Introducing Street Plan Development Zones

We need more homes, but we need them in the right locations. Addressing Ireland’s housing shortage is going to mean building within our towns and cities, which the government calls compact growth. 40 per cent of new development is earmarked for compact growth. While building within existing settlements is imperative for meeting the State’s environmental, economic, and social goals, it is also the trickiest place to build.

How do we encourage more housing in the right areas, close to jobs and amenities? A crucial barrier is confidence. Developers need the confidence that they will receive permission to build in good time, but for those building in our cities, confidence is in short supply. Planning is a risky business. Though the majority of applications are ultimately approved, delays drive up costs.¹ 

Urban Development Zones (UDZs) are the government’s plan to restore confidence. Their goal is to deliver compact growth by replicating the success of Strategic Development Zones, such as those of Adamstown and the Dublin Docklands. UDZs will work at their best when they induce a sense of confidence in the planning system. Below are two photographs of the view from East Road looking down New Wapping Street in the Dublin Docklands strategic development zone, tens years apart.

UDZs are intended to replicate the success of urban regeneration such as that exhibited by the transformation of the Dublin Docklands, as shown above. They will facilitate urban redevelopment at scale by reducing planning risks and accelerating the approval process. UDZs will be able to do this by adopting a plan-led and rules-based approach that includes a detailed master plan from the outset. The rules of what can be built and where are clearly defined. This contrasts with the current system, in which the rules are often unclear, leaving planners to use their discretion on each case.

But UDZs have their limitations. The fragmented ownership of small plots makes planned intensification extremely challenging. Where SDZs have delivered, there have been large swathes of industrial land, the potential for site assembly at scale, or heavy council ownership. Where local authorities have tried to encourage coordination across multiple owners, it has proved immensely difficult. The reality of delivering homes where they are needed most means gripping the problem of multiple ownership.

This problem has frozen the suburbs in the twentieth century, leaving professionals sharing poorly insulated homes designed for families and insufficient local customers for struggling high streets. Current rules have made adapting these areas for our growing sustainability and housing needs near impossible, even in those cases where local communities would improve the area if given the chance. 

So, how do we deliver homes in the trickiest areas? We believe part of the answer is taking the best of SDZs and bringing it down to the street level. We call them Street Plan Development Zones, or SPZs for short. They create a rules-based system that empowers communities to deliver new homes.

This article will explain the principles of SPZs. At the time of writing, our worked example is currently being prepared, setting out precisely how SPZs can deliver on the ground.

What are SPZs?

SPZs are a form of community-led development. In short, SPZs work by empowering communities to shape and approve development on their street. 

An SPZ is a micro-designation, like a smaller version of a SDZ or UDZ. In a SDZ or UDZ, the government designates an area. In an SPZ, it is the residents who make the decision. The area can be designated by the local authority upon a petition of local residents, much like similar petition processes such as that used to change local parking rules or to change the name of a street.

Once the area is designated, local residents can make proposals. Proposals will set out the ‘street plan’, which will ultimately be approved by a qualified majority of locals in a ballot. Take a street of relatively low densities near Dublin city centre, such as this street on Bargy Road in East Wall. ²

This section of Bargy Road ends at two T-junctions, on Forth Road and and on East Road. The street is near amenities and several well connected bus stops, a Luas stop, and the Port tunnel. It is lined with two to three-bedroom homes built in the 20th century. 

There is significant land value in these areas given their proximity to jobs, amenities, and transport corridors. An SPZ designation would empower residents to capture some of this value and deliver more homes as a result. Residents of this area might propose developing their plots to three to four storeys in height. These greater elevations could enable internal subdivisions, delivering more homes on the same plot. Such a plan may enable plots on this street to build to heights resembling North Great George’s St, creating more homes on the same land.

But let’s take a step back and start from the beginning. 

Housing delivery in Ireland works from the top down. The national planning framework leads into regional plans. Regional plans guide development plans. Development plans guide urban area plans, priority area plans, and local area plans. Rules flow downhill.

What if rules could be made from the bottom up? What would it take for an ordinary property owner to build more housing on their land? From our brief example: what would it take to unlock more homes in ideal locations such as Bargy Street? SPZs are our answer to these questions. They empower communities to play a role in housing delivery. 

As we have seen, confidence matters. One barrier to confidence is neighbours. From the point of view of a neighbour, development next door is all downside, no upside. They get noise and potentially congestion. In return, they often get nothing. It is no surprise then that few ordinary homeowners decide to make the most of their land: they are locked in a stalemate with their neighbours. 

The status quo offers no way around this problem. While there is no shortage of calls for a wholesale change of culture to get around this problem, the joint problems of housing supply, sprawl, and environmental damage require addressing our cities’ fragmented and low-density housing stock. SPZs address this concern head-on.

