I understand the opening sentence is a rhetorical flourish... but it is also astoundingly wrong.
> This year, on Imbolc – a Gaelic tradition that sees Ireland celebrate the patron saint Brigid, a Celtic goddess...
Imbolc is a celebration of the Goddess Brigid, which very few Irish celebrate. The feast day for Saint Brigid is on the same day, and is celebrated more widely. While she was possibly a Christianised version of the goddess, she is probably a real person who was later given the characteristics of the Goddess by her hagiographers and by confused lay people. Apparently the tradition continues.
> ...who allegedly had 7th-century lesbian romances and carried out the first abortion on the island...
I don't think that the 'allegedly' is a strong enough qualifier here. It's a relatively modern interpretation of a piece of hagiography (rather than a text considered to be more historical). Historically, neither has been asserted by the Catholic church or by scholars generally.
And finally... The goddess clearly existed much earlier than the 7th century, so assuming they're talking about the saint... she lived from the middle of the fifth century to the first part of the sixth. The book about her was written in the 7th.
Dublin has been having a bit of a boom (of which tech is a major driver) in the last decade, but this just feels like another symptom of the city which is not allowed to build denser or to sprawl with the result being anything less profitable in terms of land value is getting pushed out of the city (including many families who have lived their behind) while rents reach some of the highest levels in Europe
There are so many commenters here repeating this mantra "just build higher, just build denser", with seemingly no grip of facts about property in Dublin.
There's no restrictions on height nor density in the Docklands area of Dublin: an area within walking distance of the centre of the city, and with a good regular tram link, that is mostly vacant. Similarly, many areas on major tram routes are not so restricted, such as Sandyford and Cherrywood (these three areas, along with East Point, also happen to be where much of the tech boom is focused). So your denser/higher suggestion is being done and is having no affect—residential rents in these areas are the highest in the city, and much of the units available are left empty as a result.
Meanwhile, in terms of actual supply, even outside of those areas, Dublin has an estimated 40000 vacant residential units, and plenty of vacant commercial units on top of that.
The primary reason for this is that rent prices are not demand-based as much property is financialised—rent isn't a driver for owners, and there are little to no penalties for lack of tenancy, as other cities have.
The kind of low-end large space nightlife the author wants requires an abandoned warehouse district. SF SOMA used to be like that. Either a more productive use for the land is found, as in SF, or everybody young leaves, as in Detroit or the Cleveland Flats.
Dublin isn't cramped by geography. Five miles west of downtown is farmland.
Seriously. And when space is at such a premium, and it's possible to build up as much as demand warrants, why exactly should nightclubs be prioritized over, say, people's housing? Perhaps the fact that they're diminishing in number reflects the simple fact that housing is a better (and more economic) use of limited space?
It sounds like they're not allowing enough construction to meet demand, and then being shocked when the obvious outcome (prioritization of some uses) occurs.
Indeed. If you like ~60% of SF rents with ~39% of SF pay it's the city for you.
I still like it here, but I have a flat that I got crazy cheap in 2013 and is rent controlled (incidentally, a horrifically stupid policy enacted _especially_ badly here, making the housing crisis even worse). I also just got a remote job and bought a house in Offaly.
I used to encourage people to come to Dublin because it offered better QOL than the bay (I like not being annoyed on weekends and holidays, and that even my non-tech-worker wife gets a month off a year by law) but I really can't any more unless your housing is arranged or you have a fantastic (California-level) offer
There's nothing at all stopping Dublin from being much more dense than it is, and there's no need whatsoever to build high to do it.
Huge gains could be made by bringing more 'above the shop' units into use. Vacancy and dereliction are massive issues, both in the city centre and further out - tackling that through vacant site levies or compulsory purchase orders would be huge. Regulating the abuse of AirBnB could bring a few thousand rental units in the city back into long-term use practically overnight.
As far as building new stock goes, everything is too expensive because land is too expensive. Development land around the city has been stockpiled and hoarded for decades, creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices. It's basically impossible to make a profit on reasonably dense, reasonably priced, two or three bed apartment schemes in Dublin. The SCSI and PII have good reports on this if you want to look them up. It's nearly always more profitable (and easier) to just sit on the land rather than actually develop it. The reason all the nightclubs are being replaced by hotels is a result of this: hotels are a lot more commercially viable than almost any other form of development right now. (Hotel beds in Dublin had over 90% occupancy rates last summer - they're bursting and demand is massive.)
