Can You Prosper Without Building Proper Cities?

Summary

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The David McWilliams Podcast

Episode: Can You Prosper Without Building Proper Cities?
Date: February 24, 2026
Hosts: David McWilliams & John Davis

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Episode Overview

In this incisive and engaging episode, David McWilliams and John Davis explore the deep-rooted issues behind Ireland’s chronic urban planning dilemmas. Using the symbolism of two ancient bridges—one in Killaloe, Ireland and another in Višegrad, Bosnia—the hosts unravel how the Irish aversion to density has led to a sprawling, car-dependent society. They dig into the historical, economic, and cultural forces behind suburbanization, drawing vivid parallels with urban planning success stories like Tokyo, and question what holds Ireland back from creating truly prosperous, livable cities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Tale of Two Bridges: Killaloe & Višegrad

[01:34-07:41]

• David introduces the episode as “the tale of two bridges,” comparing Ireland’s ancient bridge at Killaloe and Bosnia’s bridge over the Drina — both as emblems of how infrastructure shapes and reflects social and political realities.
• “What unifies all the traditions [around Killaloe] is the bridge… where everyone has to come to do business, to cross, etc.” (David, 06:54)
• Reference to The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić to highlight how physical infrastructure forges community, commerce, and historical memory.

2. The Irish Aversion to Urban Density

[07:41-10:23]

• Ireland has the lowest urbanization rate in the Western world, with only 8% of people living in flats or apartments, compared to 46% EU average.
• “We have an aversion, a sort of almost endemic aversion to living in apartments. And the result of that is suburban sprawl… extreme commuting by cars.” (David, 09:34)

3. Land, Planning, and the Power of the "Strong Farmer"

[10:23-12:56]

• David contends that planning decisions are driven by the vested interests of landowners ("the land lobby"), benefiting from the rezoning of agricultural land to residential.
• "A financial heist dressed up as bad planning." (David, 11:19)
• The car industry also benefits, tracing back to political connections stemming from the 1950s–60s era of car import monopoly licenses.

4. Car Dependency and Commuting Nightmares

[13:34-22:43]

• Ireland ranks as the most car-dependent society in Europe, lacking significant rail investment.
• Planning encourages urban sprawl; congestion taxes and public transit reforms are absent.
• Notable Statistic:
  • 83% of jobs, schools, and colleges are in urban areas—yet only 65% of people live there; the gap is filled by commuter sprawl.
• “We have sun belt developments, but we’ve no sun.” (David, 23:28)

5. Societal Impacts: Lost Time, Lost Vibrancy

[24:19-26:05]

• 90% of Irish residents live in detached or semi-detached houses.
• Dispersed housing drives up the cost and inefficiency of public infrastructure.
• Around 250,000 people in Ireland spend two hours or more commuting by car daily.
• “Such a waste, a waste of time, of productivity, of fuel and energy… There’s no upside to that at all. Apart from listening to podcasts.” (John, 26:05)

6. Global Comparisons: Ireland vs. Tokyo

[34:23-37:37]

• The Tokyo-Yokohama metro area fits 38 million people in a space between Dublin and Portlaoise. By contrast, “we’ve put five Applegreens.” (David, 35:11)
• Tokyo employs prohibitive zoning (only specifying what can't be built) yielding dense, mixed-use, affordable neighborhoods—public transport infrastructure comes first, then amenities.
• “Japanese families live in apartments. They enjoy the services… parks, playgrounds, schools, typically within walking distance. Now, interestingly, crime rates are incredibly low, streets are safe for children.” (David, 37:38)

7. The Cultural Resistance to Density

[28:17-30:52]

• When councils propose denser development (e.g., turning a Dublin pitch and putt into apartments), objections are fierce—accusations of “absolute criminal monstrosities” and ‘destroying the unique area’.
• This anti-density mindset is described as “totally irrational” and leads to “low-density lock-in”—where mixed-use, mid-rise neighborhoods are essentially outlawed.