SPZs provide an incentive for residents to transform their neighbourhoods from the bottom up. Residents on the street stand to gain by approving development. Planning permission will raise the value of their land. The new development may be bigger, more energy efficient, and safer than their current home. 

SPZs provide an additional way to approve development but do not create an additional veto point. In the standard development process, planning applications can be slowed down or blocked by third-party appeals (sometimes referred to as ‘objections’). In an SPZ process, the plan is approved by a vote of eligible residents, enabling the community to back local development in a way currently unavailable to them. 

The rules of what streets can opt into will be predefined. Naturally, there will be limits to the proposals that streets can put together. We call these limits (or predefined rules) the street plan development framework. As an example, a community might want the ability to add a storey to houses on their street, enabling the creation of more homes through subdivisions. The framework would define the limits of permissible development in an SPZ, such as height limits and setbacks, with strict limits to protect residents of other streets. This framework should be created at a national level. 

This kind of intensified use of plots already occurs in piecemeal form: Roof lines are punctuated by the occasional dormer extension and gardens are eaten up by extensions of floor space. Creating a path that enables better plot use would allow a more plan-led intensification. While the plan would shape the development, the incentives of homeowners would fuel it.

Historically, cities around the world have gradually densified by a combination of simple rules and powerful incentives. The lack of modern transportation meant that cities’ outward growth was constrained. When the need for living space in the city grew, property owners would respond by intensifying the use of their plots. In most of pre-war Europe, there was a simple set of rules governing this process, enabling the built environment to adapt to a changing environment. However, this process no longer occurs as it once did. Planning policies make the steady intensification of plots in central areas extremely difficult. As a result, much of our built environment is frozen in time, unable to adapt to Ireland’s changing needs. 

Urban infill is not just how most homes have been historically delivered. It is also globally recognised as being the most environmentally friendly way to deliver more homes. Delivering homes through infill makes the best use of existing infrastructure, allows people to live without car dependence, enables cycling and, through greater densities, makes better public transport viable.

SPZs are designed to make it easier to adapt existing properties, making the gradual intensification of plot use once again possible. That can be achieved through a clear and simple set of rules. We called these rules the framework above. However the street itself will propose more precise rules within the framework by proposing specific plans.

The plan will specify precise rules for what can be built on the street. We call this a street plan development scheme, or street plan for short. The street plan sets a design code which would include permissible facade materials, plot usage rules, and height guidelines. For instance, where before a street may be uniformly two storeys, the plan may set out rules that enable the entire street to reach perhaps four storeys. The ‘street plan’ is constrained by the rules set out at a national level in the street plan development framework.

Residents of each street will then vote on whether to go ahead with the plan as proposed. These local ballots will decide whether permissions are granted by the local authority, putting power into the hands of the people who will be most affected by the development. We call these street plan development ballots. A ballot will be passed if a qualified majority of 75 per cent approves of the plan. 

A successful ballot means all plots on the street receive planning permission. Permissions would be granted to the owner of each house, without conditions based on what the owners of other plots decide to do. Like with other planning permissions, locals would be under no obligation to start developing right away. 

Street plan development ballots differ from the normal planning process in Ireland, through which a homeowner who wants to add a storey to their home applies for permission from the local council. There are no strict rules prohibiting upward extensions or greater intensity of use. Nevertheless, it seldom happens. Large numbers of property owners have no mechanism to coordinate their interests together. Unilateral planning applications for infill development are looked at unfavourably. They may disrupt a coherent streetscape. And as we have seen, they may cause a nuisance to neighbours. 

Neighbours could, theoretically, coordinate in the current system, applying on a coordinated basis for each of them to build more on their plot. In reality, this rarely occurs. There is neither the mechanism nor the incentive to coordinate on the street level. There are currently no clearly defined benefits to coordination. Where there is no obvious benefit to coordinating across residents, it is little wonder we see so little of it.

As a consequence, current planning policy offers no path to achieving the adaptability that our built environment needs to meet our climate and housing challenges. SPZs will contribute to meeting these challenges head-on by leveraging the incentives of homeowners. 

Residents will have a strong incentive to approve of the street plan. They will see a significant uplift in the value of their property. Their homes will become safer and more sustainable, by increasing thermal efficiency and fire resistance. Even the minority of residents who ultimately vote against the plan may be partially consoled by the large increase in the value of their property, for them or for their children. SPZs provide a non-coercive means to intensify the use of occupied plots, delivering homes where they are needed most. 

150,000 new homes

Progress Ireland’s modelling suggests that an SPZ policy could deliver an additional 150,000 new homes.

Our model is designed to estimate how many units of housing could be developed as a result of Street Plan Development Zones in Ireland.

To estimate how many communities could seek to build up as a result of this policy, we randomly sampled 200 properties using eircodes (eircodes with business names attached were excluded prior to sampling). We did not estimate how many homes could build mews homes or build a seomra (above 40 square metres) as a result of an SPZ designation, focussing only on upward extensions for simplicity. 

