Can You Prosper Without Building Proper Cities?

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.5 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2026

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode begins at the ancient seven-arch bridge in Killaloe, the crossing point where Clare, Tipp and Limerick collide, and jumps to Višegrad in eastern Bosnia, where Ivo Andrić’s The Bridge on the Drina uses one structure to tell a five-century story of tribes, trade, love, and conflict. Back in Ireland, the row over closing the old Killaloe bridge is about suburban sprawl swallowing once-separate towns and turning them into commuter satellites. Ireland has built a low-density model that forces people into cars, clogs villages with traffic, and makes the whole system fragile. Just 13% of Irish people live in apartments, compared to 46% across Europe, and the gap between where jobs and services are concentrated and where people actually live is now being paid for in time, congestion, and quality of life. So where do you look for a better model? Japan. We end in the Tokyo–Yokohama mega-region, 38 million people living densely, safely, and efficiently, and ask why Ireland keeps choosing a “rainbelt” version of American car sprawl, instead of building compact, mixed-use neighbourhoods that let people live near where they work, study and socialise.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
0:06.5	This podcast is powered by ACAST.
0:11.8	How are you doing there?
0:12.9	It is time for the podcast.
0:14.3	It's a pretty eclectic one today because it is basically a tale of two bridges.
0:20.4	One bridge, which will be well known to many people in Ireland,
0:25.3	is the bridge, the ancient bridge at Killaloo in, well, I was about to say,
0:30.4	County Clare, but it's disputed.
0:32.1	Could well be County Tipperary.
0:34.1	Controversial.
0:34.7	We're going to talk about the bridge over Lock Derg, and we're going to talk about the bridge over Lockdark and we're going to talk about
0:40.1	the bridge over the Drina in Vigrad in eastern Bosnia. So it's a fusion of Bosnia, the Balkans,
0:48.7	Limerick, Claire Tipperary, what could be described, John, as the Balkans of Munster. The tri-state area, the tri-state area, the Yanks say. The tri-state area. The Yanks would say the tri-state, but as I am in Serbia, John, as I am in Serbia, I'm more inclined to be more Balkan about this. So basically, it's the area where Tipperary fuses with County Clare and is also threatened by the encroachment of County Limerick
1:14.5	so that these three ancient tribes, these three ancient traditions fuse up against each other
1:21.3	in a sort of an uncomfortable, an uncomfortable settlement. But what unifies all the traditions
1:26.9	is the bridge over Locke Derg, which has been
1:30.7	standing for many, many centuries.
1:33.6	The latest iteration was built in the 17th century.
1:36.7	It is a beautiful, beautiful seven arch bridge that spans the river.
1:41.2	That part of the river is the closest crossing point at the lock
1:48.4	where the lock goes into the Shannon. People have been travelling there for hundreds of
1:52.6	years and how do we know this? Because Killaloo was the seat of the last High King of Ireland,
	...

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