Nowlan, Kevin Ingram

by Lawrence William White

Nowlan, Kevin Ingram (1910–2003), engineer, planning officer, and university lecturer, was born 2 November 1910 at Iona House, Iona Drive, Glasnevin, Dublin, second son of John William Nowlan, assistant superintendent of Glasnevin cemetery, and his wife Kathleen Winifred (née Browning). On his father's promotion, the family moved to the cemetery superintendent's residence, Clareville. After attending Belvedere College, he won an entrance scholarship to UCD (1929), where he studied engineering and science; graduating in 1932 with a BE (Civil) with first place and first-class honours, and B.Sc., he was awarded the annual Pierce Malone scholarship in engineering. Employed by Nicholas O'Dwyer and Partners, a firm of consulting engineers, he worked on the planning of water and sewerage schemes for authorities in various parts of the country (1932–6); in 1933 he was resident engineer on the Sligo water supply scheme. As assistant county engineer with Dublin county council (1936–8), he worked on water supply, sewage disposal, and roads. Appointed assistant county planning officer for Co. Dublin in 1938, he subsequently was promoted to chief planning officer, in which capacity in the 1940s he prepared the first local development plans for parts of Co. Dublin.

Interested in the development of coordinated systems for the provision of the various elements of physical infrastructure, he was drawn to the study of town planning. Admitted by examination as a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), London, in 1939, he was one of the first qualified town planners in Ireland. He later became a fellow of the institute, chairman of the Irish branch, and member of the body's education committee. Appreciative that town planning involved legal issues, as well as issues of design, engineering, and delivery of service, he studied law at TCD and the King's Inns (admitted 1948), and was called to the Irish bar in 1951.

With the formation of a unified planning office for Dublin city and county, Nowlan served both authorities, becoming a senior planning assistant in Dublin corporation, and then appointed in 1951 as the city's deputy chief planning officer. As his superior had little expertise in town planning, it was Nowlan who prepared the city's first planning scheme (1957), an initiative forced on the reluctant corporation by a high court order regarding an action taken by a developer who had repeatedly been refused permission for a proposal. Despite efforts by the RIAI to have listed for preservation most of the city's southside Georgian core, the scheme defined a preservation zone limited to Merrion and Fitzwilliam squares, thus unwittingly setting the scene for heated conflicts between developers and preservationists in ensuing decades.

Nowlan was seconded to the Department of Local Government as a special advisor (1962–4) on formulation of the planning and development act of 1963, and on the large and complex corpus of regulations that was necessary to implement the terms of the act. He thus played a major role in shaping a long overdue and comprehensive reconstruction of the country's planning process, amounting to a thorough overhaul of legislation dating to the 1930s, made urgent by the rapid development of Dublin and the growing pace of urbanisation elsewhere.

Conscious that effective operation of the new planning system was dependent upon the presence of a cohort of properly trained and qualified personnel, Nowlan devoted the next phase of his career to higher education. Resigning from the civil service, he accepted an appointment as college lecturer in town planning at UCD (1966), conducting a newly inaugurated two-year diploma course within the faculty of engineering and architecture. Responding to the level of interest in the field, UCD soon developed a department of town planning, and appointed two additional college lecturers; in 1973 Nowlan, as head of department, was appointed to a newly established statutory lectureship. In 1979 the two-year course was elevated to a master's degree course within a retitled department of regional and urban planning, on foot of which Nowlan became the first occupant of a newly created chair in the subject as acting professor, which he held for nine months till his retirement (1 January–1 October 1980). In his fourteen years at UCD, Nowlan trained most of the senior planners who were active in Ireland by the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Nowlan wrote two books outlining the legal framework of the planning system: A guide to the planning acts (1978) and A guide to planning legislation in the Republic of Ireland (1988). The latter, written after his retirement from UCD (during which time he also worked as a planning consultant), is an updated and more comprehensive treatment than the earlier book, incorporating the modifications to previous legislation embodied in the local government planning acts of 1976, 1982, and 1983, and in contemporaneous planning and development regulations effected by statutory instrument. Both works are regarded as authoritative resources utilised by planners and planning lawyers.

Nowlan made pioneering contributions to the development of regional, town, and urban planning in Ireland, both as a profession and an academic discipline. Besides his involvement with the RTPI, he was a member of the International Society of City and Regional Planners, of the development committee of An Foras Forbartha, and of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland (civil engineering division). Modest, soft-spoken, and impeccably courteous, he was remembered for his practicality, wide erudition, and approachability for wise and considered counsel. He had a passionate interest in gardening, which he especially indulged after his UCD retirement. He married firstly (mid 1930s) Nora Mary Harrington (d. suddenly 7 February 1968), daughter of William Harrington (1869–1940), businessman, farmer, and international cricketer, of Templeogue, Co. Dublin; they had two daughters and three sons. They resided in Co. Dublin, initially at Castlewarden, and then in a house they built at Brownsbarn, Kingswood, Clondalkin. He married secondly (14 October 1970) Mary Patricia Read, a solicitor, of Rathmines, Dublin; they had no children, and lived initially at Brownsbarn House, and subsequently on Sion Road, Glenageary, Co. Dublin. One of UCD's oldest pensioners, Nowlan died 5 January 2003 at St Colmcille's Hospital, Loughlinstown, Co. Dublin, after a short illness. The funeral was from the church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Killiney, to Saggart cemetery.