Develop the hinterlands of the national motorway network planned under Transport 21 for housing, so that everybody can live sustainably in the country but still work in town. Individual plots of 1.5 hectares within 3.3km of the motorway would support a house, vegetables and bio-fuel crops to support a local car culture that links to hubs, whence people commute to towns by bus on a motorway/dual carraigeway QBC.

Investment in infrastructure to 2030 will be concentrated on the building of new motorways, a fact that reflects and reinforces our car-dependent culture. This concentration on personal freedom supports the other national obsession-owning 'a house on a piece of land'. Together these aspirations have generated unsustainable housing patterns-one-offs, ribbon development and suburban clusters that are now characteristic of the Irish landscape. A reevaluation of the land, moving away from cash-crop housing towards an evolving productive landscape, makes possible the sustainable interdependence of a repopulated rural hinterland and the road network that connects Ireland's urban centres.

FKL architects
Irish Architecture Foundation