Dublin City Council rezones land for up to 25,000 new homes
Dublin City Council (DCC) has completed a significant tranche of rezoning, which it said would help enable the delivery of up to 25,000 additional homes in its administrative area.
Several key sites were rezoned from employment uses to residential and mixed-use by councillors at a meeting of the authority held yesterday evening,
The council is aiming to increase housing capacity on tracts of land around the city from 49,000 units to 73,000 by 2032, in a planning process that began in October last year.
However, councillors were also informed that around 12,000 homes have been granted permission by DCC, but have yet to commence construction.
“That’s why we are including the headroom in our current proposals, in recognition that some of these lands that will come forward and will get permission won’t actually advance to construction,” said DCC acting city planner Emer Uí Fhátharta.
“So, the additionality is to take account for that.”
At the meeting, councillors voted through the rezoning of several sites, including the masterplan for City Edge in Kylemore, which could provide up to an additional 5,300 homes.
The 52-hectare urban quarter is a partnership between DCC and South Dublin County Council.
DCC’s planning department also completed a wide-ranging review of the city’s 17 Strategic Development Regeneration Areas (SDRAs), which are targeted for large-scale, high-density regenerative development.
Councillors yesterday voted for eight of these to be expanded, along with seven key sites around the city, delivering a further 10,000 homes.
It follows the decision from elected members in January to rubber-stamp the 77-hectare Broombridge-Hamilton master plan, providing a new mixed-use regeneration area in Dublin 7 and 11.
A spokesperson for DCC said the changes “demonstrate the ambition of Dublin City Council to provide significant additional housing capacity in the city and represents a strategic intervention to bring forward development lands.”
The rezoning comes in the wake of guidance issued to all local authorities last July by Housing Minister James Browne to reopen and reconfigure their development plans to comply with new “housing growth requirements”.
The new requirements mean DCC’s housing targets are now 8,196 units annually until 2034, and 6,075 per year between 2035 and 2040.
Council officials previously argued that the authority’s development plan had already accounted for significant additional headroom over and above projected requirements, but Government insisted additional rezoning take place.