The Yanks would say the Tri State. But as I am in Serbia, John, as I'm in Serbia, I'm more inclined to be more Balkan about this. So basically it's the area where Tipperary fuses with County Cla and is also threatened by the encroachment of County Limerick. So that these three ancient tribes, these three ancient traditions, fuse up against each other in a sort of an uncomfortable. An uncomfortable settlement. But what unifies all the Traditions is the bridge over Loch Derg, which has been standing for many, many centuries. The latest iteration was built in the 17th century. It is a beautiful, beautiful seven arch bridge that spans the river. That part of the river is the closest crossing point at the lock, where the lock goes into the Shannon. And people have been traveling there for hundreds of years. And how do we know this? Because Killaloo was the seat of the last high King of Ireland, Brian Barugha, the man who gave the Vikings a slapping at the Battle of Cloud tariff in the 11th century. So we are going back a long, long way. But equally equally, John, we are also in Bosnia. Well, we're in Serbia, we're in former Yugoslavia. And the Bridge over the Drina is a book that if you want, and I know, John, it's not, you get up every morning thinking, oh, I'd really like to understand the ethnicities of Bosnia. But if you really want to do that. There is a book written by a Yugoslav writer called Ivo Andrich, and it was written in 1940-1949 when Andrich had been released by the Nazis who had occupied obviously Yugoslavia. And he wrote about the three, but particularly the two main ethnicities. In Vizegrad, which is in eastern Bosnia, people who remember the war in Bosnia will remember a place called Srebrenica where there was a massacre of the Muslim population by the Serb militia. Vishegrad is in the same locality, the same region of Bosnia. It's an ancient patchwork of tribes. The Muslim tribe who had converted to Islam during the Ottoman Empire's occupation of Bosnia, and of course, the local Serb population that refused to convert to Islam. But the book is amazing because it tells a five century. It's a real epic. It's kind of slightly magic realism if you actually get really into it. But it's a five century epic and it tells the story. It's not a who done it? It's not a who done it. Because if this, if you're, if you listen to the Serbs, it's always the Austrians, it's always the Ottomans, they did it. And if you listen to the Muslims, it's always the Austrians and the Serbs who did it. And of course there's a Croat population there, but it's a fantastic book. And of course, the way Evil Andrich, he uses the device of the construction of the bridge by the sultan and what happened on the bridge. And of course it's the same thing in effect, because basically he's saying is all these tribes live on either side of the river. But they come together on the bridge, they trade on the bridge, they fall in love on the bridge, they have tragedy on the bridge. The bridge is fought over by different people, by different ethnicities, by different empires, all that sort of stuff. And as I was sitting in a bar called Goosers in Ballina on the Tipperary side of the Killaloo bridge, and I was listening to the locals, I was at a lovely little festival called Resonance this last week, and I was, to the locals complaining about the bridge. And I was thinking to myself, I was kind of whisked away from Killaloe to Eastern Bosnia, as if I was listening to the various tribes. Because, of course, as you know, between Clare and Tipperary, in Limerick there is enormous gaa, empty, particularly in Harlan. And come this summer, they'll be knocking strips, there'll be air and skin flying and for sure each other, right? But what actually unifies them, yeah, is the bridge, because that's when all. Where everyone has to come to do business, to cross, etc. And what has happened in that part of the world. And it was just very interesting. I was, when I was listening to them and said, fellows, and I'm a tip man and I do this and I met. I was thinking, am I here? This is the real, the real dub, you know, you. You know me, who gets there. I get nervous when I go, yeah, I don't know what to do. But I was listening to the video anyway, what intrigued me, we are in Serbia. We're going to do a podcast on Serbia for Thursday. But I want to talk about is what has happened in Killalum the following. The ancient bridge was being replaced by a new Brine Baru bridge. And the new Brine Baru bridge is a pretty impressive construction on fairness. I drove over it the other day, right. But the local council didn't reveal that one of the upshots of the new bridge was that the old bridge was to be completely closed to traffic. That this has caused all sorts of uproar amongst the villagers, some people suggesting that they're not getting business, that traffic flow has changed, that the pedestrians aren't spending.
