Garden cities and healthier living

Sir, – The problem with using “street plans” to add to urban building densities (“‘Street plans” could deliver 14,000 new homes a year’, News, September 14th) is that there is an urgent need for green spaces, including gardens, rather than more concrete and traffic in our towns and cities. This paucity of greenery is not only ecologically unfriendly but creates an unhealthy and polluted environment. A better idea would be for the Government to invest some of its funds in several garden cities, which could not only house 30,000 to 50,000 each (comparing the populations of Letchworth and Welwyn garden cities in the UK) but would provide for healthier living and by definition would be self-sufficient in employment, transport, schools and hospitals. If built on some of the many currently barren fields of ryegrass, garden cities could actually increase biodiversity.

Garden cities are now a global phenomenon that Ireland could well benefit from: it has the space! – Yours, etc,

TRICIA CUSACK,

Greystones,

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Co Wicklow.