Rob Curley Profile picture
Feb 3 5 tweets 2 min read
Fascinating talk hosted by @AAIarchitecture tonight.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes calling for a global moratorium on new construction.

To paraphrase “what is being built is being built within economical logic by people that do not have the interests of the unhoused at heart.”
1/2
“Design offices need to deploy their organising abilities to think about not building, building less and building with what exists.”

“Questioning new construction as a solution to the housing crisis is the route out of a crisis of imagination.”

2/2

#ConstructionMoratorium
This is boiling the piss of all the right people. The idea of a “construction moratorium” is essentially click bait to start a conversation.

The quote tweets highlight the lack of nuance in the current discourse on our built environment dominated by blind “build build build”

/3
The point is to question what are we actually building?

What materials are we using? Why are we building a certain way and how are we setting regulations?

The construction moratorium calls for a pause for analysis and engagement with these issues.
/4
Many of the qts & replies (some from quite prominent accounts) to a couple of paraphrased quotes picked out from a 2 hour lecture, really prove a point about the dogmatism & lack of nuance around construction and housing discourse online. Lots of baseless assumptions being made.

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More from @RobJCurley

Aug 27, 2022
Let’s unravel this misinformation from a FF councillor.

• There is no shortage of unrealised residential planning permissions - 40,000 homes w permission in Dublin alone
• Vexatious objections carry 0 weight in planning decisions & are in fact liable for legal action

1/4
#BuildToRent is a specific (lobbied for) housing typology, defined as being aimed at short term accommodation for “young mobile workers”
• The opt outs from basic liveability standards allowed for BTR schemes renders them particularly unsuitable for Part V social housing

2/4
• Opt outs from standards ensure BTR has become the predominant form of new development in Dublin (82% of resi schemes in planning in 2020)
• Most new Part V social housing will be unsuitable by its very design
• This has been consistently raised by Dublin City Council

3/4
Read 4 tweets
May 31, 2022
I had a reply guy jump in my comments today defending bad housing policy - and put the onus on me to solve the housing crisis - so here goes.

In order to solve the #HousingCrisis we need to understand it is in fact a #HousingPolicyCrisis

1/22
Short timeline:

2008 global crash w an added property speculation bubble (largely driven by FF policy) which bursts in Ireland.

Country goes bankrupt, land ends up in NAMA.

Under FG/ Labour gov to follow much of this land is flogged off to get it off the balance books.

2/22
Much of this land ends up in the hands of speculators & vulture funds brought in by FG while part of a FG/ Lab coalition.

2015 Minister of Environment @alankellylabour brings in Section 28(c) of the Planning Act which allows the Minister to make diktats over housing policy.
3/22
Read 22 tweets
May 7, 2022
*State of play in Irish planning corruption & cronyism*

Since 2015 power over planning decisions has been stripped from local authorities & handed to An Bord Pleanála which has been stuffed w political appointees such as personal friend of @simoncoveney Paul Hyde

#HydeGate

1/7
Recently @wereontheditch has broken a number of stories about Hyde’s cronyism such as failure to declare conflicts of interest when deciding on decisions involving his brother’s company, lands adjacent his father’s & even on his brother’s house!

#CowboyPleanála

2/7
In many cases Hyde went against the recommendations of ABP’s own planning inspectors.

Just last November Hyde also granted permission for US developer Hines’ 1,614 build-to-rent neighbourhood in Drumcondra against the recommendation of Dublin City Council.

3/7

#GombeenGate
Read 9 tweets
Nov 8, 2021
Excited to talk about housing policy at Ireland’s Edge later this month.

The timing of this tweet seems appropriate considering An Bord Pleanála today published their decision to Grant Permission to Hines’ build-to-rent dystopia at Holy Cross College in Drumcondra…

1/
I do not believe a corporation should own an entire neighbourhood, or dictate housing policy. It is not in a community’s interest for the homes of 4,000 people to be under a single landlord. It is not in the national interest for that landlord & their profits to be overseas.

2/
Build-to-rent, like co-living is a product of the financialization of housing. Homes reinvented as investment assets for institutional funds.

The previous gov were lobbied to re-write housing policy to suit funds & dutifully reduced liveability standards for their profits.

3/
Read 14 tweets
Aug 31, 2021
A thread about build-to-rent (btr), aparthotels & how the government has rewritten housing policy for the mythical “mobile worker”, at the behest of lobbyists, and the effects of this on housing supply…

1/14
The Irish government’s Design Standards for New Apartments were updated in 2015 for the first time since 2007, just a few years after the vultures were invited in. The changes included the concept of “Centrally managed and operated ‘build to let’ housing for mobile workers”

2/14
By 2018, numerous large scale apartment schemes designed to the new standards were in planning. However, incessant lobbying by investment funds continued for reduction in standards & a receptive FG housing Minister Eoghan Murphy meant change was coming once again…

3/14
Read 15 tweets

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