such bad public transport and we’re not reaching our climate targets.
>Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, their regional towns have been building like this for decades. Apartments aren’t seen as a last resort. Families live in them and it’s just normal.
Under the towns and suburbs category in the drop down menu the rate of people in the Netherlands living in apartments is slightly lower than Ireland.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/interactive-publications/housing/2025/02/index.html
It would also not be normal for families to live in apartments there. 20% of the population and 37% of households (according to their census) translates to an average household in this category as not much higher than 1 person per household (it’s reported elsewhere that about 40% of households in NL are single people households).
There isn’t the same level of demand for apartments in smaller towns than there is in major cities, this is the case in much of the rest of Europe likewise,
I agree 100%. Coming from Italy, it shocked me that Ireland has so many houses and almost no apartments.
I have lived in apartments my whole life and in a house only for about 2 years now. I can see the advantages of a house for a family with little kids but whenever my parents or my inlaws come to visit, stairs are a problem for them. And when it’s just me and my husband, a house is too big and lots of space is unused.
A balcony is something I do need, a garden is just another place I need to keep tidy.
I don’t know about Wexford, but having lived in Limerick I think a larger number of well built apartments would suit a growing population very well.
I owned an apartment for five years, and the noise, poor build quality, and management problems were the main reasons I moved into a house. On top of that, I had to find a cash buyer because of fire regulation issues. Never again.
Locals will fight tooth and nail to block apartments because they personally don’t want to live in an apartment and then project that personal preference on to every other person in the country whilst imagining that they personally are going to some how be forced in to an apartment.
Look, nobody wants to live in apartments. Which is why apartments are super expensive and hard to get in to. Becuase no one wants to live in them. IRES occupation rate is ~99%… because no one wants to live in an apartment.
We’re not short of land as a country generally. Low density housing is grand most places including what’s shown above. The real issue is Dublin and a few other urban areas where vast areas of land are wasted on low density housing. That’s where changes need to be made first.
If you want apartment building – please at least build it to the standard you see in the countries listed by the OP, because any apartments I’ve lived in, or visited. Good jaysis christ they are paper thin walls and low ceilings; most full of damp and the joy of joys Property Management fees, that screw you annually.
I do like high density housing in certain areas. Specifically for Transport Oriented Design of housing. Built right on top of mass transit options that make owning a car optional.
But what is the public transport like in that location? Would a huge number of people here need a car to get to work/school?
People who prefer apartments usually do so because of the location and ease of transport to/from work and leisure. Also potentially not requiring to drive at all.
This doesn’t look like something that would satisfy that. I would imagine the market to buy apartments in such a location is not big enough to sell all of these apartments at the price required to make a profit. It’s much easier to sell a hundred houses and make a good profit than it is to sell hundreds of apartments in an isolated location that would make most residents rely on a car.
Not saying high density housing can’t succeed in the area. Just that it’s a huge gamble for a developer and one that could see them go bust.
OP’s next suggestion
https://preview.redd.it/0pbsh9s0fwfg1.png?width=1536&format=png&auto=webp&s=ed4c5d0e78edbfa4ac8ea0d8e58f98761b1578fd
We still build like that because that’s where the demand is. I bought a detached house in an estate like your 1st image because I want spare bedrooms for family visiting and a garden for my kids. Nothing will convince me that raising a family in an apartment is preferable to what I have now.