8. Fragility of the Irish System

[39:00-41:34]

• Overreliance on cars and underinvestment in public transit leave the system extremely fragile—especially vulnerable to shocks like bad weather.
• “Only a gobshite would say to an Irish person that rain is a shock. We can hardly be taken by surprise when it rains.” (David, 39:27)
• Lack of central vision or strategic planning is the core failing, contributing to youth emigration and declining quality of life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On car commuting:
  “Ireland is the most car dependent society in Europe… Suburban sprawl in Ireland is, and one-off housing again, has made the car the default mode of transport.”
  (David, 19:42–20:35)

• On the strength of the anti-density lobby:
  “How dare you try to turn this area into nothing but housing estates against the will of the local people!”
  (Resident objection, paraphrased by David, 29:00)

• On Japan’s zoning logic:
  “Rather than what can be built, they specify what cannot be built. And that means that Japanese urban areas have houses, schools, clinics, hospitals, little factories, all co-located in the same area.”
  (David, 35:27)

• On rain as a "shock":
  “Only a gobshite would say to an Irish person that rain is a shock…”
  (David, 39:27)

• On the missed potential:
  “What struck me… the real problem is the absolute lack of vision or central planning. Unless we fix this, Ireland is going to become a country of commuters, of people wasting their time, of highly expensive public infrastructure, and eventually of very, very decreasing returns to what we call quality of life.”
  (David, 40:18–41:17)

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Important Timestamps

• [01:34] – Introduction to Killaloe’s bridge and its history
• [03:40] – Bosnia’s Drina Bridge and the book by Ivo Andrić
• [09:34] – Start of in-depth discussion on Ireland’s anti-density culture
• [11:19] – “A financial heist dressed up as bad planning.”
• [13:34] – Ireland’s car dependency and planning failures
• [16:53] – Key statistics: 83% of workplaces in urban areas vs. 65% population
• [20:35] – 65% of Irish workers commute by car; 43% of secondary students are driven to school
• [23:28] – “We have sun belt developments, but we've no sun.”
• [24:19] – Cost of sprawl: infrastructure & extreme commuting
• [26:45] – Dublin: 3rd most congested in Europe, 11th in the world (95h/year lost)
• [34:23] – Introduction to Tokyo as urbanization model
• [37:38] – Japan's dense, mixed-use, safe, affordable city logic
• [39:27] – System fragility: bad weather, traffic chaos
• [40:18] – Lack of vision as the root of Ireland’s urban dilemma

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Conclusion

With wit and a touch of exasperation, McWilliams and Davis trace Ireland’s sprawling, car-centric development back to deep cultural, economic, and political roots, stressing that without vision—learning from places like Tokyo—Ireland faces endemic congestion, unaffordable housing, and stunted urban vibrancy. The episode ends with a call for real urban planning courage: denser, more connected cities and a break from the “absolute lack of vision or central planning” that keeps Ireland literally and metaphorically stuck in traffic.

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Transcript

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[David McWilliams]

To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by acast. How you doing there? It is time for the podcast. It's a pretty eclectic one today because it is basically the tale of two bridges. One bridge, which will be well known to many people in Ireland, is the bridge. The ancient bridge at Killaloo in, well, I was about to say County Clare, but it's disputed. Could well be contemporary, controversial. We're going to talk about the bridge over Loch Darg and we're going to talk about the bridge over the Drina in Vigrad in Eastern Bosnia. So it's a fusion of Bosnia, the Balkans, Limerick, Claire, Tipperary. What could be described, John, as the Balkans of Munster, that area of Tri

[John]

State area, as the Yank say the Tri State area.

[David McWilliams]

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.

[John]

It would steer people away from the

[David McWilliams]

village, steer people away from Killaloo, just

[John]

to keep traffic flowing.

[David McWilliams]

Just to keep traffic flowing. So as I was sitting there witnessing this with my beak shut, taking mental notes, I thought to myself, and there was a sort of a rumbling of, oh, that was Clare County Council and Tip County Council, we're not doing this. Or delimiter. There was that sort of slightly. Little ethnic, slightly what I would Call GAA sectarianism. That sort of stuff was going on. I thought, you know, that's not the story at all. The story is, John, and this is what we're going to do the podcast on is mass suburbanization of. It is the way in which Irish cities, in this case Limerick, have spread out so significantly that these previously rural towns, which existed absolutely on their own in terms of the relationship with Limerick, or there's lots of towns in relation with Dublin, have now just been kind of subsumed into a greater commuting conurbation. And so the idea behind this podcast is using what's happening in Killaloe to explain what's happening all over Ireland, which is that Ireland is the least urbanized country in the western world. I digest that. Not the second least, not the third least, not the fourth least. And when I say urbanized, I'm talking about dense living. Living on top of each other. Right. Living in dense areas. I give you one statistic that I'd like the listeners to digest. That 8%. I thought it was 12%, but it's actually 8% of Irish people live in flats or apartments. That is in contrast to 46% of European.

