Today is ‘Ireland Reads Day 2026’. And while there are at least 20 placemaking books in my reading queue (a messy, piled stack that grows weekly), this week’s addition arrived at exactly the right moment. With the European Parliament now formally recognising the housing crisis as a social emergency – following adoption of the HOUS Committee report (A10-0025/2026) on Wednesday [https://caroltallon.com/housing-recognised-as-a-social-emergency-parliament-backs-hous-report/] – the focus must be not only on accelerating supply as a matter of urgency, but on ensuring that what is delivered stands up to scrutiny in the long term.

On Monday, at the 2026 RIAI and Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage National Housing Conference in Sligo, I picked up the New Housing 3 book. The RIAI deserves real credit for hosting a bookshop on location at events. It is consistently a highlight for me, and it is one of the few reliable ways to come across placemaking and built environment books I would simply never find otherwise – especially those that connect policy and practice with people and place.

New Housing 3 is a 564-page publication by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), produced with support from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, that showcases 100 high-quality, sustainable Irish housing projects. Curated by Paul Kelly, it spans urban developments, infill schemes and projects delivered at a range of scales, alongside essays on design standards and settlement structure. Each project is presented with design strategies, site information and comparative data bars, allowing readers to interrogate development standards rather than simply admire finished forms. It is rigorous as well as visual.

Paul Kelly also presented at the conference. The book is not a catalogue but a statement of intent. Organised by scale – from small infill schemes to large masterplans – it reinforces a simple but often overlooked point: design quality must be embedded at every scale of development. The author challenged the tendency to reduce housing debates to unit counts and density metrics, arguing instead that density should be experienced spatially and socially, not merely calculated. The projects demonstrate that higher density does not inevitably mean diminished standards; when carefully composed – through massing, building lines, permeability and integrated landscape – compact development can enhance vitality, environmental performance and everyday quality of life.

I have about 550 more pages to go, but I am happy to recommend the book already on the strength of its essays alone. The opening set provides a strong frame for how we should be thinking about delivery now – without letting volume become an excuse for lowering ambition. The essays include Paul Altman on the urban design principles informing the Design Manual for Quality Housing; Karen Kenny on sustainable and compact settlements; Paul Keogh on the 15-minute city and whether it is a global solution to an Irish problem; John O’Mahony on the challenges of retrofitting suburbs; Tony Reddy on low-rise, medium-density housing for twenty-first century Ireland; Charlotte Sheridan on integrated design-led planning for town centre living; and Jason Taylor on re-thinking our approach to housing.

What I value in this line-up is that it maps the full system, not just the building. It links standards to street structure, density to dignity, and delivery to the long tail of consequences – maintenance, adaptability, social life and climate resilience. It is also a reminder that the argument is not quality versus speed. The real contest is between coherent approaches that scale and fragmented approaches that do not – between a housing programme that learns and one that repeats avoidable mistakes (*standardisation was a contentious point throughout the conference so I won’t comment on that…).

While I only picked up this book on Monday and am not in a position to review it thoroughly, the essays are excellent and the level of project detail across the 100 featured schemes will appeal to design teams across housing delivery.

New Housing 3 is available (€60) through the RIAI Bookshop: https://www.riai.ie/discover-architecture/bookshop-featured-publications#:~:text=%E2%82%AC60.00,practical%20solutions%20from%20across%20Ireland