The properties were randomised using a random number script ranging over all registered Eircodes in the country. We removed businesses, apartments, and any properties which we couldn’t reasonably work out the area of (eg because the satellite imagery was too blurry or street view didn’t show the number of storeys).

We divided the properties we measured into 3 different area types based on the use of the land surrounding them. There will be some edge cases, but we employed common sense to get to the best approximation of an answer. “Rural” means properties that are not part of a larger settlement, “Town” for any property in a built-up settlement, and “City (Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Galway)” is self-explanatory.

We proposed a suitable number of storeys for town and city areas (four and six respectively).

We removed rural properties from our sample because SPZs are designed to help deliver compact growth. This left us with 141 properties.

Measurements of floor area were completed using Google Maps’ measuring tool. This is not an exact science. Not every house is rectangular in shape, so we were conservative in how we measured, erring on the side of minimising the area of the properties. When working out the overall floor area of the house, we applied a 10% reduction to account for internal (and external) walls on each floor.

We took house price data for each county (and different areas of Dublin) from Daft.ie‘s Q2 2024 house price report. This allowed us to value each home based on the average in its county or subarea.

In order to use Daft’s price data effectively, we needed to work out the number of bedrooms in each home. There is no fully satisfactory way to do this for our sample based on public data. It is possible to look at a property on Google Street View and make a reasonable assumption about the number of bedrooms in it, but this risks being somewhat opaque and subjective, while also being difficult to scale. Therefore we created a table with bands of gross floor area corresponding to different numbers of bedrooms, based on online property sites (which do provide bedroom and floor area data for their properties). Importantly, if you dispute this data or just want to experiment, you can duplicate the model and change these assumptions. You can find our public model here.

Additional floor space is generated if the homes add storeys up to their area type limit. This was calculated by taking the ground floor area and multiplying it by the number of additional storeys. This additional floor area was adjusted down by another 10% to account for the possibility of a Mansard or Dormer roof, and then a final 10% to account for stairways and entrances that may be required if the new floor space is used as a separate dwelling.

Financial viability was calculated as whether the gross uplift in property value (using a price per square metre value) was greater than the total costs (including relocation costs, construction costs, and financing costs) plus a 20 per cent get-out-of-bed margin.

The estimate of how many houses would find it financially attractive to add storey(s) was calculated as a simple proportion: 52 per cent of our sample met the necessary conditions. If all viable houses built additional storeys, it would mean an additional 13,962 square metres of floor area added across the 141 homes in our sample.

In order to estimate the number of new housing units this would provide, we used the regulations for the minimum size of a 2 bed apartment: 73 square metres.

To be conservative in our assumptions, we then adjusted the uptake down to 10% — people may have various good reasons for not adding storeys to their home and/or their street may vote against such a plan. Scaling up our results across all non-rural residential properties with these assumptions, we reach a figure of 147,079.

Why should Ireland pursue an SPZ policy? 

There are five reasons why Ireland should pursue SPZs. They provide a win-win solution, benefitting both existing and new residents. They are self-sustaining since once empowered, local communities can continue to adapt their communities to changes in the broader environment. By making our communities more adaptive, SPZs enable communities to contribute to Ireland’s sustainability goals and accommodate demographic changes. And by combining the incentive to back development with the authority to approve it, SPZs are a powerful tool for housing delivery. 

The first reason why Ireland should pursue an SPZ policy is because they provide a win-win solution to Ireland’s housing shortage. While they are no silver bullet, they address an important and previously intractable problem. Housing policy has too often been framed as choosing which group will be favoured at the expense of another: young people are pitted against older homeowners;. YIMBYs against NIMBYs; city dwellers against the rest. Street plans will benefit a wide range of groups. 

In many circumstances, homeowners will be strongly incentivised to opt into an SPZ designation. A successful street plan development ballot will benefit households which will receive significant value uplift by greater intensity of use. This creates a pathway in the planning system to enable development in areas where the vast majority would support it. Such a pathway would be complementary to the existing standard development process.

Similar policies around the world have successfully delivered homes by leveraging the incentives of homeowners, unlocking homes where there is local support. Homeowners do not have to be the perennial barrier to new homes, presenting a recalcitrant obstacle to be overcome rather than an active stakeholder to be engaged with. 

One recent policy in Israel has shown the effectiveness of empowering communities to support development. Since 2005, Israel has given homeowners the power to develop their own block. Homeowners are balloted to approve the plan. The policy has delivered tens of thousands of homes. 

By 2019, the program–called TAMA 38– was responsible for 25 per cent of all new homes in Tel Aviv. By 2020, 26 per cent of all homes built in Tel Aviv were due to this opt-in program.