[John]

That's outrageous.

[David McWilliams]

So we have an aversion, a sort of almost endemic aversion to living in apartments. And the result of that is suburban sprawl. And the result of all that, John, is what I would call extreme commuting. Are you fear of extreme sports? It's extreme commuting and extreme commuting by cars.

[John]

Why is it that we, we're not into living in flats? Like, is it something deep in our psyche, like do we need a front garden or a back garden? Is that what's driving us?

[David McWilliams]

I don't really know, John. I mean, it is a total outlier in terms of western European living experience. What I want to do the podcast on is the difference between the way we live and where we live.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

So what we have in Ireland, I think it is now, my, my own feeling is the following. That the land lobby in Ireland, landowners, has been so hand in glove with planners over the years that the only way you can rationally explain why the Irish housing market is skewed towards three bedroom semis is that three bedroom semis are built on greenfield sites. That means that the value of greenfield sites, when they change from agricultural zoning, John, to residential zoning goes up dramatically.

[John]

Yes.

[David McWilliams]

Okay, so therefore, who benefits? Cui bono? Who benefits are strong farmers. This is a very old term that used to be used in the old days, largely Describing fine gale farmers.

[John]

Sorry, strong farmers as opposed to weak farmers.

[David McWilliams]

Yes, yes, yes, it was really interesting. So I think what we're really looking at is a heist, a financial heist dressed up as bad planning.

[John]

Right.

[David McWilliams]

I was thinking, John, if the Irish planners were doing nixers, in effect, for the Irish car industry, for the large importers of cars, this would all make sense. But I have no evidence to say that the Irish planners are in the pocket of the car distributors. Because the only people who really benefit. There's only two people who really benefit from what's going on in Ireland. One are the owners of agricultural land who lobby to get that land rezoned and in the process get a massive windfall gain. Because we know that what happens to land when it's rezoned, it is. It goes up in value. That's number one. That explains where we live. Number one. And the only other people who benefit are the people who import cars into our country. Now, there is a very interesting phenomenon, John, that the people who imported cars were given license in the 1950s and 1960s to import cars. They were usually very, very close to the main political parties. Why? Because getting a license to import a brand of a car was, in effect, a license to print money. Because you were the only person who could import out of Fiats or Toyotas or Ford. Right? Yeah, but this was an extremely lucrative business.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

Because in effect, you were given the keys to the mercs and the BMWs and the Ford.

[John]

You buy the monopoly.

[David McWilliams]

You buy the monopoly. Now who gives you that monopoly? Oh, isn't that amazing? The Department of Transport. And who makes those decisions? Isn't that amazing? Some politician.

[John]

Right.

[David McWilliams]

All I'm saying is, John, people who got licenses to import cars in the 1960s and 70s ended up being very

[John]

rich, but now everyone's on bikes, so could the same be safer?

[David McWilliams]

No, they're not. No, they're not. And this is the thing. We are the most car dependent society in Europe, right?

[John]

Okay.

[David McWilliams]

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.

[John]

Wow.

[David McWilliams]

So the gap between the 83% of people who go to live and work and play in the urban areas and the fact that only 65% of the residents are in those Areas that gap is filled by commuter sprawl. It's so easy to see.

[John]

Just thinking about this on one of your recent lectures on the Trinity course that we're putting out on Patreon, you talked about how urbanization happened in the Dark Ages and people moved into urban areas. And then also during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, how the land kind of emptied out in the UK and moved to cities like Birmingham and Manchester and all the rest, whereas we kind of skipped that Industrial Revolution phase and we were still mainly an agricultural economy. So it's only now that we're moving to urban areas and kind of. We're not doing it particularly well. But it does take time.

[David McWilliams]

Look, you're absolutely right, by the way, if you do want to do the course with us and learn economics with me. Me. If you're a member of the crew, you get it all for free. If you're not a member of the crew, you can join us at David McWilliams ie crew and we will learn economics. We have Q and as we have book lectures, all sorts of things together there, and it's a bit of crack. And the last lecture, John is right, was about urbanization in the Dark Ages and what it did and why money was a part of that. And we also touched, I think on a podcast last week or the week before, on the industrialization of the United Kingdom and the Industrial Revolution.

