Sustainable Residential Development in Urban Areas

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Planning Guidelines
to the past. For example, the development of new building forms and
technologies to standardised formats, used on a large scale and
added to an existing historic small town or village can work against
diversity of design and successful integration between old and new.
General advice
6.3 Key overall messages of these guidelines include the following:
(a) Development in smaller towns and villages must be plan led
A local area plan, within the meaning of the Planning and
Development Act 2000, is an essential prerequisite for the
proper consideration of development proposals in smaller
towns and villages mentioned at 6.0 category a) above.
Planning authorities should not consider extensive proposals
for new development, including residential development, in
these smaller towns and villages in the absence of an adopted
local area plan. For towns and villages under 2000 in
population, planning authorities can prepare either an LAP or
prepare such supplementary local development frameworks as
is appropriate and necessary to guide any new development
proposals. Guidance on such supplementary frameworks is
outlined at 6.5 below.
(b) New development should contribute to compact towns and
villages Through planning and design, walking and cycling
should be preferred over travel by car for local trips. Ireland’s
small towns and villages have benefited from investment over
many years in areas such as water services, schools, shops,
libraries, health centres, childcare facilities and other physical
and social infrastructure. It is appropriate that the investment
in such services is utilised properly through the prioritisation
of development that either re-uses brown-field development
land such as central area sites and backlands or through the
development of acceptable “green-field” sites at suitable
locations within the immediate environs of the small town or
village concerned. Designs for the development of backlands
should seek, where feasible, to maximise permeability for