1This paper reviews the manner in which a neoliberal political agenda emanating from central government has increasingly infused Irish urban policy and created an entrepreneurial local-authority culture in which urban planning and regeneration policies have been pursued in a highly contentious manner. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the functioning of local-area planning, public-private partnerships in social-housing regeneration and urban gentrification strategies have operated in inner Dublin to exacerbate existing problems rather than addressing and mitigating them.

2Although the paper inherently concerns issues of distributional significance with regard to both class and geography, resulting from the wielding of class power through the aegis of the capitalist state, it intentionally avoids couching the discussion within a context of spatial or territorial “justice”. Specifically, the engagement with such concepts is deemed inappropriate to the achievement of a materialist analysis of the consequences of state activity as the concept of “justice” in the abstract is one that emanates from bourgeois ideology itself and is closely linked to a protean moralistic ideology of “rights”. Thus, in developing his materialist critique of legal forms, Pashukanis1 noted that the definition of humans as legal personalities and bearers of “rights”, rather than possessors of customary privileges, coincides with and is necessary for social production to be pursued as a process of general commodity production. Thus, “only in bourgeois capitalist society where the proletarian figures as a subject disposing of his labour power as a commodity, is the economic relation of exploitation mediated legally, in the form of a contract2 ”. It is therefore the commodity form which produces the legal form and “the legal relation between the subjects is simply the reverse side of the relation between the products of labour which have become commodities3 ”.

3This argument was elucidated further in Arthur’s introduction to the 1978 edition of Pashukanis’s work:

It is only in the conditions of commodity production that the abstract legal form is necessary-it is only there that the capacity to have a right in general is distinguished from specific claims and privileges. It is only the constant transfer of property rights in the market that creates the idea of an immobile bearer of these rights. Indeed, the abstract capacity of everyone to be a bearer of property rights makes it difficult for bourgeois thought to see anything else than subjects of rights; legal fetishism complements commodity fetishism4.

Background

4Following Irish entry to the European Economic Community in 1973, the Irish economy underwent major restructuring resulting from intensified competition. Nowhere was this restructuring felt more intensely than in Dublin, with its older manufacturing plants. Between 1971 and 1981, employment in Dublin’s traditional industries declined by 45%. Expansionary budgets of the late 1970s to address economic difficulties generated rapid increases in inflation, with rates exceeding 20% for three consecutive years in the early 1980s5. A crisis in the public finances forced cuts in public-sector spending and an embargo in public-sector recruitment, exacerbating the impacts of the general economic crisis. At a time when the city’s population was increasing, employment in the services sector faltered. Unemployment in Dublin rose from 36,500 (1981) to 82,000 (1987). Simultaneous declines in industrial, office and residential development resulted in unemployment in the construction sector rising to over 45% by mid decade. By the end of the 1980s, Dublin had become Ireland’s problem region par excellence, the number unemployed exceeding the total of all the western seaboard counties, traditionally viewed as Ireland’s problem regions. Unemployment rate in Dublin’s inner city reached 35%, with some social-housing areas recording rates over 80%6. The physical environment reflected the depressed economic situation with 600 cleared sites and derelict buildings in the inner city in 1986, totalling 65 ha.

5From the 1980s, the influence on the Irish government of neoliberal politics deepened, notably in urban regeneration. Such policies were underlain by a naïve ideology that markets were efficient distributors of resources and that market relationships should dictate social life. The state became more overtly orientated towards serving the interests of capital, changing the way in which the public sector operated, marking a movement towards laisser faire principles as market forces were given freer rein.

6However, in Ireland, such trends were associated with a “social partnership” model of negotiated national wage bargaining rounds in which pay restraint was rewarded by improvements in public services and by reductions in taxation. Commencing with the Program for National Recovery in 1986, the “partnership” approach delivered a quiescent labour force in return for rising real incomes, the implementation of a series of such agreements over two decades created effective control over wages and salaries. In contrast, the agreements ignored incomes from investments, property or shareholding dividends. They deflected attention from rising levels of business profitability and incomes from self-employment. Indeed, tax rates were reduced to just 12.5% on business profits and from 40% to 20% on capital gains. As a result, the share in the economy taken as wages and salaries declined from 73% in 1987 to 58% in 1999, the lowest rate within the European Union.