[John]

I think I conflated both of them, but there you go.

[David McWilliams]

That's. That's grand. That's just the sign of an agile mind, Johnny boy. The sign of an agile mind. You know, I don't know who said this. Once person once said that consistency is the hobgoblin of the curious mind. Okay? So we should be inconsistent and change our minds all the time and take little ideas from here there never. But I come back to the point. You're absolutely right. We should be getting this right because we should be looking at people who got it wrong in the past because Ireland didn't have an Industrial Revolution. We basically had, as I've always said before, we had a beer and biscuits economy for years, right? The only industrial output of this country up until the 1950s in effect was beer, Guinnesses and biscuits, Jacobs, right? Both of which were derivatives of agriculture. Why didn't we have the Industrial Revolution? Because we didn't have any source of power, and that's the key. And the Industrial Revolution was all about proximity to the sources of power. And the sources of power and energy were largely coal. So that's why you see for example the roar development in Germany. You see the north of England development in the industrial revolutions because in effect people moved to where the energy was. And what I'm saying now is that people don't no longer have to move to where the energy is because we import energy. And as a result of that, we should have much more long term strategic planning. But we don't. So if you think of that, 83% of all the work is in urban areas, but only 65% of people live densely packed together in urban areas. So the gap in that in Ireland is commuter sprawl. And this has made Ireland uniquely car centric. Suburban sprawl in Ireland is and one off housing again. And we see that around Killaloo has made Dakar the default Mode of Transport. 65% of Irish workers commute by car.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And even in Dublin city and Dublin suburbs, half workers drive to work. And the same is the case for Cork and Limerick. 60% of people in Limerick drive to work even though they live within the city and county banks of Limerick. And of course among school children, this has gone through the roof. I mean, you'll see if you're stopped in traffic in Dublin anywhere. I mean, sometimes on the Vespa, I can't understand why people are stuck in traffic. Because the Vespa is a great yoga, just zooms past them. Right. Although it hasn't seen the light of day now because of the monsoon, it's

[John]

been under that cover for a long time.

[David McWilliams]

It has. The monsoon and the Vespa are not great mates. But when I'm on the Vespa, it's interesting. You know, you see all these, these school kids that trust open these massive car seats in the back. You know, I was just thinking, you know, if you think about the seats that Neil Armstrong was strapped into in order to be propelled to the moon, John. Right. It was more rickety than the things that are in the back of Ford Focuses. And you know, it's true to take, to take little Johnny 1/2 mile.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

Going to five miles an hour because everyone's stuck.

[John]

I suppose you're going to say now that back in my day we walked to school 10 miles in our bare feet.

[David McWilliams]

Well, I'm going to give you the stats, John. We did walk to school and we did get the bus and we did cycle. I don't think I was ever driven to school.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

In 1986, 50% of Irish primary school kids, kids in national school, little kids walked or cycled to school. Today it is 24,5.

[John]

Wow.

[David McWilliams]

Percent.

[John]

Wow.

[David McWilliams]

Now that is of little kids.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And in General, in general, 43% of secondary students are driven to school. Secondary students, these are like teenagers.

[John]

They need to kick up the arse, get out there and.

[David McWilliams]

Well, my point is, My point is, John, is that we have become extraordinarily car dependent.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And it's this car dependency. And this is why I think planners should have been on a nixer. I mean, if we could prove that if the planners were on a nixer for the carbon. But they're not. They're not. So we're doing this willingly.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

Or else we're doing this because they are being lobbied by landowners.

[John]

It's amazing that in, when I was in, in California quite a number of years ago, particularly Orange county, you can't move like there is no proper public transport. Everybody drives. But the difference though, in Orange county and California and here is that the distances were so much greater.

[David McWilliams]

We have, you know, you hear about sun belt states in America.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And California being one and the Arizona being one and Nevada and all those places. Right. They're the sun belt states and they've sun belt developments, which is based on cars. We have sun belt developments, but we've no sun.

[John]

Rain belt.

[David McWilliams]

It is, it's. It's a sun belt development without the bloody sun.

