3.4 | Cities – Metropolitan Areas
The strategy for the development of the Region is built on the pillars of our three cities, each incorporating more than one local authority within their metropolitan areas. The RSES includes Metropolitan Area Strategic Plans to ensure coordination between local authority plans. A key component of the RSES is about building partnerships and a collaborative approach between the cities and metropolitan areas to realise combined strengths and potential, and to support their development as a viable alternative to Dublin. Our cities need sustainable planning to ensure that they can absorb a significant scale of development, retain their essential character and ensure quality of life. Compact urban settlements, efficient public transport networks and the provision of essential physical and social infrastructure is required in tandem with achieving projected growth. Responding to the radical change and growth required by the NPF and the RSES will be a major challenge for our cities and metropolitan areas. Each city has unique strengths and opportunities. Each one is a major centre of employment, has a third-level education presence, healthcare structures, accessible public transport, and interregional road networks and is linked with international gateways of airports and ports. Cork through the Cork Area Strategic Plan (CASP) has an established (non statutory) metropolitan and cityregion planning framework. The newly emerging metropolitan frameworks in Limerick-Shannon and Waterford provide a significant combined proposition for effective regional growth and, at national level, an effective counterbalance to the Greater Dublin Area. The three cities have extensive areas of influence, as demonstrated by the catchment zone map. The MASPs address these areas for each city and metropolitan area, included in Volume 2. A summary of each MASP is set out in the following pages.
RPO 6
Collaboration between Metropolitan Areas
It is an objective to establish a collaborative intra-regional partnership approach between the Region’s metropolitan areas of Cork, Limerick-Shannon, Waterford and a similar inter-regional approach with the Galway Metropolitan Area in the Northern and Western Region, that they are prioritised in line with the NPF’s strategic objectives and population targets, for focused and long-term investment as economic engines to ensure regional parity. The three metropolitan areas will lead together in partnership to harness their combined potential as viable alternatives to the unbalanced growth of Dublin.
Map 3.2 | Collaboration Between Metropolitan Areas
GALWAY
LIMERICK-SHANNON
WATERFORD
CORK
Southern Regional Assembly | RSES
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