7As in the United Kingdom, neoliberalism infected the regime of urban development planning. From the mid 1980s, deepening entrepreneurialism in Irish urban governance saw urban planning working together with property development interests to effect planning goals7. This was achieved by ensuring that plans conformed to developers’profitability criteria, permitting increased development densities8, by “pump-priming” of private investment through public-sector expenditure on necessary infrastructures, by subsidising development costs through tax incentives and by facilitating private-sector site assembly by obliging local authorities to dispose of their inner-city land holdings to private developers. Meanwhile, the effective influence of the general public over urban planning was reduced through the “fast tracking” of development planning with the establishment of special-purpose agencies and by the increasing use of joint ventures between the state and private capital9. Local government roles were sometimes by-passed altogether, key functions being vested in alternative, often centralised or quasi-private agencies such as the Custom House Dock Development Authority.

8Strategic alliances were forged between urban planning, the economic boosterism lobby and the property-development sector to reinvent the image (and reality) of the city, to make it “liveable” and more attractive to the middle class, to create an urban landscape which would be iconographic of economic success, growth and change.

9From 1986, key inner-city areas were designated as qualifying for fiscal incentives for property-related renewal. The measures provided a signal for capital to return to run-down inner-city areas, effecting a massive revalorisation of land. The initial impact was a wave of office development in areas fringing the traditional office core, swiftly followed by apartment construction for owner occupation or sale to landlords10.

10The economic boom of the 1990s had a major impact on the city. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at over 3% per annum during the 1990s and the per capita level surpassed that of the UK by the end of the decade. Demand for land for building was strong, notably for offices to accommodate the expanding services sector and for residential units to house a growing workforce, many of whom were expressing a preference for an inner-city lifestyle. The impacts on land price were especially strong in the inner city11.

11Through the 1990s, neoliberalism was warmly embraced by Irish governments. Policy became infused with a vocabulary drawn from the business world: “mission statements”, “cost centres”, “stakeholders”, “benchmarking” and “performance indicators” etc. It was accompanied by a growing managerial ethos of control and neo-authoritarianism and associated with the privatisation of semi-state bodies and key public-sector operations (e. g. Irish Life and Irish Telecom) and the “out-sourcing” of some public services. It also involved an increasing use of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), where private capital is engaged directly in partnership with the state under a variety of arrangements12 to provide infrastructure (e. g. toll roads, school buildings) and services (e. g. light rail operations) which would traditionally have been undertaken by the state directly or by its agencies. Though originating with the central state, PPPs became forcibly implanted into the local-authority sector, notably in large-scale renewal of social housing. From small origins, these are destined to become of major significance, the national Budget of 2004 setting targets for PPPs to increase from 3% of public-sector capital investment in 2004 to 15% in 2008.

Integrated Area Plans

12The impacts of the early urban renewal incentives were subjected to widespread criticism, notably for their property-related emphasis and for ignoring community concerns. The shortcomings were largely accepted by the government’s appointed consultant reviewers13. From the late 1990s, area-based urban regeneration would be grounded in Integrated Area Plans (IAPs), balancing subsidies to property capital by prospects of community participation and community gain. The approach is described by Gleeson14 as incorporating

a more holistic planning philosophy, with the social and economic agenda balancing the more traditional emphasis on environmental aspects. Emphasising consultation, the IAP can respond with focused strategies to address local issues on the ground.

13In theory, IAPS were to operate as localised planning mechanisms aiming to achieve social, economic and environmental goals, translating broad planning aims into locally-focused implementation strategies, providing for the integration of public, private and community sectors to create a collaborative effort towards holistic regeneration.

14The IAP approach became the key element in the Government’s Urban Renewal Scheme15. The approach offered the prospect of community participation in regeneration through local IAP Steering Committees. However, by failing to establish satisfactory terms of reference and by creating only ex post facto Monitoring Committees to approve what had already taken place, community participation was drastically diminished.

15Furthermore, by providing misinformation, failing to allocate adequate resources to community representatives and, sometimes, by marginalizing and discrediting them, participation became tokenistic and highly cynical16. Moreover, the delivery of very little community gain under IAPs17, compared to the scale of tax incentives given to property developers and investors, resulted in inner-city working-class communities increasingly viewing IAPs as agents of the property development sector, effecting the incorporation of working-class protest18.