[John]

Right. Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

So let's get back to it. Okay. 64% of Irish people only live in urban areas. That's far below the typical 80 to 90% of residents in similar wealthy countries. So that's the first thing. So we are a non urban. We have a diversity to density. Lots of people say, oh my God, Dublin dwarfs the rest of the country. In fact, Dublin at 1.4 million out of the 5.1 million who live here is not excessive by international standards at all. The issue isn't the over concentration of people in the capital, but it's the fact that the urban population is unusually low. And the best stat for that is the 8% of us who live in flats, as opposed to the EU average is 46%. Right?

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

So 90% of Irish residents live in detached or semi detached houses spread out all around the country. And this means, number one, that we become extreme commuters. But number two, it drives up the cost of infrastructure. And why is that? Is because infrastructure that has to be spread over a much greater land footprint is inefficient.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

Right. So you need, if you want to have efficient infrastructure, you need dense buildings. So that's the argument against a metro system in Ireland. Which is that, you know, lots and lots of areas where the metro may well be built are not sufficiently dense to actually justify the expense. Why? Because not enough people are living there. But the interesting thing is Irish people still work in the cities. We haven't decentralized factories. We haven't decentralized fabs. We haven't. We haven't decentralized the civil service. We haven't decentralized the public service or any service. For example, we built the IFSC right in the center of Dublin, but we didn't build any flats around them, or we didn't build sufficient flats. Right. Which is kind of mental. Right. And as a result of all this, John, half of our working and student population commutes into Dublin from out outside the city. And 25% of all workers in Leinster travel to Dublin for work. And these commutes have gone through the roof. Right now there are around a quarter of a million people spending two hours and more in a car every day.

[John]

It's such a waste, a waste of time, of productivity, of fuel and energy coming on. It's just like there's. There's no upside to that at all. Apart from listening to podcasts.

[David McWilliams]

Well, listen to podcasts. We are in league, John, with car distributors and landowners as the people who benefit most from congestion. No, but I'll give you some more statistics, right? All these patterns show up in global rankings of congestion. Right. Dublin is now the third most congested city in Europe, and it's tiny in comparison to European cities. The 11th most congested city in the world.

[John]

Wow. And drivers, not a claim to fame at all that you want.

[David McWilliams]

And you're talking about cities like New Delhi and Jakarta and Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro and, you know, Mexico City, like we are up there. The 11th most congested city in the world. Drivers into Dublin are losing an average of 95 hours a year sitting in traffic jams. And the same problem, but on a less extreme basis, is in Cork, Galway and Limerick, leading us all the way back to Killaloo.

[John]

John Killalu.

[David McWilliams]

So all roads, John, lead back to Killaloo.

[John]

Well, do you know what, Mac? It's actually an argument which is another debate that's going on at the moment for remote working and working from home where you don't have to commute.

[David McWilliams]

Well, I tell you, John, I'm going to just say that the system then, in Ireland lends itself to objections to density. So the solution to what we're trying to do here is to have a much denser Limerick, a much Denser Cork, much denser. Galway, much denser Dublin and rr. Build an entirely new city somewhere in Athlone. Like build a new city like most countries build new cities. We haven't built a new city for years. In fact, Ireland hasn't built a new city since the Brits left, obviously, but we haven't built a new city since the 1700s, which is an extraordinary thing to actually try to digest.

[John]

Well, we've built plenty of ghost estates.

[David McWilliams]

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.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

Mid rise mixed use urban areas in favor of protecting low density areas are large housing estates miles away.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And the large housing states miles away. Do you remember I wrote that book, the Pope's Children?

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

[David McWilliams]

The Pope's Children was basically a. Sounds a bit wonky, but a sociological view of Ireland. And I remember I created these characters like the Kells Angels.

[John]

Right. Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And the reason I did the Kels is because I went to places like Kells and I thought, hold on a second. And I went really early in the morning and I traveled around and I watched how people lived. And I, you know, I referred to a place called the buckle of the baby belt, which was nice. These hugely rapidly growing places. But all of this was just a sort of a pop. Sociological account 20 years ago now, Joe. Of the sprawl.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And the Kells Angels were basically people who commuted from. From Kells, which used to be miles away in the sense that not just geographically, but philosophically and psychologically. Kells was a rural town.

