This May, we witnessed the latest twist in the battle for Dublin’s skyline. As the city grapples with a chronic and worsening housing shortage, its Council has gone to the High Court against the national planning board, An Bord Pleanála, to preserve a lower maximum height for new buildings in the Docklands “Strategic Development Zone” (SDZ). The Board wants the Council to allow for more height, but the Council has argued that Dublin needs to preserve its low-rise heritage.

At the heart of the deadlock are two towers proposed for the north quays by developer Johnny Ronan. At 41 and 45 storeys each, and to include more than 1,000 apartments, the towers would mark a new phase in Dublin’s development. However, on May 21, the Board rejected the planned development, not because it wanted to – indeed, it said that the development complied with national guidelines – but because the local SDZ prohibited it.

While Dublin debates and dithers, Cork carries on. Last year, Cork City Council approved a 15-storey office development called the Prism in its own docklands. The same year, a 24-storey apartment block on Albert Quay received approval just before the COVID-19 pandemic. And most recently, the City Council granted planned permission for a 34-storey complex in the old port that will be home to retail and hotel space.

The fact that Ireland’s tallest building is currently in Belfast and might soon be in Cork must strike external onlookers as anomalous, given Dublin’s population is three times that of Belfast and five times that of Cork. However, Ireland in general – and Dublin, in particular – has developed a global expertise in not building up.

A recent study by Barr and co-authors shows that, given Ireland’s income and urban population, it has the fewest tall buildings in the world. Ireland, it seems, does not just have an ordinary fear of heights but rather is deeply acrophobic! The nation has some of the most restrictive building height regulations in the world. As a result, it is paying an economic price through more expensive housing in its big cities. 

Though the issue is heated, it remains full of misunderstandings. Here, we discuss three of them, and offer some guiding principles that might help Dublin, in particular, and Ireland, more generally, when it comes to thinking about cities and housing.

Myth #1: “Building up is pricing up”

Skyscrapers are a response to, and not a cause of, high land values. When land is expensive, it signals that the demand for that location is high and that people are willing to pay more to be there. As a result, developers respond to the demand by building tall. High prices bring forth the construction of tall buildings, not the other way around. This is why it is so anomalous for Dublin to have a lower skyline than Cork or Belfast: the bigger a city’s population, the more pressure on central city land values, and the higher the buildings that should result. If Cork and Belfast need buildings of 25 or 35 storeys, Dublin likely needs some at least as tall.

A related argument is that building up benefits only the builders. After the Celtic Tiger bubble and crash, real estate developers have enjoyed particular notoriety in Ireland. However, based on current demographic projections, Ireland likely needs close to 50,000 new homes per year for decades, with Dublin close to 20,000 per year. A developer building tall buildings is not a “win” for them at the expense of the city (especially if the city is clever enough to have a land tax). Rather, a developer adding much-needed housing during a shortage is the city using the developer to get what it wants. 

Myth #2: “Skyscrapers cause gentrification”

When a new high-rise goes up, it has two effects. The first is on the supply-side, which reduces neighbourhood prices, even if only slightly. A large body of research documents this to be true: If you build more housing at any income level it adds to the total supply and helps to keep prices in check. However, because tall buildings allow for denser neighbourhoods, it increases the demand for local services, such as coffee shops and pubs, which can draw more people in, further raising real estate prices.  

Gentrification is caused by barriers to new construction. These barriers generate “fixed-pie” neighbourhoods: those who can afford it can get a slice of the pie. The rest need to go elsewhere. More housing increases the size of the pie. As columnist Noah Smith argues, if an area becomes popular with “yuppies”, surely it’s far better to build them a yuppy fish tank than to have them displace the existing population through higher rents.

Myth #3: “Skyscrapers are incompatible with the ‘Good City’”

Jane Jacob’s 1961 classic book,The Death and Life of Great American Cities, sparked a debate about the ideal urban neighbourhood. As a result, historic, pre-automobile neighbourhoods represent in the minds of many a “Goldilocks” neighbourhood—not too hot, not too cold, but just right.  The policy implications boil down to preserving the historical communities in amber and banning tall buildings. 

In Dublin’s case, however, nobody is arguing to demolish its Georgian squares and the surrounding buildings to replace them with towers. The debate is about what gets built elsewhere, especially in land further east in the former docklands. Dubliners, of course, have the right to prioritize historic preservation over affordable housing. However, most Dubliners, we presume, would be happy to keep the Georgian squares and find room elsewhere for new homes, offices, and other spaces. Declaring the city closed to tall buildings because they might impact the view from an 18^th-century square or building is allowing the technology of the past to determine housing costs today.