IAPs: Facilitating Development, Silencing the Marginalised

16In recognition of the way in which debates about the efficacy of entrepreneurial polices have been “dominated by the hollow rhetoric of politicians and policy makers,” Hall and Hubbard19 have pointed to the need to explore “the manner in which entrepreneurial cities are experienced and understood by local populations, and the ways in which this differs from the hyperbole of the city boosters” and “élite coalitions” espousing such policies20 ”.

17This section explores the experience of one inner-city community in its attempt to engage with the local state in the implementation of one of the IAPs in the context of increasing levels of property development activity in the locality (see Figure 1). Located at the south-western edge of Dublin’s central business area, the Liberties comprises an old and distinctive quarter which once accommodated a vibrant working-class community finding employment in a variety of local labour-intensive industries.

18As economic circumstances changed mid-century, marked by the closure of virtually all its traditional industries and economically devastating the area, the labour force became surplus to capital’s requirement21. The withdrawal of industrial capital was compounded by a long period of government inaction, allowing the area to descend into a state of dangerous physical dereliction. A series of inter-agency and partnership-type structures attempted to address the community’s socio-economic plight. However, the late 1990s saw the appearance of a party with an altogether different interest in the area. Increasingly, property capital recognised the potential profit to be wrung from the area’s close proximity to the city centre and that the area’s most valuable asset was no longer its labour power but its land. In realising this potential, it was to be greatly assisted by the state’s urban renewal policies.

19Hailed as “a radical departure from previous schemes22 ”, IAPs were to address23 “not only issues of physical development but also cover wider issues of local socio-economic benefit24 ”. These were heralded as bringing “about sustainable urban regeneration by integrating physical, social and economic interventions to address the key issues in the area25 ”. In addition to detailing the physical-renewal objectives for each of the 100 tax-designated sites, the Liberties IAP also articulated many socio-economic objectives high on the community’s agenda.

20Having convinced the community of the benefits to be derived from the IAP, Dublin City Council (DCC) persuaded it to set aside its traditional adversarial relations with the local authority and engage with the IAP by helping to oversee its implementation. In practical terms, this translated into four community organisations each formally delegating a representative to the IAP’s Monitoring Committee. However, this represented a downgrading in functions compared to the promise to establish a cross-sectional Steering Group to which a “Project Implementation Team” would be responsible and to which it would report26.

21From the outset, the community’s representatives encountered difficulties in engaging with the local state. It refused to provide terms of reference governing their role and function or the resources necessary to participate effectively. In an environment in which information was often imparted after the event (if at all), the community representatives were relegated to the position of unequal and uninformed participants. As they became aware of their diminishing role in the IAP, they made several attempts to engage DCC over their concerns27. However, officials never conceded the validity of those issues.

22Meanwhile, those concerns became increasingly acute as planning issues on individual tax-designated sites came to the fore. As developers began submitting planning applications for developments of a scale well in excess of the building heights and densities provided for in the IAP, the community awaited their automatic refusal. Instead, DCC proceeded to grant a series of planning permissions, which breached its own design specifications and contravened its own IAP.

23After a cursory engagement with the community over the precise standing of the IAP and the hierarchy of other plans and government “guidelines” used in determining planning applications, DCC responded that it saw “no merit in engaging in further correspondence” on the issue28. When community representatives persisted with their objections, they were told that “things had changed”, that “the detail of the IAP had been superseded by new residential density guidelines from the Department of the Environment”, a fact which had never been communicated to the Monitoring Committee ! Officials retorted that if they were unhappy with planning decisions, they were free, as private citizens under the normal provisions for third-party objections, to appeal decisions to An Bord Pleanála29.

24Subsequent attempts to engage the central government over the implementation of the IAP proved equally futile. The community representatives were told that their non-approval of the local authority’s annual report to the Department of the Environment held “no implications”. Attempts to secure a response to a highly critical Minority Report submitted directly to the Minister resulted in the community’s being informed that IAPs were “in law, matters within the competence of the local authority30 ” and that the Minister would not be engaging further.

25Thus, the community was obliged to confront its true function on the IAP Monitoring Committee. The community representatives were divided. Two continued their participation. Two formally resigned, refusing to allow DCC any further opportunity to make them complicit in the way in which the state was implementing and contravening the IAP. One community representative appealed successive cases to An Bord Pleanála. A pattern became established where intense pressure from property-development interests and politicians was exerted on him to withdraw his appeals. As it transpired, there was little cause for their concern as An Bord Pleanála repeatedly upheld planning decisions in contravention of the IAP.

