Cost benefit analysis of peri-urban land use policy - Plurel

The Study Area and Scenario Analysis
Greater Dublin Area (GDA)
Greater Dublin Area (GDA) consists of not only the business and urban core of Dublin, but also the
surrounding Counties of Kildare, Meath, and Wicklow. The area has a land cover of around 7,000
km 2 , and has a total population in excess of 1.6 million (CSO, 2007). There are seven local authorities
governing the area. Four of them i.e. Dublin city, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, South Dublin and Fingal
comprise the Dublin Region, while the other three are in the adjacent counties including Kildare,
Meath and Wicklow (see Figure 1).
Dublin Area is considered as one of the most negatively affected cities by sprawl development
patterns within the European Union in the study carried out by European Environment Agency (see
EEA, 2006: 13). According to Williams et.al. (2007), “the outward extension of the commuter belt
reaches over 100 kilometres from the Dublin area into Outer Leinster and now adjacent to Ulster
counties of Monaghan and Cavan” (Williams et.al. 2007: 6). Considering the uncontrolled urban
growth that the Dublin Area has experienced from early 1990s, problems in transportation and landuse
planning have also contributed to sprawl type development patterns in the peri-urban areas of
the Dublin Region. Since this is the case, the Region has required further examination considering
future land development processes and new infrastructure provisions.
There are recent attempts in the GDA related to Regional Plans for GDA and the Transport21 project
which aim to achieve coordination between transportation/infrastructure provision and land-use
development and planning. Regional Plan is searching solutions to mitigate the effects of urban
sprawl by focusing on new development centres beyond the Dublin Metropolitan Area. Transport 21
Plan, on the other hand, gives importance to the transportation projects which strengthen the role of
existing urban settlements or the settlements having the potential of attracting new residential or
industrial growth (see Figure 2). Transport 21 covers the period 2000-2016, and aims at “managing
travel demand by reducing overall travel and by increasing share of public transport” (Ellis and Kim;
2001: 363). There is specific emphasis on the rail investments including light rail and metro in order
to achieve more compact and mixed developments along the rail lines and in urban centres. In
relation with the goals set in Planning Guidelines and Transport 21 Investment Programme, the
three scenarios derived from the MOLAND Model will be evaluated in the next section.
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