Regarding urban amenities, the argument runs that something like that a six-storey average is the level required to achieve, for example, the “fifteen-minute city”. Indeed, we can see something like this in various European cities where six-storey buildings are ubiquitous and there are an abundance of cafes and small shops. As nobody is advocating for the compulsory purchase and demolition of existing houses, streets, and estates, for Dublin to achieve that kind of average density, it will need its infill sites to be significantly above that magic number of six for the overall average to be brought up.

Consider the abundant supply built during the mid-2000s in the upper Shannon region, viable only due to extraordinary tax breaks: the region still has a very low housing costs fifteen years later. 

It is true that not all tall buildings fit within the urban fabric, and glass boxes can be alienating to passers-by. However, human scale and quality of life are more directly harmed by dependency on automobiles. Dense walkable neighbourhoods are inherently more vibrant than those with sprawling suburban tracts. 

Imposing a low-rise city centre in the name of the “Good City” has two impacts—it increases spawl and car dependency, and it generates housing shortage. We all want to live in a city that feels nice, but only the rich can build cities that uphold their notions of ideal beauty but ignore economic realities. 

Guiding Principles

Here we offer a set of guiding principles to inform the debate around height and urban growth in Ireland. These four principles – the importance of supply and demand; the efficiency of tall buildings; citywide planning; and the importance of mobility – reflect a desire for housing policy that is designed both to make cities both more affordable and to promote quality of life.

First, while many commentators rail against it or prefer to ignore it altogether, real estate markets operate like all markets – that is, according to the laws of supply and demand. Consider the abundant supply built during the mid-2000s in the upper Shannon region, viable only due to extraordinary tax breaks: the region still has a very low housing costs fifteen years later. Conversely, the on-going inability of supply to meet demand in Dublin can be seen in the emergence of a “Dublin premium” over the past generation, with home prices now twice as expensive as elsewhere in the country.

The more the laws of supply and demand are subverted, the more they wind up harming residents. Whenever possible, let the demand for a neighbourhood decide how much housing is provided there. High demand – as witnessed by high prices – should be followed by new construction, which increase vibrancy and keep prices in check. Planning policies should be designed to increase neighbourhood services and reduce congestion, without overly burdening new construction.

Second, skyscrapers are built in central areas where demand for housing (or space more generally) is highest. As such, they represent an efficient use of land. The fact that homes in taller buildings tend to be for upper-income residents should not distract us from the fact that more housing is needed at all income brackets. We should spend less time worrying about a handful of central skyscrapers and more time getting all neighbourhoods to add more homes. 

Take those over the age of 70 in Ireland, a group that is going to drive growth in the population in coming decades. Currently, they have little choice but to stay in their family homes. Building more homes includes providing new housing options – such as independent living and assisted living complexes – not on greenfield sites but in existing areas, densifying the suburbs. Building tall in the centre is in addition to, not instead of, building more homes elsewhere in the city.

Third, getting angry about one high-profile project each time it crops up is missing the forest for the trees. Focusing on one building or area at a time is not only inefficient but harmful for residents more broadly. Policies need to be citywide, and they must ensure that every neighbourhood gets its fair share of housing based on the demand for those neighbourhoods, including from new construction, conversion of old buildings, and subdividing existing homes. 

And, in a country the size of Ireland, there is a strong role for national policy too. By not allowing tall buildings, Dublin is imposing costs on the rest of the country, with neighbouring local authorities impacted in particular. (Although perhaps Cork sees it differently: Dublin’s difficulty is Cork’s opportunity!)

Lastly, creating a liveable city must begin with mobility and transportation – a system that moves people quickly and gives them a wide range of choices to live where they want and have easy access to the rest of the city. Once a transportation plan creates greater mobility, let density naturally arise where people want to be and let mixed-uses and diversity emerge along with it. Dublin has long dreamt of an underground – but without the population density that taller buildings bring, this is likely to prove a very expensive dream to fulfil. Allowing greater densities along proposed underground lines will ensure ample ridership.

Implementing good design and transportation practices while not allowing for new housing construction will not be enough on its own to produce better, more liveable cities. If we limit new construction, we wind up getting cities designed better only for rich people. 

The Future City

All cities must find the right balance between preserving the past and promoting the future. But Dublin is Dublin because, historically speaking, it had the flexibility to add housing as the demand arose. Of course, the process was messy and led to a whole suite of building regulations to slow down change. That is where we are today; the result is an affordability problem. We have nothing to fear but the fear of heights.