WELCOME TO BRAY CO. WICKLOW
Bray is a seaside town located on the border between County Wicklow and County Dublin. It was regarded as a small town outside of the pale in medieval Ireland. It grew exponentially in size with the extension of the southern railway in 1854 and transformed into a popular seaside town. Today Bray is regarded as a seaside commuter town where the inhabitants enjoy small-town living and benefit from a short commute to work in Dublin City. Currently, like so many Irish commuter towns, Bray is struggling to facilitate appropriate housing for its growing population and is suffering from the urban sprawl of large housing estates into the Wicklow countryside. In 2019 the Office of the Planning Regulator published its first annual report which revealed that "in 2019, 55 per cent of all houses in the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly area were permitted in the four commuter counties of Kildare, Louth, Meath and Wicklow". (Milne, 2020). The planning watchdog declared: "This poses a challenge to the government's planning objectives in tackling the sprawl of major urban areas, including Dublin." (OPW, 2019). This is happening while many unoccupied and derelict sites lie vacant in desirable central locations in these commuter towns. These sites, such as the ones found in Bray present an opportunity for the ethos of co-housing groups like Common Ground to flourish.