Why is it, I wonder, that the average 20-storey-plus building all over the world is just a 20-storey-plus building, but for some reason in Ireland it's always a 'landmark tower'? The hyped continental architects routinely approached by 'I don't care how weird the building looks so long as it's huge and gets us through planning' Irish developers must scratch their heads in wonder every time they're asked to draw up a Landmark Tower for Dublin.

'We get the bit about the 20 storeys plus, ' I hear them say at the end of the brie"ng meeting in Jamsankoski, 'but what's all this 'landmark' stuff about?'

'Oh, ' says the developer 'that's the bit that happens after you've finished over-maximising the development potential of the site. What you do is, you hit the 'make this building look like a shard of glass' button on your Computer Aided Design package to give it that 'it must be good architecture because it looks like a shard of glass' look. Then you go to the 'Find and Replace' function on Microsoft Word and everywhere you've labelled a space "to be rented by usual high-street retail chain" change it to something like "specialist delicatessen which sells only truf"es cycled from Tuscany on Brompton bikes". Then you slip in a couple of 5,000sq ft-plus penthouse apartments on the top "oor. Make sure you call them "affordable". That's what makes it landmark.'

'Ireland sounds like a curious place, ' the architects say. 'Why must we engage in such an irrational game of charades?'

'Because, ' explains the developer, 'it fools the Irish press into thinking our proposal is serious. And they, in turn, write gushy bits in their property supplements about how wonderful it is. Which then puts massive pressure on planners and councillors who eventually get so bamboozled about the decision they have to make they begin to feel like they're at one of those dinner parties where someone has just put a bowl of clear liquid in front of them and they don't know whether to drink it or wash their fingers in it.

'Why do you think we chose you as our architects? Is it because we're devoted fans of your work? No. It's because you've got a name no one can pronounce and which will have insecure Dublin-based hacks dropping their skinny lattes in their rush to write up articles which will predictably go along the lines of: "Lets not rush to judgement on this challenging proposal for Sandyford/Ballsbridge/Smithfield/Sir John Rogersons Quay: the landmark height of the tower must be measured against its unquestionable sustainability." If your name was Murphy we wouldn't be here. Now, shave your head, slip into something black and get your Masai posture-correcting shoes on . . . we've a press launch to attend.'

What I've just described isn't far from what actually happens. 'I'm not in it for the money, I just like to get people together to make things happen' developers (if that's what drives them, why aren't they in Darfur? ) do this curious dance with 'I'm so desperate to have a retrospective of my work at the New York Museum of Modern Art within my lifetime, I'll work with anyone' architects who "nd common cause in concocting edi"ces which satisfy their "nancial and/or egotistical requirements.

Just this week, a huge new commercial development was (re)launched for Dublin's south docklands. But if we were to believe the hype we'd be forgiven for thinking the development is a new Daniel Libeskind-designed theatre with Martha Schwartz-designed public plaza, which just happens to be surrounded by a chunk of inert office building (and incidentally, don't be hoodwinked by the Libeskind World Trade Centre connection. If you want to know what the new theatre is going to be like, next time you're in London take a stroll past his Metropolitan University extension in Holloway.

Everything he does is the overpraised, underwhelming same).

I'm amazed by what passes for planning here. It's as if a hundred years of serious thinking aimed at making urban planning a more democratic process has passed over Ireland unnoticed. It's as if the New York City Zoning Resolution was never written. It's as if Tokyo or Berlin weren't completely and successfully rebuilt after the second world war. It's as if the Dutch haven't just recently built the Borneo Sporenborg.

The planning system in this country amounts to this: wishy-washy development plans, planning policies so loosely written they could mean virtually anything, planning officials completely seduced by the latest Eurojourno speak, lip service to concepts of openness and fairness (is the average resident of Ballsbridge looking to extend their kitchen getting the same attention from the planning of"cers as Sean Dunne? Absolutely not) and, worst of all, complete and total lack of overall vision.

Which is why we now have that private walled commercial city in the place we used to call Dundrum, and that description-defying collection of whatevers in a place we used to know as Sandyford, and why we'll go to Greystones some coming Sunday for an afternoon constitutional and find it's not there any more.

But let's not point the finger at the developers, the planners and the bureaucrats. Better to point the finger of blame at ourselves. If we want to create cities which are not individual acts of speculation but which are a reflection of our own collective vision we must do as they do in other countries: a) get seriously informed and b) join the debate.

If we're to have 30-storey buildings in Dublin, Cork or wherever (and I happen to think we have to), they'll go where we want them to go. Not where the Sean Dunnes of the world are desperate to put them.

Garry Miley is an architect and author of web blog Planning Dispatch.

Visit www. garrymiley. com