The majority of new residential building happens in the outer suburbs and commuter belt, from Lucan to Navan. Just 31 (!!!) new homes were built in Dublin 1 (the very centre of the city) in 2018.
Apartments made up just 13% of new builds in the state last year. The apartments we do build are, on average, smaller, darker, less well serviced, and more expensive than almost any other European city. The apartments built between 1995 and 2008 are riddled with issues, from fire safety to damp to electrics. I think that accounts for a lot of Irish people's apparent antipathy towards apartment living, much more than any nonsense about an inherent desire for a semi-d with a garden.
Rents are expensive because of an increase in the numbers renting (doubled in last decade); because the rent-certainty regulation is weak or non-existent; because tenure security does not exist; because build-to-rent is expensive to develop; because REITs and larger commercial landlords are soaking up all supply and charging as much as they can. Take your pick. It's a mess.
Sorry to go on, but I just finished a six-month deep dive on the reasons behind the housing crisis in Dublin and there is just so much misinformation out there, it's frustrating.
P.S. In case anyone wants to hear more, I made a four-episode podcast series about this, the final episode of which just went up today:
The reason I didn't even consider Dublin over London or another major European had little to do with the rent prices as it had to do public transportation.
Being dependent on mainly in Dublin means you'll likely want to restrict yourself to areas which can get you to your workplace with zero connections (and everyone else who works in your general area will probably feel the same).
Being an especially wet country (nowhere near as bad as the west of Ireland, mind), means even this is gonna be an utter misery many mornings and evenings.
As far as nightlife is concerned, with a better public transportation system you can get away for ages by just continuing to push stuff further out.
In London I've the option if I want to live pretty far out (but still on a line that stops near my office) and live alone for not a whole lot more (if anything) than I'd pay to live within walking distance and share. Hardly anyone I know on my pay level in Dublin could even consider living alone, which puts even further pressure on living as near to work as possible.
I've lived in Dublin for two and a half years years. I like to tell about its public transport to people who complain they have it bad in their city (not that it's an excuse, it's just extremely entertaining to see their reaction):
- There's one suburban train service (DART) that kinda goes through the centre and then just takes you to suburbs. It's like an S-Bahn except it doesn't stop anywhere useful in the city itself. Unless you live in one of the expensive suburbs it takes you to, you can basically forget about it. I've only used it to get out of the city for hikes.
- There's two tram lines, that until a year ago didn't even cross. Oh, and the trams are _extremely_ slow because they have barely any dedicated lanes in the centre, instead sharing the street with the rest of the road traffic. Even when they are on dedicated tracks, they're still absurdly slow for some reason (in comparison to all other tram systems I've used elsewhere).
- There's buses. They're ugly, loud and extremely uncomfortable. They have no timetable, instead they leave their terminus at some fixed time and then go as fast or as slow as they can, sometimes skipping stops if the traffic is bad. [1] Since this means you basically cannot make distributed, reliable connections between buses, they maximize their usefulness by running most of them through a single choke point in the city centre, where it can take up to 30 minutes to go through. Each line has a ton of stops, and every time passengers get on the bus, they go single-file through the driver that asks for the target stop and charges their pre-paid card accordingly (or you can go through a separate card reader that just charges you a daily flat rate, but that doesn't make sense if you're not commuting a long distance that day).
And that's it. Nothing else. Unless you're lucky enough to be on the _two_ tram lines or _one_ commuter train, you're stuck with shitty, expensive buses. Don't move to Dublin.
[1] - There is real-time bus tracking, but this doesn't help you to make a connection, just to leave home/work and not have to stand in the rain for too long. Just hope you bus doesn't get stuck in traffic along the way.
In SF, that happened to Cocomos. It was a great club that was closed and sold for development. That’s understandable but it brings to mind the Yogi Berra quote, Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.
Tech workers move into a city and drive up rents. They complain about lack of density driving rents up. Meanwhile, New York and Chicago are not really tech hubs, even though they have dense downtowns. Hong Kong should be the center of the tech universe with all that density, but alas it is not. Maybe the thing that makes tech workers want to live and work somewhere is lack of density?