Not only did the policy deliver homes, it was remarkably popular. The scheme has proved so popular that it has been repeatedly extended. 

TAMA 38 delivers homes by incentivising homeowners to build on their own land. TAMA 38 was ostensibly tasked with addressing earthquake safety but it has had an outsized impact on housing supply. Mulam et al show that the economic incentive to homeowners drove the success of the policy. In fact, the correlation between seismic risk and TAMA 38 planning permissions was negative. The areas that unlocked the most homes were those with the highest demand, such as Tel Aviv, showing that land values were crucial to incentivising homeowners to build. 

Homeowners are strongly incentivized to approve the plan in two ways. First, they will get a much bigger, more modern, and safer home out of it. And secondly, that home will be worth more than their current property. That is why it is unusual for block votes to reject plans.

The Tama 38 policy showed that when incentives are right, homeowners can become champions of new development, delivering a greater supply of high-quality sustainable homes. 

Like Tama 38, SPZs will work when they benefit both existing and new residents, they will work when they deliver win-wins. Building more homes on an existing plot will generate large windfalls to homeowners. These new homes would enable new residents to come to the area. An upwardly extended building could be subdivided, creating three homes where before there was one house. 

Incentivising more efficient plot use has not only worked well in Israel, it is a well-worn policy intervention around the world. That brings us to the second reason Ireland should pursue an SPZ policy. 

SPZs are a self-sustaining policy, creating a flexible system that empowers local communities. Empowering communities to deliver more homes where there is overwhelming support for it creates a self-sustaining pipeline of housing delivery.

Part of Ireland’s housing problem is structural in that there are too many ways to block development and not enough ways to approve one. Small groups of objectors have significant sway. 

As a recent report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change argued, planning systems like ours “empower veto players rather than empowering those keen to deliver change.” In other words, there are many ways to block development, and few ways to champion it. That isn’t just a problem of culture, as some have suggested, rather there are few pathways to effectively drive housing delivery in our planning system. That’s not culture. That’s policy.   

To create a new pipeline of delivery without establishing further and damaging veto points in the system, the report suggests that the Labour government in the UK pursue a ‘street vote’ policy—analogous to our SPZ proposal–allowing homeowners to play a pivotal part in housing delivery.

The reason similar policies have lasted in other jurisdictions is that they share this self-sustaining characteristic. A good example of this phenomenon comes from Houston, Texas. 

In Houston, an opt-out ordinance reform has added around 80,000 new homes. It has worked by allowing homeowners to benefit from subdividing their plots, delivering new homes in the process.

Minimum lot sizes–the minimum size of a plot with a single home on it–were as high as 5,000 square feet in some cases, baking in low densities and sprawl. This rule came from a 1960s law which also baked in large setback rules from the property line. 

These rules were overhauled in 1998: the minimum lot size fell from 5,000 to 3,500 square feet and, in some cases, as low as 1,400 square feet. 

But what made the overhaul of these rules possible was an opt-out provision introduced in 2000. A petitioning process enabled residents of an area to temporarily opt out of the ordinance reform. That means that areas which were, for whatever reason, resistant to the reforms didn’t have to go along with them. 

The petitions could be initiated by signatures from 51 per cent of homeowners in an area or by as few as five residents in a single block. Once the request has been approved, stricter ordinance rules are passed if 60 per cent of homeowners vote for it. These stricter rules expire after 40 years, allowing the following generation of homeowners to reconsider the setback and lot size rules for their areas. 

Most blocks did not choose to opt out of the reform. The increase in their property values from the ability to add more housing proved a strong encouragement for most residents to decide to accept the reform.

In Houston, the ordinance reform delivered homes by creating a self-sustaining policy instrument. It empowered communities to be part of delivering more homes. The policy worked best by structurally aligning the interests of homeowners with the interests of both newcomers who needed homes and city officials seeking ways to encourage gentle density. 

SPZs will work when they follow the lesson of Houston’s ordinance reform and TAMA 38, ensuring that delivering new homes does not pit local residents against newcomers. It will work best when it empowers local communities to play an active role in housing delivery. 

TAMA 38 and Houston’s reform unlocked homes in the heart of settlements. When it comes to housing delivery, as we have seen, location matters. The importance of location brings us to the third reason why Ireland should pursue an SPZ policy: sustainability.

Putting new housing near and within existing settlements is more sustainable. As the 82nd recommendation of the report of the Housing Commission said, compact growth is “essential to achieving the transition to a low-carbon society.” SPZs, by delivering compact growth in areas that have been locked in at lower densities, will help enable this transition. Houston, known for its car culture and sprawl was the only major US city without a rail system in the 1990s. Now it has three operational light rail lines and two more planned, enabled by the increased density of homes, showing the potential of policies like SPZs for delivering compact growth.

