Andy Sheridan

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Flatland

Looking north over Dublin City centre, from a rooftop carpark.

When you get up any height in Dublin it really strikes you just how flat the city really is...church steeples still direct you to the various neighbourhoods, as they usually are by far, the tallest structures in the area.

It can only be a matter of time before specific sites and zones will have to develop vertically, not ever, ever outwards. The city needs it...the market demands it. What's going on now in the city with rents, with homelessness, is madness. The system is broken.

The Celtic tiger consumed so much land around the city it was frightening...feeding the ever increasing frenzy for real estate. Since all that fell asunder in the late noughtys, it's only now that activity in the construction sector has returned to something akin to normality again...and that's only within the pale.

There are student-housing developments currently either under construction or in the pipeline...flying up, all over the place...thousands of new bed-spaces to be filled with the future professionals of the country. 

Thats great, but where are the housing developments so badly needed to cater for the thousands of familys who, right now, just need a place to call home, that they can afford?

I've an awful feeling it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better...