Maybe the thing that makes tech workers want to live and work somewhere is lack of density?
The vast majority of non-dense areas have much less of a tech scene than New York and Chicao. I would expect that what draws tech workers is career opportunity more than high or low density and that density is more driven by how municipal government responds to the changing local job market.
[+] [-] hydrox24|7 years ago|reply
> This year, on Imbolc – a Gaelic tradition that sees Ireland celebrate the patron saint Brigid, a Celtic goddess...
Imbolc is a celebration of the Goddess Brigid, which very few Irish celebrate. The feast day for Saint Brigid is on the same day, and is celebrated more widely. While she was possibly a Christianised version of the goddess, she is probably a real person who was later given the characteristics of the Goddess by her hagiographers and by confused lay people. Apparently the tradition continues.
> ...who allegedly had 7th-century lesbian romances and carried out the first abortion on the island...
I don't think that the 'allegedly' is a strong enough qualifier here. It's a relatively modern interpretation of a piece of hagiography (rather than a text considered to be more historical). Historically, neither has been asserted by the Catholic church or by scholars generally.
And finally... The goddess clearly existed much earlier than the 7th century, so assuming they're talking about the saint... she lived from the middle of the fifth century to the first part of the sixth. The book about her was written in the 7th.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid_of_Kildare
[+] [-] xkcd-sucks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexTWithBeard|7 years ago|reply
But I'm sure they've done the research and checked their data for the rest of the article.
[+] [-] Macha|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucideer|7 years ago|reply
There's no restrictions on height nor density in the Docklands area of Dublin: an area within walking distance of the centre of the city, and with a good regular tram link, that is mostly vacant. Similarly, many areas on major tram routes are not so restricted, such as Sandyford and Cherrywood (these three areas, along with East Point, also happen to be where much of the tech boom is focused). So your denser/higher suggestion is being done and is having no affect—residential rents in these areas are the highest in the city, and much of the units available are left empty as a result.
Meanwhile, in terms of actual supply, even outside of those areas, Dublin has an estimated 40000 vacant residential units, and plenty of vacant commercial units on top of that.
The primary reason for this is that rent prices are not demand-based as much property is financialised—rent isn't a driver for owners, and there are little to no penalties for lack of tenancy, as other cities have.
[+] [-] Animats|7 years ago|reply
Dublin isn't cramped by geography. Five miles west of downtown is farmland.
[+] [-] CydeWeys|7 years ago|reply
It sounds like they're not allowing enough construction to meet demand, and then being shocked when the obvious outcome (prioritization of some uses) occurs.
[+] [-] CalRobert|7 years ago|reply
I still like it here, but I have a flat that I got crazy cheap in 2013 and is rent controlled (incidentally, a horrifically stupid policy enacted _especially_ badly here, making the housing crisis even worse). I also just got a remote job and bought a house in Offaly.
I used to encourage people to come to Dublin because it offered better QOL than the bay (I like not being annoyed on weekends and holidays, and that even my non-tech-worker wife gets a month off a year by law) but I really can't any more unless your housing is arranged or you have a fantastic (California-level) offer
[+] [-] dubliner9039|7 years ago|reply
Don't confuse density with its opposite, sprawling. Irish and british cities often have large, low density, horrible sprawls.
[+] [-] maleno|7 years ago|reply
Huge gains could be made by bringing more 'above the shop' units into use. Vacancy and dereliction are massive issues, both in the city centre and further out - tackling that through vacant site levies or compulsory purchase orders would be huge. Regulating the abuse of AirBnB could bring a few thousand rental units in the city back into long-term use practically overnight.
As far as building new stock goes, everything is too expensive because land is too expensive. Development land around the city has been stockpiled and hoarded for decades, creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices. It's basically impossible to make a profit on reasonably dense, reasonably priced, two or three bed apartment schemes in Dublin. The SCSI and PII have good reports on this if you want to look them up. It's nearly always more profitable (and easier) to just sit on the land rather than actually develop it. The reason all the nightclubs are being replaced by hotels is a result of this: hotels are a lot more commercially viable than almost any other form of development right now. (Hotel beds in Dublin had over 90% occupancy rates last summer - they're bursting and demand is massive.)