Building with more density is one tool among many to help curb our carbon emissions, due to, among other things, reduced commuting times. Areas with higher densities are the most environmentally friendly. Restrictions on building in the areas with the highest demand leads to dispersed development and higher emissions. 

Sustainability and an improved economy go hand in hand. New homes are typically more socially valuable in areas with high land prices (in the middle of towns and cities) because these areas tend to have higher productivity due to urban agglomeration economies. Unlocking a greener and more prosperous future will require delivering greater densities in our cities and towns.

One way to add density is to allow homeowners to add modest homes in their own gardens replacing underused structures like sheds or garages. Another way to allow them to build up, extending their properties upwards.

We need to build up as well as out to reach the densities required to tackle our climate and housing challenges. However, building up doesn’t mean building skyscrapers (which increase building costs per home), it means building gentle density. 

SPZs can enable upward extensions by creating a strong rules-based approach. A policy of upward extensions has been successfully implemented in South Tottenham, London in precisely this way.

In Haringey council’s area, there was a prevalence of haphazard and informal dormer extensions (which are common in Ireland). These extensions responded to a need of the community for more space, given the large family sizes within the local community. However the extensions were not architecturally consistent, causing some annoyance among neighbours. The solution was to provide a strict design code to govern what kinds of upward extensions could be carried out on the street. 

The scheme led to a win-win. Local residents who needed extra space were able to upwardly extend their properties. The rules governing the extensions enabled homeowners to make architectural contributions to the area. The clear rules not only allowed the council to promote and preserve a particular style but it also allowed homeowners to extend their properties with a high degree of certainty that they would get planning permission. 

The clear rules underpinning the South Tottenham upward extension case resemble our SPZ proposal. In both cases, confidence is assured by clear and definitive rules.  Both policies allow homeowners to make more efficient use of their existing property. 

Any strategy to sustainably deliver homes to meet Ireland’s growing needs is going to have to find a way to enable gentle improvements in the suburbs. Adapting our building stock with gentle upward extensions, in keeping with the context of the local area, is one way to meet our joint housing and sustainability challenges. The case of South Tottenham shows how effective clear rules can be.

Sustainable urban infill will require adding density in our cities and towns and that will mean building up. SPZs, by creating a rules-based approach, will enable communities to gently increase the densities of their areas, ultimately creating sustainable communities. 

This important combination of clear rules and empowerment could unlock homes in multiple ways. As discussed, upward extensions are one means to deliver more homes in a sustainable way. Another way is to replace underused and often empty garages facing onto laneways with homes. Gardens which face onto a laneway are an opportunity to create entirely new streets lined with mews homes. 

One of the winning entries to the Housing Agency’s Housing Unlocked competition, Start Spreading the Mews, suggested that allowing the development of mews homes could deliver 15,000-20,000 new homes just within the M50. A crucial barrier to developing mews homes is local opposition and the possibility of achieving economies of scale. SPZs would enable a block to come together and develop across their plots, creating a new street facing onto a laneway. 

What’s difficult about Mews homes is that they require coordination across multiple plots to create a new street with sufficient numbers to justify the cost of improving the laneway. One instance where this problem of coordination appears most startlingly is in the seemingly intractable problem of ‘above-the-shop’ vacancy. 

There are two broad approaches to the problem of above-the-shop residential units. One is to change the building regulations for older buildings to make conversions to residential more affordable. The other is to find a way to reduce the costs of conversion within the regulations. 

Collaboration may be the answer to bringing down the costs of above-the-shop conversions. A detailed report by DCU and the Simon Community found that collaboration will be key to addressing above-the-shop vacancy. By aligning the incentives and providing a mechanism for sharing the costs of renovation, SPZs could accelerate the conversion of above-the-shop units into homes. 

Similarly, converting the Georgian core of Dublin into residential could be accelerated by implementing SPZs. Overcoming tricky regulatory barriers by coordinating across several properties may increase the likelihood of more residential uses of the Georgian stock.

Confidence is a major issue in taking on costly renovations, especially with historic buildings. The use of SPZs would increase confidence by carving out a clear pathway to achieving planning permission.

One of the core issues when it comes to historic buildings is adaptability. It is the question of whether we create rules that allow our built environment to adapt over time to our needs. Adaptability not only is crucial to the sustainable use of older buildings, but it is also key to addressing demographic changes. 

That is the fourth reason Ireland should pursue an SPZ policy: demographic change. Allowing for the adaptive reuse of existing properties, as Progress Ireland has argued elsewhere, should be at the heart of a strategy to deliver smaller homes suitable for young professionals and ageing rightsizers. 

There is not just a shortage of homes, there is a mismatch between the homes we have and the people living in them. Lots of family homes are crammed with renters and lots of larger homes are under-occupied.  