26The experience led to a radicalisation of political perspectives among many who had sought, in good faith, to engage constructively in the participation process. Some became severe critics of the renewal plan for facilitating the redevelopment of this once-distinctive quarter of Dublin’s inner city in a manner entirely contrary to that outlined in the IAP, having become a renewal plan which again effectively focused on physical renewal31.

27When individual community representatives sought intervention from the European Commission, which authorised the use of tax incentives in the IAPs, they were met with equal silence. The much-heralded “community perspective” had become a wholly unwelcome voice of critical dissent.

28Those who continue to dissent from the hyperbole of the city boosters are left to compare the rhetoric in which the state couched its initial invitation to participate, with the manner in which they were treated when they refused to agree uncritically with the planning contraventions and socioeconomic failures of the plan. They contend that the Irish state misrepresented the real agenda of the IAPs and the role and standing of the community representatives; that the inclusion of the community within the IAP structures was merely an attempt to pre-empt and co-opt any opposition among a largely property-less working-class to the private-sector development agenda being pursed via the IAPs; and that the state’s newly-found modus operandi of conciliatory partnership functions to preclude and negate the emergence of any legitimate criticism of what is being done to working-class communities in the name of urban renewal, which is heralded as an entirely positive, progressive and positive process.

Land Price, the Neoliberal Agenda and Social Housing

29By 2005, more than a decade of economic boom and a declining number of available inner-city development sites resulted in significant increases inland prices, the cheapest inner-city sites selling at 24 million euros per hectare and those in prestigious Ballsbridge reputed to have sold for over 220 million euros per ha. Disconcertingly for the tenants of social housing, the rapidly escalating value of inner-city land undermined the very “viability” of social housing as an inner-city land use.

30As early as the late 1980s, the central government had obliged local authorities to dispose of their land holdings to private developers to facilitate site assembly and act as an impetus to urban renewal. Sites that had been purchased for social housing or parks was sold, 78 sites in central Dublin being sold for private development during the 1990s. One such sale involved the disposal by Dublin Corporation of the Sheriff Street estate, accommodating 113 dwellings, to a private developer. Adjacent to the highly profitable Custom House Docks International Financial Services Centre, the 4 hectares site was sold in 1994 for just 2.4 million euros, being redeveloped as a mixed commercial and private housing development.

31As the neoliberal agenda intensified, a directive in 2003 to local authorities from the central government (Circular PPP, 2/03) instructed them to consider for PPP all social-housing regeneration schemes valued at over 20 million euros. DCC became an enthusiastic proponent of the PPP approach. It owned several social-housing estates in the inner city which were commonly in acute need of refurbishment as a result of chronically-inadequate maintenance by Dublin Corporation/Dublin City Council (DCC) and which were associated with social problems emanating from the economic dislocation resulting from economic restructuring. These estates were often located in areas which seemed “ripe” for renewal, near to newly-completed infrastructures such as the light-railway, or amenities such as the Phoenix Park. Indeed, in some social-housing estates, DCC seemed to pursue a policy of reducing levels of estate maintenance and management, the de-tenanting of flats and poor allocation policies (involving their becoming “dumping grounds” for tenants who required considerable social support), creating an environment not conducive to continued residency. Thereafter, DCC would seek to enter into a Public-Private Partnership with a developer, who would negotiate to provide a number of social-housing units and community facilities in return for the the ownership of the site and for permission to develop a significantly larger number of private units of accommodation for sale on the open market.

32Significantly, the land value given away would often greatly exceed the value of the public sector’s return from the “partnership”. Yet, this is viewed by the state as a “no-immediate-cost” model. However, the enormous value of the land given to the private developer can be viewed as an “asset- stripping” process in which both the state and poor households on waiting lists for social housing lose out heavily to the interests of property capital.

St Michael’s Estate

33The planned regeneration of St. Michael’s social-housing estate of 346 dwellings, built in the early 1970s, provides an example of this PPP process, showing the huge value of land to be transferred to the private-sector developer and the small scale of the return which would have accrued to the public sector, had the original PPP project had taken place.

