Kevin Ingram Nowlan
Born 2 November 1910
Died 5 Jan 2003
Kevin Ingram Nowlan, who died on 5 January 2003, was associated in one way or
another with the physical planning system in Ireland for over sixty years. As he wrote
himself in 1988, he had the peculiar experience of being involved in the formulation
of the 1963 Act, helping to operate it as a local official, teaching it at University postgraduate level and wrestling with it later still as a consultant.
Born in Dublin in 1910, where his father was manager of Glasnevin Cemetery and
lived in the manger’s house, Clareville, Glasnevin, he was educated at Belvedere
College, won an entrance scholarship to UCD in 1929 and studied science and
engineering. He graduated BSc and BE (civil) with first class honours in June 1932,
winning also the Pierce Malone scholarship. He joined the firm of Nicholas O Dwyer
& Partners later that year and, in the following four years, and worked on the planning
of various water and sewerage schemes, in Sligo, Waterford, Monaghan, Cavan,
Laoighis, Longford and Cork. He was resident engineer on the Sligo water supply
scheme in 1933 and on the construction of a one million gallon reinforced concrete
reservoir in Waterford in 1935. While based in Sligo, he met Nora Harrington, the
daughter of a Kildare farmer, businessman and international cricketer, whom he was
to marry in 1937.The couple lived initially Castlewarden before building a house at
Brownsbarn near Clondalkin where their five children were reared.
Kevin was appointed Assistant County Engineer with Dublin County Council in
November 1936. His first assignments included the preparation of plans for the
conversion of the main Bray Road to dual carriageway status and for a bypass of
Leixlip. Funds were not available, however, at the time to carry out these ambitious
plans but a Kevin did manage to complete one section of dual carriageway near
Foxrock in 1937-38 using a direct labour force financed by monies made available for
the relief of unemployment.
His work on water supply, sewerage disposal, roads and other services led to an
interest in creating a system for coordinating the provision of infrastructure and to the
study of town planning. He became a member by examination of the Royal Town
Planning Institute, London, in 1939, thus becoming one of the first qualified town
planners in Ireland. He became Assistant County Planning Officer for County Dublin
in July 1938 and was subsequently promoted to Planning Officer for the county,
exercising planning control functions and preparing the first local development plans
for areas of the county in the 1940s. Realising that town planning involved legal
issues as well as design and services, he studied for his BCL in the Kings Inns and
was called to the bar in …1950…… The establishment of a unified planning office
for Dublin City and Dublin County saw Kevin emerging as Deputy Planning Officer,
serving both city and county authorities.
The rapid growth of Dublin in the late 1950 and early 1960s, the growing pace of
urbanisation elsewhere and the deficiencies in the 1934 and 1939 Planning Acts
(which were fully operated in only a few areas outside Dublin) influenced Minister for
Local Government Neil Blaney to draw up a complete new planning framework
which eventually became law as the Local Government (Planning and Development)
Act, 1963. Kevin was seconded temporarily to the Custom House and played a major
role in framing the large body of complex regulations which were required to bring
the new system into full operation in 1964. Some years later, concerned about the
absence of sufficient skilled town planners to operate the new legislation, he was
persuaded to resign from his post with the Dublin authorities and to take on the task of
setting up the first Irish school of town planning at UCD. In 1978? a full chair of
Regional and Urban Planning was set up and he was appointed as first professor. Most
of the senior town planners in Ireland today passed through his tutelage.
On retirement from UCD, rather than devote himself entirely to his beloved
gardening, he set out to write a textbook which would “make a little easier and it is
hoped, a little more effective the administration of planning legislation”. His Guide to
the Planning Acts was published by the Incorporated Law Society in 1978. A second
and more comprehensive work A Guide to Planning Legislation in the Republic of
Ireland followed in 1988.with a final edition published in 1999. These books became
essential companions to all town planners and planning lawyers.
Kevin’s beloved wife Nora passed away suddenly in 1968 but he was fortunate to
meet Mary Read, whom he married in 1970. A practical and quite man, some saw
him as an academic, some as the most experienced town planner in Ireland but for his
family he was friend, advisor, father and companion. May he rest in peace – he has
earned it.