The shortage of small homes forces an impossible dilemma onto older people: either stay in potentially unsuitable accommodation or leave your community. The government claims that 150,000 rightsizing homes are required by 2031. SPZs could unlock these homes in the areas where they are needed the most by enabling homeowners to build small homes on their existing plots.

The shortage also forces young people into ‘crammer’ homes, with little privacy of their home. Young people are met with a dilemma of choosing to live with parents well into their thirties or live with groups of strangers. This is a choice between independence and privacy. By creating a pipeline of small homes, SPZs will help ease the pressure on both the young and the old, allowing them to live more comfortably with independence. 

Adaptability is made more difficult by who decides on whether a development takes place. What has made community-led policies successful in a range of countries is the combination of the incentive to support development and the authority to approve of it. SPZs provide that combination and that is the fifth reason Ireland should pursue an SPZ policy. 

The combination of incentives and authority is a powerful tool for housing delivery. An example of a scheme in Seoul, South Korea is illustrative here. The scheme delivered homes at scale. In 1992 in Seoul, 53 per cent of new apartment or condominium developments came through the policy. 

Seoul gave homeowners a central role in initiating and shaping new development in the city. Central to the policy was a profit-sharing opt-in model. The system permitted particular areas to vote on regeneration projects. The opt-in ballots became so popular that districts sought out participation in it. 

Local democracy was central to the scheme – the city government identified and designated redevelopment districts through surveys of areas in need of urban regeneration. Next, homeowners in these areas would form an owner’s association to lead the redevelopment project. The association would democratically select a construction company as a partner, but the association itself would remain responsible for overseeing the project’s progress and making key decisions.

Homeowners shaped the plan. The construction company would set out a detailed plan, including architectural drawings and infrastructure improvements. The plan would first be approved by the association. Once approved, the association would submit it to the planning authority. 

Homeowners were strongly incentivised to approve the scheme. Members of the association could choose compensation or a home in the new scheme. Compensation was typically well above market prices, taking into account the uplift due to the development. New homes in the development typically went for much more than the initial homes. In some cases, the homeowners received a new home for themselves and another new home that they could give to their children or sell.

Homeowners who chose to apply for new homes had a lot of flexibility. Later in the process, those who decided to apply for new homes could sell their ‘acquisition rights’ to a third party. If the market was particularly strong, then homeowners could sell these rights for a significant premium.

Combining the incentive to say yes to development with the authority to approve of it was central to the success of Seoul’s policy. That same combination was displayed more recently in the case of the Squamish First Nation group in Vancouver, Canada.

Vancouver has one of the world’s worst housing crises. It is remarkably hard to get anything built. “It’s easier to elect a pope than to approve a small apartment building in the city of Vancouver” said the city’s first indigenous relations manager, Ginger Gosnell-Myers. 

In 2019, the Squamish First Nation, an indigenous group, voted to approve the development of 11.7 acres of land in the heart of Vancouver. The development, comprising 11 towers on reserve land, will include up to 6,000 new homes. These are remarkable figures in a city that saw a net gain of just 2,300 rental homes in the eight years from 2010. In the same period, the city added 40,000 people. 

A referendum process allowed members of the Squamish Nation to decide on the project. They had a strong incentive to approve the plan, given the enormous value uplift of approximately 20 billion Canadian dollars in revenue over 99 years. 87 per cent supported the land use for redevelopment. 81 per cent supported the business terms for partnering with a developer. The community plans on using the massive uplift to address education and health disparities.

The nearly 12-acre parcel of land was repatriated to the Squamish Nation in 2001 after a long court battle over government annexation in the early 1900s. This development represents the largest project on First Nations land in Canada. The project is on reserve land, which is regulated by the federal government. That means that the City of Vancouver has no regulatory authority. 

When given the power to shape the development of their land, and capture the benefits of doing so, the Squamish people overwhelmingly supported development. 

While SPZs will not approximate the scale exhibited by that of the Squamish Nation’s example, the lesson for Ireland is that, if the benefits of development are clearly defined and the system is clear, existing communities can play a positive role in spurring and shaping development.

A nearby example of the powerful tool of combining authority and incentives was recently displayed in London.

London has been balloting social housing residents on regeneration projects since 2018. The policy has been a remarkable success. 31 estate regeneration ballots have passed so far. In some instances, over 90% of residents voted to regenerate their estate.

The case of estate regeneration shows that residents in all tenure types can be the strongest advocates of development when the structures are in place to facilitate that advocacy.

Street Plan Development Zones as micro-UDZs

While Progress Ireland’s detailed proposal for how SPZs will work will be released after this piece, this section will discuss how we are approaching the detailed proposal. Our next document on SPZs will show our proposal of what choices we think will be best. This section will discuss the principles underpinning these choices. The broad structure of how SPZs will work can be seen in this decision tree. 