34In St. Michael’s, a low-rise redevelopment of the 5. 6 hectares site, had been painstakingly agreed following lengthy negotiations between the community and DCC. Under traditional procurement methods, the plan would have yielded 170 social-housing units, 70 units for owner occupation and a further 80 “affordable” private-sector dwellings. However, it was rejected by the central government Department of the Environment (DoE) in 2003 as being too expensive, at a cost of 63 million euros, and DCC was required to engage in negotiations to undertake regeneration through a PPP. Having endured years of blight and neglect and having engaged laboriously and in good faith with the local authority to achieve the agreed regeneration plan, the community was bereft at such a change in policy:

To have it all wrenched away from you like that. It’s really terrible. You know, to me it just proves the fact that they don’t give a fuck. They really don’t. They couldn’t care less about people32.
We had to go back to the residents in the flats and this was after we’d been building them up and convincing them to stay and convincing them that this was the best opportunity for a good house. And you know, people are laughing at us now ! They must be ! They must be sitting back, thinking we’re a right shower of gobshites33.

35The first PPP plan, which was strongly supported by council officials, involved the transfer of ownership of the site to a private-sector partner, who would act as the developer. In return, the developer would give 80 units of new social-housing units to the local authority and build a further 770 private-sector dwellings (550 at open-market prices and a further 220 at an “affordable” rate for owner occupation). Thus, the loss of social-housing units would be considerable, amounting to some 266 dwellings.

36The rejection of the original negotiated plan by the DoE and the imposition of a PPP in which the community was to have no influence in its design, led to the organization of a range of protests by the community (see Figure 3) and elicited the following observations from residents:

The attitude in St. Michael’s Estate is “This is the way we’re doing it and you either like it or you don’t like it, but irrespective, it’s being done that way regardless”. There’s absolutely no consultation actually takes place34.

37The intentions of the City council became clear and readily comprehended by the residents, encapsulated in the following quotation:

They’re not interested in appealing to us. We’re the past, we’re not even the present any more, we’re the past. The future is something totally different and it doesn’t include us. Or they certainly don’t seem to want to include us. They’re quite happy to disperse people who live in poverty around the city so they can hide the problem of poverty35.
It’s like well you know “This is the way we’re doing it and you either like it or you don’t like it, but irrespective, it’s being done that way regardless”. There’s absolutely no consultation actually takes place36.

38Indeed, PPPs are inherently contrary to real community participation because the financial details are always kept confidential for reasons of “commercial sensitivity” of the private-sector partner.

39Interestingly, it seems that the first PPP plan was drawn up by council officials in the absence of any independent valuation of the site37. It was eventually conceded by officers of the Council that just 4.6 hectares of the 5.6 hectares site had a value of at least 70 million euros38. Estimates by private-sector valuation surveyors of the true value of the land which would have been transferred under the first PPP deal range from 80 million to 130 million euros, the estate being situated just 3 kilometers from the city centre and linked to it by a newly-completed light-rail line. Yet, in return, the state would obtain just 80 units of social housing, worth less than 20 million euros !

40However, as a postscript to this section, the almost total reliance placed by DCC on PPPs to effect its social-housing regeneration has recently been thrown into turmoil. PPPs rely on the private sector’s ability to generate sufficient profit from the redevelopment of the land (for private commercial or residential space) to allow the developer also to provide a “social yield” in the form of new social housing. The collapse of the property market in Ireland during 2007 and 2008, with an estimated 20,000 vacant residential units lying on the market in Dublin, caused the private-sector partner for five social-housing regeneration PPPs to withdraw completely in mid 2008. Uncertainty currently (October 2008) surrounds the future for those schemes and for their residents.

Gentrification as Urban Strategy

41The overwhelming outcome of an increasingly neoliberal central state and an entrepreneurial local state, which has become a more-than-willing “agent” of capital39, has been the widespread gentrification of inner Dublin40. This section outlines the extent to which the built environment and the social landscape of the inner city have changed since the early 1990s. It maintains that the process of gentrification has deepened in recent years as the implementation of local-area planning and as social-housing regeneration create displacement through the direct replacement of a working-class population by young, professional owner occupiers and as a commitment to “social mix” in formerly-deprived areas of the city is realised through a policy of “social cleansing”.

42Since the introduction of tax-incentives for property development in the mid-1980s and the re-orientation of the local state towards more entrepreneurial forms of urban governance, the inner city has experienced an unprecedented influx of capital, largely in the form of private residential development. Having experienced negligible levels of private-sector residential development during the twentieth century, the inner city saw the construction of 16,500 new private residential units between 1989 and the end of 200341. These new developments predominantly consist of private apartment complexes, a large majority (circa 92%) of which are either one-or two-bedroomed units42. New and re-imagineered residential spaces have appeared in many former industrial areas including Dublin’s docklands, the Liberties (south-west inner city) and the north-west inner city.

