TWICE THE SIZE - DIT Update - Dublin Institute of Technology

successful, as planning policies that ‘fight trends’ are often doomed to fail. Also, the shift
of population from rural to urban will likely result in the loss of political support for shifting
resources from the East to the West, as the political and electoral base becomes
increasingly urban.
Recent trends in population growth show that the counties that grew the fastest were the
ones without the gateways, while the counties with gateways grew the slowest. This points
to a conclusion that the NSS has focused on rather weak centres and therefore the return on
public investment was rather low.
Although a strong possibility that the urban conurbation on East coast will dominate the
development of Ireland in the future may be rejected by many, it is recommended that the
critical mass argument of balanced regional development is reviewed; all spatial planning
and infrastructure policies should be tested against the possible development of a single
urban centre along the Eastern seaboard; and the gateway cities outside the Eastern
conurbation should be encouraged to develop ‘distinctiveness’ instead of population
growth.
Preparing Ireland for Possible Futures
An analysis of the scenarios shows that some underlying drivers and outcomes are common
to all scenarios. It is recommended that plans and policies should be tested by asking
whether interventions will reinforce or impede the desirable outcomes identified in this
report.
The key area of concern for the way forward for the gateways identified by this study is the
issue of governance, and especially the lack of appropriate regional governance structures
that would oversee development and implementation of strategic regional policy.
Conclusion
The study identified a critical need to revise the National Spatial Strategy reflecting the
vital and dominant role of the Greater Dublin Area in securing the future of Irish society and
the continued prosperity of the national economy, as well as the progress towards spatial
and economic cohesiveness with Northern Ireland. The revision of the Strategy should also
address the need to formulate development policy in a way that would reflect
distinctiveness of the Eastern and Western regions.
There is a pressing need for fostering collaborative visionary leadership at all scales and
across all sectors.
Finally, the study recognised a fundamental requirement for a major reform of local and
regional structures of governance to be conducted based on the concepts of sustainable city
regions, subsidiarity and integrated policy formulation, decision-making and
implementation.
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