The first step is the street plan development framework. The framework is set at the national level. A street plan development framework will define the permissible envelope of development for all street plans, what counts as a ‘street’ for the purposes of designation, and the maximum and minimum size of an SPZ for the purposes of designation.

In SDZs and UDZs, frameworks are drawn up for each individual designation. Given their scale and ambition, this makes perfect sense. However, SPZs will be, by definition, small, covering a single street at a time. Requiring that local authorities draw up a framework for each SPZ would overburden already overstretched planning departments. Drawing up individual frameworks would ultimately slow down the process considerably, removing one of the key benefits of SPZs. As a result, Progress Ireland believes that a framework should be set at the national level, covering all SPZs.

The rules must be written with sufficient clarity and objectivity to allow communities to have confidence in the system. There is a trade off between high levels of flexibility and legibility. The more flexible the rules, the less predictable their application in a given case and the less confidence that others can have that the rules will protect them. The more standardised they are, the less useful they will be in unusual contexts. An easy way for SPZs to go wrong is that the street plan development framework is written with too much flexibility in mind. SDZs work because of their clarity. It is imperative that an SPZ policy does not lose sight of its comparative advantage. The normal discretionary process of applying for permission will always be available for unusual contexts. 

An illustrative example of this trade-off is the notion of a street. Naturally, streets come in many shapes and sizes. There is no univocal notion of a street that will carve up the country. For the purposes of this policy, this fact presents the policymaker with a choice between adopting a sufficiently flexible notion of a street to allow for variation and a strict notion of a street which may exclude or brush over variation. 

This choice involves the question of whether to prioritise what might be called rationalism or pragmatism. The most intellectually satisfying notion of a street is going to be flexible enough to account for variation on the ground. The more pragmatic notion of a street is going to have to accept a clear though intellectually unsatisfying notion which will successfully cover the vast majority of cases.  

Progress Ireland recommends that the rules surrounding SPZs, including the definition of terms such as ‘street’, be written in a pragmatic way, erring on the side of clear and simple rules. SPZs will be effective only when they are clear and simple. 

Introducing high levels of flexibility bears the risk of unintentionally introducing uncertainty. Suppose a flexible definition of ‘street’ is adopted. The job of local authorities in the designation process is to apply the basic framework created at the national level. If the rules are not clear, the burden will be on the local authority to apply an unclear set of guidelines. 

Unintended consequences such as these can prevent the state from delivering what it has intended with a policy. A useful example is the case of upward extension rights in the UK. Rules were created making the upward extension of properties a ‘permissible development right’. In order to realise this right, there were natural checks to be done to ensure, for instance, the safety of pursuing an upward extension. These checks were called ‘prior approvals’. The stated intention was that these would be procedural in nature, allowing for only limited discretion.

These prior approvals were treated by local planning authorities as ordinary planning permissions and were rejected at similar rates as ordinary development applications. The number of homes that it was estimated this mechanism would deliver has not been achieved, in part due to this mistake in the writing of the policy. 

SPZs will have to have a pre-specified size. Here again, there will be a choice for policymakers. Make SPZs too big and they become unwieldy. Coordinating the choices of any group of people is difficult. The bigger the group, the more difficult it gets. Keeping SPZs small will minimise such coordination challenges. On the other hand, the smaller the area, the less that can be done without significant externalities imposed on those outside the area. If you make an SPZ designation too small, it will be impractical to achieve change that does not affect those outside the area. As before, this principle should be guided by a relentless focus on the goal of the policy: to create a sustainable pipeline of new homes using existing sites. 

The size of an SPZ designation should be strictly applied and measured by the number of households and not by the size of the area. Measuring by the size of the area would exclude properties with large plots and the lowest density which are potentially the most useful places to designate as SPZs due to their potential. 

The second step is initiation. In other words, who begins the process? Similar policies chose only one route for initiation. In the UK’s ‘street vote’ policy, only local residents can opt into a street plan. In Seoul, it was the local planning authority that would put the vote to the local community. We believe that there should be two pathways to an SPZ designation, through either the local authority or local residents. 

We believe that local authorities could integrate SPZs into their development plans, increasing their capacity for plan-led development. Suppose the local plan is planning for some investment in an area with relatively low densities and multiple ownership. Allowing only the residents to initiate the process means they may encourage the street to take the lead but they would ultimately rely on the street to take the initiative and get the ball rolling. By empowering local authorities to initiate the process, they increase the ability to plan for growth in given areas in ways they currently cannot do. They simply do not have a way to get private individuals to build in the places they want them to build. With this system, they can shape development in otherwise frozen areas, out of reach of the normal development plan.

While it is important to empower local authorities to initiate the process, ultimately SPZs will work best when initiated by local communities. If 50 per cent of eligible residents in an area petition the local authority to designate their area as an SPZ, then the local authority should be required to designate the area as an SPZ once certain clear and simple rules are met. 