43The influx of capital to inner Dublin has been accompanied by an influx of population, the inner area experiencing a population increase of 33.3% to 112,076 persons between 1991 and 2002. This shift in demographics is significant, as the population of the inner city had been decreasing since the 1930s with slum clearance.

44Research into the occupiers of the first phase of residential developments (1989-1996) clearly showed the emergence of a gentrifying population, displaying socio-economic characteristics quite distinct from those of the indigenous population which was typically elderly, poorly skilled and suffering from a high incidence of unemployment43. The new population had few links with the locality. It was predominantly youthful, with 94% of residents being aged between 18 and44 years, having an average age of 27 years. Households were small in size, averaging 1. 9 persons with 80% comprising just 1 or 2 people. Professionals accounted for 48% of the new residents, clerical workers and students accounted for 14% and 9% respectively. A majority (77%) held, or were currently pursuing, a degree or professional qualification.

45Recent census results confirm that the process of gentrification has gathered momentum 44. The dramatically altered socio-economic composition of the inner city’s population is revealed by changes in its age structure, social class, levels of achieved education, employment rates and housing tenure. The 33% increase in population can be attributed almost entirely to the net in-migration of young professionals. Between 1991 and 2002, the inner city experienced a 90% increase in the number of adults aged between 25 and 44 years to 45,107 persons. This cohort accounted for 40% of the population in 2002, up from 30% in 1991. Simultaneously, the number of children and elderly persons has fallen45.

46Concentrating on changes in Social-Class composition, a substantial rise in the number of persons in the upper Social Classes 1-3 of 75% to 45,112 is noted, whilst a drop in the number of persons in the lower Social Classes 4-6 of 24% to 29,177 was registered. Furthermore, 39% of those aged between 25 and 44 years belong to Social Classes 1 and 2, representing a proportionate increase of 18% since 1991. Other changes, which clearly support an interpretation of inner-city gentrification, relate to changes to levels of post-secondary education. In 2002, 27,090 persons had received third-level education. The corresponding figure for 1991 had been a mere 6,581 persons.

47Another indication that the inner city is undergoing a process of gentrification is the changing tenure structure of the city’s dwelling stock. Since 1991, there have been two notable changes to the tenure structure: a substantial increase in the number of households in privately-rented accommodation, which has more than doubled from 5,611 to 13,272 households46 and a 20% reduction in the number of households in social housing to 8,111 units, a result of the sale or privatisation of existing stock and the decline in the number of new social-housing units being constructed. This decline in the provision of social housing has had serious implications for inner-city residents, leading to an intensified housing-affordability crisis and the displacement of the indigenous population.

Affordability and Displacement

48Changes to the social profile of the inner city are linked directly to a decline in housing affordability. In inner Dublin, house prices escalated in the early 1990s and have continued to spiral. New house prices in 1995-6 were still remarkably affordable when expressed in terms of multipliers of prevailing incomes. At the lower end of the market, one-bedroomed apartments could be purchased for less than twice the level of average industrial earnings, which amounted to 20,342 euros in May of that year, whilst the cost of higher-end one-bedroomed apartments was just over five times the average industrial wage47. For white-collar workers, three-bedroomed units could be purchased for less than four times average earnings in the Banking, Insurance and Building Society (25,584 euros).

49Between 1995 and 2002, the Consumer Price Index rose by 25%, average earnings rose nationally by 43% and building costs increased by 52%. Meanwhile, new house prices rose nationally by 181%. However, the changes in the housing market in inner Dublin were far more dramatic.

50By June 2003, average annual industrial earnings had risen by 46% compared to May 1995 to reach 29,671 euros per annum, while earnings in the Banking, Insurance and Building Society sector increased by 44% to 36,806 euros. Despite these increases well above the rate of general price inflation, the income multipliers required to purchase a dwelling in central Dublin by November 2003 suggest strongly that prices were far less affordable than eight years previously. One-bedroomed cost nine times the level of average annual industrial earnings. Three-bedroomed units cost 14 times average annual industrial earnings. Even for the white-collar sector, one-bedroomed apartments cost six times average annual incomes while three-bedroomed units ranged from 11 to over 19 times average white-collar annual incomes. By 2006, new one- and two-bedroomed apartments in the Liberties commanded prices of 385,000 euros and 420,000 euros respectively.