[John]

Yeah. I mean, there were day trips to Kells up to Dublin, and now they're day trips, but they're commuter day trips.

[David McWilliams]

Exactly, exactly.

[John]

But tell us, if we are the 11th most congested city, where is a city that actually does this?

[David McWilliams]

Well, well, John, before we answer that, let's do a bit of this.

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[John]

Okay, Mark, we're talking about, you know, the whole idea of urbanization in Ireland and the lack of good planning and foresight and all the rest. And you were saying that we are the 11th most congested city in the world. So the question is, who can we learn from? Who does this?

[David McWilliams]

Well, okay, John, the podcast started in Killaloo. It went to Vizigrad, Bosnia. We are going to conclude by the Tokyo, Yokohama metropolitan area going to Japan. So the Tokyo Yokohama metropolitan area is the most densely populated place on earth. It has 38 million people live in this enormous urban area. But for Irish listeners, I will actually give you a statistic or a sense. Right. It is in effect an area which is about the same as the stretch between Dublin and Port Leash, really in that area of Tokyo, they've put 38 million people and we've put five apple greens.

[John]

least we got our priorities right.

[David McWilliams]

So how did the Japanese do it? How did the Japanese. The Japanese do it because they have what they call prohibitive zoning rather than prescriptive zoning. So what they do is they specify what cannot be built.

[John]

Okay. Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

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.

[John]

Wow.

[David McWilliams]

This keeps the average amount of rents down. And therefore Japanese families live in apartments. They enjoy the services. They have parks and playgrounds and schools and all that sort of stuff, typically within walking distance. Now, interestingly, crime rates are incredibly low.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

Streets are safe for children. Parents have peace of mind, because as Jane Jacobs always said, a populated street is a safe street. What makes streets dangerous, John, is when there's no people on the. They're dark and there's nobody around. And when there's nobody around, bad things happen.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And of course in Japan, there's never nobody around because everyone lives on the street.

[John]

And were they following the planners there in Tokyo? Are they following the Jane Jacobs or way of thinking or, you know, it's just so happened to turn out that way?

[David McWilliams]

No, I just think that they've very, very efficient planners who know what they want to do. And what they want to do is they want coherent areas where people can, as they say in the Mars ad of the 1970s, John, work, rest and play.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

And that is really, that's the watchword in Ireland. What we have managed to do with a much smaller population is create a traffic commuter sprawl nightmare for people. So much so that people are commuting two, three hours a day in their cars.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

They are living miles away. But I'll just leave you one. What happens then is it means the system is unbelievably fragile because so many people are driving and the public infrastructure isn't sufficient. There's no proper railway network, there's no alternative. Now, what that does, and people remember this, is it makes the system unbelievably fragile to shocks like getting bad weather.

[John]

Yes.

[David McWilliams]

Rain. So when it starts to rain in Ireland, the. The entire system is gummed up. Now, only a gobshite would say to an Irish person that rain is a shock. We can hardly be taken by surprise when it rains. So what you see is the transport system, the school system, the health care system, everything which is dependent on good planning becomes more and more fragile in the face of. Of shocks. Why? Because the thing is overstretched. Because it's not dense enough.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

Again, what we need to do in Ireland is go to Japan, see how they do it and then replicate it here because otherwise this is just going to be an endemic problem.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

A sort of a chronic problem. To just go back to Killalo.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

To Gooser's Pub. So when I was listening to the Balkanization, John, of North Tipperary, East Clare and that region.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

What struck me is I know that in the middle of the summer these people will be kicking lumps out of each other, shouting and roaring right at the Harlem. But the real problem, John, isn't the inter ethnic rivalries of that disputed territory. The real problem is the absolute lack of any vision or central planning. And that is the root of Ireland's dilemma. And unless we fix this, Ireland is going to become a country of commuters, of people wasting their time, of highly expensive public transport, of highly expensive public infrastructure like our children's hospital, and eventually of very, very decreasing returns to what we call quality of life. Which may explain why the kids are leaving in huge numbers.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

A because sprawl creates expensive housing. B because they don't want to commute. C because the denser the city, the more culturally, socially and creatively vibrant it is. And lastly, they don't see anything changing.

[John]

Yeah.

[David McWilliams]

So they're hightailing out of the place. We will leave it there. We'll be back to you from Serbia on Thursday. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger

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[David McWilliams]

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