While the city of Dublin is home to the largest park in Europe, its historic working-class neighborhood of The Liberties notoriously hosts the least amount of green space in all the capital. In addition to historically low investments in green space, The Liberties, as most of Dublin, is also faced with a severe housing crisis affecting long-term and socially vulnerable residents. In the context of uncontrolled real estate expansion and economic growth, these combined scarcities and inequities—in both green space and quality, affordable housing—represent conflicting challenges for achieving sustainable revitalization in The Liberties and in Dublin as a whole.
Over the course of the 20th century, housing priorities relegated the construction of green and open spaces in the city center, allocating new parks to the outskirts and creating the conditions for the chronically unequal distribution of green space in the city. Today, many of Dublin’s inner-city neighborhoods fall far below the desired 50m2 of green space per resident, as recommended by the World Health Organisation (2012). In The Liberties, the statistic drops to lower than 1m2 per resident. When it comes to housing, the figures are just as startling. In 2018, the Guardian reported that in the span of only four months that year, 415 Dublin families—including 893 children—became homeless. Between March 2017 and March 2018, rents throughout the city increased by 12%.
The impact of the The Liberties Greening Strategy on community gardens
“With population densities as high as 18,000 per km2 in places, the inner city has a social, economic, indeed moral claim for substantially greater ‘green’ investment.” — Beyond Pebbledash, by Paul Kearns and Motti Ruimy, Dublin 2014. Excerpted from the first page of The Liberties Greening Strategy (2015)
Since the launch of the Dublin City Council’s widely lauded 2015 Liberties Greening Strategy to address the shortage of green space, the Department of Parks and Recreation has had significant trouble juggling the priorities of large-scale projects with those of smaller-scale community-driven greening projects that have proved more difficult to preserve.
The debut of Weaver Park in October 2017 stands out as the first large-scale park to succeed thanks to a long and arduous battle fought by local activists and city councilors. Adjacent to the park, however, community gardens that have provided support for at-risk youth for the last four years are facing displacement by a city-backed, rapid-build, low-cost housing project. Activists argue that this does not justify their loss of green space, deeming 21 units insufficient to address the housing crisis, especially considering the 30,000 units that lie empty across Dublin.
The conflict represents a political dilemma for the Dublin City Council. Staff members supportive of the community gardens admit it is “difficult to get the right balance between the urgent need for housing and the demand to retain open spaces such as this one.” In a densifying neighborhood with an endless waiting list of families waiting for emergency homes, Dublin City has chosen to make housing the priority. In the meantime, community gardeners worry that local authorities will fail to find them a new site while pushing for more rapid-build, social housing.
Social housing in The Liberties lacking green space. Photo © Isabelle Anguelovski
On the north side of The Liberties, the close-knit community gardens on Bridgefoot Street were similarly threatened when the construction of a new park was announced in 2017. Although residents felt reassured when the plan promised to incorporate displaced community gardens and “transform a derelict place and address the lack of green and recreational space which locals had been campaigning against,” the delayed construction for the park, slated for 2020, has worried many that it will be years before they can enjoy new park amenities or restore their community gardens.
Competing interests and social costs
While the Greening Strategy has served as a motivating framework for the development of two key park spaces and the preservation of some community gardens, it may have unduly catalyzed the rapid rise of large-scale, high-end construction that has resulted in gentrification and displacement. The Liberties has been disproportionately affected by the development of luxury accommodations for students, global firm employees, luxury hotels, and AirBnb rentals despite new regulations.
Not only do these occupy land that could be used for long-term housing developments, they compromise long-term residents’ abilities to afford price hikes, and in turn, benefit from new greening in the area. Short-term accommodations also tend to exclude residents from enjoying the green amenities that developers are required to zone as public, but which in reality are often gated off to children or restricted to purposes that exclude other users.
Gated off green space inside the New Mill student accommodation complex in The Liberties. Photo by Zuzia Whelan via Dublin Inquirer
The Department of Parks and Recreation is thus faced with the dilemma of either implementing a greening strategy in The Liberties that is constantly compromised by competing housing needs, or allowing private developers to finance much-needed green spaces.
¨The Greening Strategy was to make it look like this is a good area for you to invest in: build your student accommodation here, because next door you’re going to get a park. You’re going to get a nice tourist trial. We’re going to clean up the mess. Nothing for the residents.¨ – Dublin City Councillor interviewed by BCNUEJ in May 2019
Across The Liberties, as growth of public green spaces fails to match rapid high-end constructions, indicators of youth disaffection, obesity, negative effects on mental and physical health, and poor ecosystem maintenance steadily continue to grow. The emotional and physical toll of things like derelict streets, the threat of eviction, social exclusion from city infrastructure, and homelessness on residents only widen the gap between low-income residents and incoming wealthy transient populations who stand to benefit from these urban transformations.
Towards a greener Liberties?
What are the possible solutions to this dilemma? For one, Dublin City Council could proliferate usage of Development Contributions included under Section 48 of the Planning and Development Act, 2000 (as amended), which allows local planning authorities to include conditions requiring contributions to community improvement by developers when granting planning permissions under Section 34 of the same act.
From an activism standpoint, while recent support for more affordable housing units has taken the form of public lobbying and campaigns by regional non-profit coalitions, they make little impact as political narratives sink deeper into compliance with neoliberal growth policies. Hopeful actions include those of the National Homeless and Housing Coalition and one of its most vocal leaders, Dublin City Councilor Tina McVeigh.
In a neighborhood rich with strong local culture and historic value, underserved populations are likely to watch their schools and other public amenities shut down as displacement pushes out residents and their community gardens. As community spaces and opportunities for affordable housing make way for glowing high-rises, and local family businesses transition to catering almost exclusively to tourists or simply shut down, the residents of The Liberties face mass gentrification, threat of eviction, and loss of cultural value: a life struggling to get by day to day, watching themselves slowly disappear as protagonists in the story of a green-ish Liberties.
__
This article was co-authored by Isabelle Anguelovski, Jen Fox and Panagiota Kotsila, with editing by Ana Cañizares.
Top image via Fountain Resource Group
