Chapter 8

Vision

The creation of healthy, inclusive and sustainable communities where all generations have local access to social, community and recreational facilities, and parks and green spaces, to suit their needs.

 Introduction

The creation of sustainable, healthy, and socially inclusive neighbourhoods is one of the cross-cutting themes of the County Development Plan. A quality public realm, access to parks, open spaces, sports and recreational facilities are crucial elements of quality places and are central to our health and wellbeing. In addition, essential services such as healthcare, childcare and education along with culture and the arts, all have a significant role to play in our quality of life. All of these services and facilities should ideally be located within each neighbourhood to provide easy access and optimise the opportunity for people to walk or cycle to them. Policies and objectives throughout the County Development Plan will work to achieve this goal over time.

 Community infrastructure, for the purposes of the County Development Plan, includes community centres and halls; libraries and cultural facilities; places of worship and burial grounds; educational, healthcare and childcare facilities; and play, sports and recreational facilities including greenways. Public open space includes large regional parks such as Corkagh, Tymon and Griffeen Valley Parks and smaller neighbourhood and local parks and publicly accessible green spaces.

 The Council will seek to provide, where it is within its remit, community infrastructure that meets the social and recreational requirements of each neighbourhood within the County. Where provision is the responsibility of developers, government departments or other agencies, the Council will work closely with these stakeholders to facilitate and support the provision of such community infrastructure. The Council will seek to ensure that community facilities are physically integrated within urban centres and residential and employment areas to optimise access, function and use; and to ensure that they are designed to incorporate universal accessibility insofar as possible, to cater for all ages and abilities.