51Rising residential prices are also apparent in the second-hand apartment market (see Figure 4). In 1995, one-bedroomed apartments in The Maltings in the Liberties had a Euro-equivalent launch price of 38,100 euros. In 2004, the same development were being re-sold at 187,000 euros. Furthermore, increasing house prices have also impacted on the older, nineteenth century stock. For example, a one-bedroomed, 45 square meters cottage in Daniel Street in the Liberties sold for 475,000 euros in July 2006.

52Such prices indicate the scale of the affordability crisis facing indigenous residents. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that the first-phase residential developments (1989-1996) have themselves since been gentrified. While it can be argued that some of the indigenous residents gain from rising residential values, others who do not stand to gain by virtue of their inability to access property capital. For this group, escalating prices present an insuperable obstacle to gaining access to accommodation.

53Access to housing for the indigenous population has also been hampered by recent policies adopted by the local state in its pursuit of a neo-liberal urban agenda and it is to these policies that this section now turns.

The State as Agent of Gentrification

54In addition to promoting property renewal through tax incentives and sale of publicly-owned sites, the local state has embraced the role of “enabler” and “facilitator” in the redevelopment of the inner city48. A process of sanitization of the inner-city has been initiated in which the local state has been an active agent in the process of gentrification, creating new residential, commercial and cultural spaces often at the expense of former lower-grade residential, commercial and cultural spaces. The privatisation of public housing and the displacement of working-class residents have been effected through the adoption of a PPP approach to social-housing regeneration and through micro-area planning via IAPs.

55Additionally, in recent years, the justification for the sale of public land by the local authority has evolved to reflect principles of short-term accounting, an ideology of “social mixing” and an unwillingness by DCC to provide and manage additional social-housing units. The overwhelming result of this policy49 has been a reduction in the social-housing stock with bleak prospects for the future provision of additional public-rented units in the inner city.

56Recent policy documents, for example the Dublin City Development Plan50, Part V of the Planning and Development Act51 and the Integrated Area Plans52, are all concerned with the promotion of “social mix”, “tenure mix” and the avoidance of “undue social segregation” in the inner city. This policy of social mixing seems to be founded on an inherent belief that the introduction of middle-class residents into working-class areas will prove beneficial to the recipient community. This assumption can itself be criticised for its overtly ideological basis and for its failure to recognise the problems and difficulties thereby created for that community.

57Nevertheless, there seems to exist a pervasive belief among policy makers that “social mix” can be achieved through the introduction of private residential development to areas with previously high concentrations of social housing. In effect, this “social mix” or social engineering policy is being employed as a tool for legitimising the privatisation of land and housing in the inner city.

58Furthermore, Dublin City Council has interpreted the “avoidance of undue social segregation” as meaning that no additional local-authority housing should be developed in those areas already possessing high proportions of social housing (greater than 50% of dwellings). Up to April 2004, this policy of zero social housing in areas of high concentration had effectively excluded 15 of the 40 wards of the inner city from receiving any addition to its social housing stock.

59Interestingly, this attempt at social engineering through the introduction of a middle-class population to poor areas is a highly selective and exclusionary policy, any one-class concentrations of middle-class or upperincome residential areas being excluded from its concern. In Ireland, where one of the strongest spatial indicators of social deprivation is the presence of social housing, this represents the withdrawal of a key element of welfare-state support from areas in which the need for assistance is most acute.

Gentrification as Strategy

60Gentrification has been adopted by the state as a more general urban strategy. In preparing and selling the city for capital, the state is actively involved in seeking to attract a middle-income professional population to live in the inner city. Recent planning and housing policies are being employed as a tool to “civilise53 ” or socially to “cleanse” Dublin’s inner city. A major result has been the intensification and entrenchment of the gentrification of inner Dublin. More specifically, the adoption of policies which seek to reduce the stock of local-authority housing in the city are aimed at displacing low-income families from the inner area to more peripheral parts of the city. One of the ways in which processes of gentrification (or more broadly the uneven movement of capital) can be mitigated is through the provision of social housing in the inner city. However, the local state is instead freeing up public land for capital exploitation and withdrawing from housing provision through the sale of local-authority houses and flats, the reduction of the stock through PPP redevelopment, a growing reliance on the privately-rented and voluntary-housing sectors to provide accommodation for low-income households and through the sale of sites earmarked for social-housing provision.

