Dislocation and newly developing Dublin

Aine Ryan and Greg Barrett

The briefing literature for this symposium begins with the statement that �Dublin is experiencing a sustained period of growth and development on a scale not seen in two hundred years�. We have turned that statement around somewhat to say that �Dublin is sustaining a period of growth and development on a scale not experienced in two hundred years�. Dublin itself is sustaining this growth. New demands are placed on the city by new, expanding and reforming sectors of Irish society. Developers are meeting that demand, and a new urban landscape is superimposing itself on the grain of the city. This landscape is so extensive in coverage as not to discriminate against nor distinguish centre, periphery, or non-urban areas, and it is composed of elements of such size and scale that they decisively coarsen the existing grain of the city. Urban geographer Michael Conzen wrote that �each society produces its own urban landscape, working into the detailed configuration almost every assumption, objective, skill and preference of the society at large, so that while the landscape is full of �signs� reflecting the society, these signs will not yield answers until the right questions are posed.� What questions then need to be posed in order to yield answers in Dublin's current urban landscape?

The city centre is an attractive place to live. Proximity is its greatest advantage - proximity to places of work and recreation, to the social and cultural outlets of the centre, and to the transport networks of the city. Much of people's lives are lived outside 'home', indeed a city centre apartment complex was described to us as �a dormitory close to Grafton Street� by one of its tenants. So, a significant gap seems to have opened between the immediate living quarters of the occupant and their next social port of call. Quite often, especially in the case of short-term tenants, residents interact and socialise within the urban core, business or cultural quarters in preference to the environment in which they actually live. What has changed so fundamentally in Irish urban society to make demands for this type of development, or rather, to make so few demands of development?

The demand for such temporary �dormitories� is satisfied by developer-led construction of generic 'blocks', often regardless of social or physical context. The city is already blanketed by this landscape of �multiples�, be they small infill projects, large blocks or free-standing developments on the city edge. Notable in this landscape is the emergence of the 'superblock', wherever enough land can be assimilated into holdings expansive enough to wipe out the underlying urban grain. These blocks are all products of the same formula, cut from the same cloth. A new city map might suspend them above the older city, or cluster them together, without public space, to indicate their dislocation and independence from any pre-existing context. (A survey we are currently undertaking has already filled an area the size of Trinity College and St.Stephen's Green with the site plans of some of these developments.) Together, these blocks can be considered the new centralised periphery. This new strain of residential architecture, occasionally with ground-floor units for commercial use, can be quite easily identified by passers-by (that is, those not directly involved in their interior habitus) by the generic facade which they present to the street, and by the small number of entrance points. This presentation is often one of exclusion, a resistance to the street manifest in intercom-controlled entrances and gates, which limit access to the private-public space of their interior stairwells and courtyards. This new typology has devalued the street as a primary urban realm. How can urban public space then be compensated? What is the trade-off?

This particular relationship between the street as an open public space and the interior courtyard behind the gates is a new form for Dublin. However, one should not then assume that these interior courtyards somehow replace, for residents, the conventional public space of the street. While they often mimic, if on a smaller scale, the features of a public park or garden with benches and sculptural assets, they are rarely used for repose or recreation. Perhaps this is due to the feeling of self-consciousness associated with being in an enclosed space surrounded by anonymous observers, or maybe due simply to the lifestyle of the requisite tenants. Does the lifestyle of the tenant type then precede and determine the typology, or is it vice versa?

The fact that such a marked change in socio-spatial use is occurring within areas adjacent to streets of cultural and commercial diversity is not reflected in the current City Development Plan. For example, the strip that runs from Richmond Street to Aungier street is home to an important local and ethnic community of small retail outlets. However, Charlemont Street, which runs adjacent and parallel, has undergone a massive social overhaul having lost five pubs, a barber, a baker, a cafe, a betting shop, a bicycle repair shop, and a greengrocer since 1987. The vitality of such local enterprise has been replaced with video library and photocopy chain outlets. This has taken place in what is referred to as �Zone Z 4�, that is, �to provide for and develop mixed services�. How can the integrity of localities not designated in the City Development Plan or Integrated Area Plans be then maintained?

�ine Ryan graduated from UCD School of Architecture in 1997, where she is currently completing research on the recent transition of the Charlemont Street area of Dublin city. She has contributed to multi-disciplinary collaborations and participated in international workshops centred on diverse urban issues.

Greg Barrett graduated from Falmouth College of Art in 1998 and recently completed an MA in Contemporary Urban Culture at Goldsmith College, London.