The majority of new residential building happens in the outer suburbs and commuter belt, from Lucan to Navan. Just 31 (!!!) new homes were built in Dublin 1 (the very centre of the city) in 2018.
Apartments made up just 13% of new builds in the state last year. The apartments we do build are, on average, smaller, darker, less well serviced, and more expensive than almost any other European city. The apartments built between 1995 and 2008 are riddled with issues, from fire safety to damp to electrics. I think that accounts for a lot of Irish people's apparent antipathy towards apartment living, much more than any nonsense about an inherent desire for a semi-d with a garden.
Rents are expensive because of an increase in the numbers renting (doubled in last decade); because the rent-certainty regulation is weak or non-existent; because tenure security does not exist; because build-to-rent is expensive to develop; because REITs and larger commercial landlords are soaking up all supply and charging as much as they can. Take your pick. It's a mess.
Sorry to go on, but I just finished a six-month deep dive on the reasons behind the housing crisis in Dublin and there is just so much misinformation out there, it's frustrating.
P.S. In case anyone wants to hear more, I made a four-episode podcast series about this, the final episode of which just went up today:
www.dublininquirer.com/2019/02/27/supply-demand-a-podcast-about-dublin-s-housing-crisis-episode-4
[+] [-] dajohnson89|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JansjoFromIkea|7 years ago|reply
Being dependent on mainly in Dublin means you'll likely want to restrict yourself to areas which can get you to your workplace with zero connections (and everyone else who works in your general area will probably feel the same). Being an especially wet country (nowhere near as bad as the west of Ireland, mind), means even this is gonna be an utter misery many mornings and evenings. As far as nightlife is concerned, with a better public transportation system you can get away for ages by just continuing to push stuff further out.
In London I've the option if I want to live pretty far out (but still on a line that stops near my office) and live alone for not a whole lot more (if anything) than I'd pay to live within walking distance and share. Hardly anyone I know on my pay level in Dublin could even consider living alone, which puts even further pressure on living as near to work as possible.
[+] [-] q3k|7 years ago|reply
- There's one suburban train service (DART) that kinda goes through the centre and then just takes you to suburbs. It's like an S-Bahn except it doesn't stop anywhere useful in the city itself. Unless you live in one of the expensive suburbs it takes you to, you can basically forget about it. I've only used it to get out of the city for hikes.
- There's two tram lines, that until a year ago didn't even cross. Oh, and the trams are _extremely_ slow because they have barely any dedicated lanes in the centre, instead sharing the street with the rest of the road traffic. Even when they are on dedicated tracks, they're still absurdly slow for some reason (in comparison to all other tram systems I've used elsewhere).
- There's buses. They're ugly, loud and extremely uncomfortable. They have no timetable, instead they leave their terminus at some fixed time and then go as fast or as slow as they can, sometimes skipping stops if the traffic is bad. [1] Since this means you basically cannot make distributed, reliable connections between buses, they maximize their usefulness by running most of them through a single choke point in the city centre, where it can take up to 30 minutes to go through. Each line has a ton of stops, and every time passengers get on the bus, they go single-file through the driver that asks for the target stop and charges their pre-paid card accordingly (or you can go through a separate card reader that just charges you a daily flat rate, but that doesn't make sense if you're not commuting a long distance that day).
And that's it. Nothing else. Unless you're lucky enough to be on the _two_ tram lines or _one_ commuter train, you're stuck with shitty, expensive buses. Don't move to Dublin.
[1] - There is real-time bus tracking, but this doesn't help you to make a connection, just to leave home/work and not have to stand in the rain for too long. Just hope you bus doesn't get stuck in traffic along the way.
[+] [-] CalChris|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secfirstmd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway29319|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asymmetric|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narrator|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexgmcm|7 years ago|reply
But alas, businesses still want everyone in the office (often all the time as well).
[+] [-] kd0amg|7 years ago|reply
The vast majority of non-dense areas have much less of a tech scene than New York and Chicao. I would expect that what draws tech workers is career opportunity more than high or low density and that density is more driven by how municipal government responds to the changing local job market.
[+] [-] purplezooey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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