David McWilliams (13:35)
So we have this strange situation. We have planning which is encouraging urban sprawl. We have absolutely no real profound investment in, let's say, a light rail system or an intercity rail system or something that can be used. Because the problem with the buses is they compete with cars for space on the road. And as a result of that, people find buses. Even though people using buses has gone through the roof, it still is not seen as a almost guaranteed alternative to driving in terms of will I get there on time? Why? Because the bus competes with the cars. So the more cars on the road, the less car space. The fact that Ireland doesn't and refuses to actually tax car space at certain times. So, for example, you could have a congestion charge, which is between the hours of 8 to 10 or 7 and 9, whatever you decide, because the premium and car space goes through the roof. In an economic world, you'd actually tax that. So you would encourage people not to use their cars between 7 and 10 and you'd encourage them to move at different times. But be that as it may, this is what we're going to talk about. The problem with Killaloo, although it has been framed in the publisher as a local council and enmities between various different counties, what it is is the fact that Ireland has turned our beautiful country into a country of sprawl. Suburbs are creeping into the ancient countryside, traditional villages, so much so that we need to build these new bridges because the old infrastructure is creaking and the old towns are choked with traffic. But it's a planning problem that is driving almost everybody to be compelled to drive. You know, there used to be a train from Killaloe into Limerick, right? And of course, that's gone. The only way you can get around the country is by driving. And I'll give you an amazing statistic, John, right? According to the latest census, there is a massive gap between how people in Ireland live and where we live. So what the census does is it breaks down every area into densities, right? The most dense, the least dense. And I'll give you one statistic, right? So the top 20%, most dense urban areas in Ireland account for 83% of all workplaces, all school places and all college places, which makes complete sense. So the most urban areas account for 83% of the places that people go to work, go to school, go to college, go to hang out, go to shop, all that stuff. Right, so that makes sense. So the vast majority of schools and jobs and retails and social venues are in urban areas. So you'd imagine therefore, John, that in a well planned, normal country, 83% of the people would live in urban areas where 83% of the work and of the college and of the socializing goes on. Yeah, but not in Ireland. Not in Ireland. The top 20% of these urban areas, where 83% of us work and commute to, account for only 65% of the population.
David McWilliams (28:19)
We've been plenty of ghost estates. We were talking about last, last time, but we've, we've no planning, right? And of course when, when the council says, okay, well we're going to have to be more dense, people go bonkers, right? So I'll give you an example. Step aside, pitch and put. Now this is hyper local for a non even Dublin listeners. I'm just going to give you an example. I'm not going to go step aside. Is a suburb of Dublin. It's in the county of Dunleary Rathdown, which is the county that John and I live in, the county council, which is in south Dublin, right? So this is part of the city and there's a pigeon putt course there and they're going to put new housing on the pitch and put course, right. The objections poured in, right? And I love to love this, call it a disgrace and a travesty, accusing the council of destroying the fabric of the community. And there's this is one, one submission fumed, how dare you try to turn this area into nothing but housing estates against the will of the local people, Right? And other residents insisted that was all, it was already overcrowded. And here's a great one, right? The infrastructure is creaking. The countryside has been ruined enough building in this area that people need amenities and green space. No more houses. Apartments are flats and it's declared absolutely criminal that our amenities are a target for rezoning this passionate language. The language is great, John. Yeah, Jungle destroying the unique area. Absolutely criminal monstrosities, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This shows how deep rooted the anti density mindset is. Yeah, yeah, of course. The irony is this isn't some place in the middle of nowhere. This is a Dublin suburb. So this is the sort of resistance that the councils in Ireland are coming up against and therefore they're slow to rezone land because of so many objections, particularly for higher density. And this means that the local councils can't do their jobs because the local residents are challenging everything. And the local residents are challenging everything because they don't want Density. They have an aversion to density, which in my estimation, John, is totally irrational. But what you get is a sort of a low density lock in, in effect, that areas that should be mixed use mid rise urban neighborhoods have now essentially outlawed. Outlawed is the word.
David McWilliams (35:27)
Rather than what can be built. Right. So they'll say you cannot build this, that and the other, but you can build whatever else you like here. And that means that Japanese urban areas have houses, schools, clinics, hospitals, little factories, all co located in the same area. So those about Ireland, we zone for residential and then we zone for leisure and then we zone for retail. The Japanese don't do that. They just say you can't build this and this, this, this, but you can build anywhere else you like. So what you get then is extra extremely dense mixed use developments. And of course that makes public transport really efficient. Because what they basically say is, look, this greenfield site, this area, what you can't build is, let's say, for example, a factory or a nuclear power station, which you can build anything else, and away you go. And what that allows that is this sort of organic way in which people live. Because people want to live beside schools, they want to live beside shops, if possible. They want to live close to where they work. And what you get then is mixed residential, commercial, retail, all on top of each other. Right. And what is extraordinary is they do it so efficiently that people live close to where they work, close to where they shop, and they live in apartments. And what you have then is all these neighborhoods are kind of convenient, they're vibrant, they reduce the need for car trips. Japanese cities prioritize public transport and walkability. So the transport system is therefore world class, making it easy to live without a car. They have these mixed use developments which are centered around transit stations. So they build the public infrastructure first, like the train station, and. And then they say, okay, you can build whatever else you want around this. And therefore it manages to have a huge population that's relatively affordable. Right. The city adds more units per year than Dublin, London or New York put together.