61Dublin’s inner city has become symbolic of the underlying social transformation that has taken place. Through policies of gentrification, “sugarcoated” as regeneration, locales and streets have been physically recast and “re-imagineered” as spaces for middle-class consumption54. The re-focusing of priorities of the neoliberal local state has been reflected in a redistribution and channeling of wealth through the built environment. It is in this way that it could be argued that neoliberalism is embodied in new urban redevelopment projects and that Dublin, in its physical form, is increasingly representative of a neoliberal agenda55.

62The overall impact of land-use change, house-price increases and the loss of low-cost housing has been the social transformation and changing terms of who can use and live in the city. It is perhaps in this context that Dublin could be viewed as becoming increasingly “revanchist56 ”. Working-class areas are being repackaged for middle-class consumption and, in the longer term, an attendant middle-class politics is likely to emerge in re-colonised locales, with the local grassroots agenda being set no longer by indigenous community activists and residents but by incoming middle-income residents who are more likely to act politically in a manner which increases the capital value of property rather than lobby for appropriate services and land-uses to be provided for the lower-income population.

63Indeed, the recent work of Lawton57 provides evidence of growing resentment by new residents of the use by neighbouring lower-income groups of a newly-created public square (Mayor Square) in Dublin’s north docks. Here the use of and access to space is being contested but the very site itself has been reproduced and gentrified. It is the site which once accommodated the community of the Sheriff Street local-authority housing complex, discussed earlier. Essentially, a low-grade residential function was upgraded and reproduced as a consumption space for the middle classes58. Fifteen years on, the new population has begun to act politically and, to use Smith’s terms, in a “vengeful” or “revanchist” way, to restrict the use of the space by the original working-class population.

Concluding Remarks

64Over the last two decades, urban planning in the Republic of Ireland has become increasingly infused with an ethos of entrepreneurialism with growing emphasis being placed on the facilitative role of planners rather than on their traditional reactive and essentially passive modes of operation. In Dublin, planning has been transformed in response to central- government urban renewal initiatives and a climate of increasing entrepreneurialism within the local authority itself59. Rather than mitigating the impacts of economic change on an already deprived inner-city community, the consequences of national and local-authority policies aimed at the regeneration of the inner city have been to increase significantly the difficulties which such communities face.

65Future policies and developments, which are likely to intensify the process of gentrification and exacerbate problems of housing affordability, include the sale of local-authority owned flats and the promotion of a new cultural quarter in Dublin’s Liberties area. This new initiative, which has been “imaginatively” rebranded as Dublin’s SoHo (South of Heuston Station), embodies and expresses the sentiments and intentions of Dublin’s new urban entrepreneurial managers with its greatest clarity yet:

[There is a] need to get the leaders of fashion into the city core to make it fashionable/desirable for the middle classes; if they come, the others will follow and suburban mind-sets will be transformed. Only then will we get the full and final revaluing of core city and all the practical results of that (better policing for example). Tony O’Reilly and others moving into Fitzwilliam Square was positive in its time. Now we have to get them into e. g. 300 sq. m. apartments in exciting schemes in the Liberties or Docklands. It happened in 18th century with move south of river by our then aristocrats. It was also successful in New York60.

66Underlying such policies seems to be a pervasive arrogance of state officials, encapsulated in an interview with another DCC Senior Planner, that:

If you live in a marginalised area, one of the aspects of making it a better place to live is bringing in richer people61.

67The processes and policies outlined above have underpinned and legitimated a process of gentrification and working-class displacement. Viewing the new entrepreneurial regime with growing alarm, one retired Chief Planning Officer has referred to this process as “social cleansing”, releasing potentially valuable sites for “higher and better” uses. Thus, as Drudy and Punch cogently observe:

Indeed, it could be argued that the state is now acting as a broker for capital in this process, while co-opting dissent and assuaging working-class combativity by diverting it into safe channels of participatory and consultative structures. Once “on the inside” of such consultative committees or boards, it is likely that many tenants and community representatives will feel less able to speak critically about any of the policies or projects, however uneasy or alarmed they might be. Moreover, these consultation processes are not as a rule subject to much external scrutiny, nor do they greatly influence the outcome beyond a few marginal concessions (for example, the appropriateness of a PPP demolition and redevelopment is never up for negotiation-minor concessions within this framework might be won or lost, but the bigger project itself is beyond challenge)62.