Keeping the minimum petition threshold at 50 per cent is crucial to avoid the disruption of an unwise request for designation. Setting the bar for designation at a simple majority will increase the probability that SPZ designations are effective and do not cause unnecessary nuisances for local communities. If the threshold were below 50 per cent, a greater proportion of ballots would fail to pass, ultimately causing a nuisance and jeopardising the longevity of the policy.

The third step is pre-designation. What are the boxes a petition will have to tick to enable an SPZ designation by a local authority? We have discussed a few of these boxes, such as the threshold of the petition. A crucial barrier to overcome is environmental. SPZs will be ‘subthreshold’ for the purposes of section V of the Planning and Development Act – that is, an SPZ will not automatically trigger an environmental impact assessment given its comparatively small scale. However, it will need to undergo pre-screening and potentially a screening determination to ensure a given SPZ will not have an adverse effect on the environment. 

Where further environmental checks are needed, they will have to be paid for by somebody. One crucial question is not just who pays for it but when it is paid for. Suppose local residents have to pay upfront for appropriate assessment and environmental assessment screenings. These costs will come before local residents have any certainty about whether a street plan will pass. Meaning, it is risky for them to pay the thousands of euros required for these screenings upfront. We saw that a similar fee deterred homeowners from building small units in their gardens in Portland, as discussed in Progress Ireland’s paper on seomraí. It is crucial, therefore, that any upfront costs not deter residents from pursuing an SPZ designation.

The fourth step is designation. We have discussed why the criteria of designation should be transparent, clear, and objective, erring on the side of pragmatic clarity over rational but stultifying precision. Designation also must be fast. Allowing for an open-ended timeline to process a petition risks creating a slow and uncertain process. The rules should be simple enough to enable fast processing of petitions. 

The fifth step is the street plan development scheme. This is the street plan that is proposed by eligible local residents and the local authority. The street plan is a detailed proposal setting out the rules for the development of the street. Returning to the example of South Tottenham, what made the upward extension scheme in South Tottenham effective was that the rules covering the permissible use of the plot, the height, the facade design, and the material used were clear.

The next step is the decision made in the street plan development ballot. This is the only point at which discretion is exercised in the process and it is exercised by local residents. Ballots pass when 75 per cent of eligible residents approve of a given plan. If the ballot fails to pass, there should be no further ballots allowed for three years.

It is imperative that ballots can pass without unanimity since requiring 100 per cent approvals of any kind of development is an unrealistic and harmful requirement for any kind of planning process. Such a requirement would create a veto on developing streets, allowing a single person to hold back the majority of an area from developing. Even though a ballot may pass without one’s approval, any given household is under no obligation to develop, just as is the case with ordinary planning permissions. 

A question emerges about how many votes are allowed per plot? Any rules covering this have to remain cognizant of the risk of ‘gaming’ by households and many occupants. Any rule covering a ballot of this kind should be designed to avoid any one property having disproportionate voting power than any other. 

The ballots also highlight the role of the renter within an SPZ. There should be no doubt that SPZs will only be successful if they are paired with fair and transparent rules covering the role of tenants in the process. That highlights one way an SPZ policy could go wrong: if it doesn’t provide a fair and transparent system for tenants.

We have mentioned other ways the policy could fail on its own terms, such as if designations are rejected due to excessively prescriptive or unclear rules.

Another way that SPZs could fail is if they are defanged into a process that enables nothing more than residential extensions. While there is nothing wrong with making extensions easier, if the SPZ framework lacks ambition by setting excessive limits on SPZs, it will fail to deliver the homes we desperately need.

What is most important, and it bears repeating, is that SPZs must be designed with a relentless focus on delivery in mind. The countless small choices that the design and implementation of a policy of this complexity necessitate will require the right principles. This section has tried to present Progress Ireland’s approach to these principles.  

Conclusion

Ireland needs to build a lot of homes, as all readers will acknowledge. That will mean, as former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said, “pulling out all of the stops”. Addressing the housing shortage is going to mean layering solutions, some big, others small. No single policy is going to close a housing deficit as large as ours. 

Current policy has de facto ring-fenced huge areas–the suburbs, occupied streets of low-density housing in our cities–and frozen them in the mid-twentieth century. This has forced young people into living with their parents far longer than they would like or into crammer homes often with groups of strangers. We need a way to unlock these areas, creating a new pipeline of sustainable homes. SPZs are one way to do just that.

SPZs reimagine the idea of delivering homes. Rather than seeing local communities as reluctant but bribable participants in creating sustainable communities, we should give them the power to shape their own areas. 

1. According to Aileen Gleeson of the Department of Finance, “a six-month planning delay can reduce a projected 10 per cent return on a development project to 8 per cent, while a 12-month delay can reduce the return to 6 per cent.” ↩︎
2. This street has been chosen purely for illustrative purposes. ↩︎