‘Behind the Headlines’ panel discussion asks are we falling out of love with Dublin?
Posted on: 09 February 2022
In 1922, the year of Ulysses, James Joyce’s love letter to his native city, Patrick Abercrombie, Sydney Kelly and Arthur Kelly published Dublin of the future: the new town plan, having won a competition launched by The Civics Institute of Ireland to gather ideas for the city’s development. One hundred years later, and on the eve of Dublin City Council’s new Development Plan, 2022 – 2028, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute asks: where next for the capital’s civic future?
Taking place this evening the latest ‘Behind the Headlines’ discussion is entitled ‘Falling out of Love with Dublin?’ (Wed, 9 Feb 2022, 7 – 8:30pm). It will feature contributions from urban historian Prof David Dickson (Trinity); former environment editor at the Irish Times, Frank McDonald; Chief Executive of Dublin City Council, Owen P Keegan, architect Valerie Mulvin; and activist with the ‘Dublin is Dying’ group, Eoghan O’Ceannabhain. The online event is free and open to the public. More information here.
At the event this evening, the panel will discuss what the historic development of Ireland’s cities can tell us about the capital’s future, how architecture and urban design should respond to changing social needs, and what it means to take responsibility for the civic identity of one of Europe’s greatest cities. With so many now pushed out of the city due to the ongoing housing crisis, the recent controversies around the redevelopment of Dublin’s civic and cultural spaces will also be addressed.
David Dickson is currently an Emeritus Research Fellow in the Trinity Long Room Hub. As a professor in Modern History at Trinity College Dublin he has published widely on Irish urban history, including Dublin: The making of a capital city (2014) and The first Irish cities: An eighteenth-century transformation (2021). Taking us back to 1920s Ireland, Professor Dickson will argue that this was “a great missed opportunity for changing Dublin”.
With a political revolution completed, a revolution in urban transport underway, and a festering crisis in housing, Ireland’s capital city in the 1920s was poised for transformative change. But that change didn’t happen; even today it is still worth asking the question, why?
Also at the event, Owen P. Keegan, Chief Executive of Dublin City Council, will discuss the Council’s current public consultation for the new Development Plan, 2022 – 2028, which will close on the 14th of February.
Valerie Mulvin is a co-founder of McCullough Mulvin Architects, a Dublin-based practice focusing on the design of sustainable cultural, educational and civic buildings, with an interest in innovative contemporary architecture, place, and history. Her recent book Approximate Formality – Morphology of Irish Towns (2021) discusses the origin, originality and potential of towns and town plans in Ireland, a timely context when increasing numbers of people have left the city for the easier environments of small towns during lockdown. With award-winning buildings across Ireland and beyond, Ms Mulvin will focus on the unique nature of the capital’s position, wrapped around Dublin Bay.
James Joyce – writing Ulysses in 1922 – imagined Dublin Bay into all our consciousness: from Sandymount Tower to Howth Head; he invented that coherent semicircle facing the sun and made it poetry. Our challenge now is to be ingenious, in a patchwork of tiny ways, with all sorts of people involved. We’ve new ways of thinking since we’ve lived through a global pandemic – it goes against the old model of continuous globalisation, continuous expansion. A new plan for Dublin needs to be about small scale brilliant ideas in all kinds of places. No magic bullet, no grand gesture – just imagination.
Attendees will also hear from Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, a musician and an activist with People Before Profit. He is part of the ‘Dublin Is Dying’ group which has been campaigning against a proposed hotel development at the site of the Cobblestone pub in Smithfield, Dublin 7.
Frank McDonald is an author and former Environment Editor with the Irish Times. He has published widely on planning and development of Dublin, from the demolition of parts of the historic city to the impact of Airbnb, as well as on global climate change. His most recent book is A Little History of the Future of Dublin (2021), where he explores visions of the future of the capital city, and speaks to some of the most prominent Dubliners today.
What’s happening now is a classic example of ‘developer-led planning’, rather than ‘plan-led development’ — which is what should be happening. Developers are gaming the system, availing of ministerial directives that provide for ‘no restrictions on dwelling mix’, so we end up with schemes that overwhelmingly consist of one-bedroom apartments or studios, with little or no private amenities. Such schemes simply cannot provide the building blocks for creating sustainable residential neighbourhoods in Dublin.
For registration details and more information about the event see here: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/whats-on/details/event.php?eventid=157569249