Regeneration 'over-promised and under-delivered' from start

ANALYSIS:Limerick's city and county councils did not help matters with their own conflicting plans

WHAT MARKS out Limerick from other Irish cities is that more than two-fifths of all its homes were built as what we now call social housing – vast swathes of it in places like Moyross and Southill, with middle-class housing estates congregated out in the suburbs, beyond the artificial city boundary.

Moyross had 1,130 houses and Southill 1,170.

Translated to Dublin, the total would work out at something like 13,000 houses, in proportional population terms, or about four times the size of Ballymun. It should never have been allowed to happen, but it did.

Limerick has turned into a classic “doughnut city”, severed by social segregation. Trying to chart a new course, so that it can truly “become what it is” (to paraphrase Nietzsche), has proved tortuously difficult – even for a State-backed agency, with an admittedly limited brief.

Launched with great fanfare in January 2008 by then president Mary McAleese, Limerick Regeneration’s €3 billion masterplan “over-promised and under-delivered”, as one critic put it. Half of the money was meant to come from the private sector, but that never happened.

The agency was narrowly conceived from the outset. It was given power over specific parts of the city, mostly the “problem areas” on the northside and southside – to the intense irritation of Limerick City Council, which spent a lot of time trying to thwart the new body.

It was simply expected that the two bodies would overcome such natural rivalry and work together. But although meetings were held regularly, even at a high level, there was no effective communication. And Limerick County Council simply sat on the sidelines in Dooradoyle.

Over the years, the county council granted serial planning permissions for out-of-town shopping centres that undermined the primacy of the city centre, with the inevitable result that it is dying on its feet. The Georgian “new town” is a sad case, after decades of indifference.

But the city council had no clear idea of what Limerick might become. And as the regeneration agency produced masterplans for the areas under its control, the council responded with its own “grand plan” for the city centre – ignoring the regeneration areas and the suburbs.

“This was crazy,” one informed observer remarked. “It chopped Limerick, which is already tiny, into even smaller bits, and the bits themselves were utterly unworkable.

“You can’t change a city the size of Limerick like that, with no overlap, overview or overall vision.”

Like Dublin and other smaller Irish cities, Limerick is dysfunctional because so many agencies are involved. Roads fall under the National Roads Authority, public transport under the National Transport Authority, schools under the Department of Education, etc.

“What happened in Limerick is an extreme version of what happens everywhere – extremely ineffective governance leads to the formation of a ‘hydra’ of quangos, all trying to make up for and supplement what should be delivered by the public service in the first place,” the observer said.

Stockholm-based Elizabeth Hatz, a visiting lecturer at the University of Limerick school of architecture, says it is “one of the most undervalued cities that I have come across” anywhere in the world – despite its superb location on the majestic river Shannon.

“It also seems to be a crucial time in its history. It can go either way: either further downhill – its problems, of course, being the colossal social and physical segregation and, most of all, its dying city centre – or it can decide to change its course completely,” she says.

“A city centre is by definition the part that is shared by the whole city. If it’s dying, something is drastically wrong. We need to get people back living in the centre: students, inhabitants of Southill (which is being pulled down), young families, old people and so on.”

Hatz believes the regeneration projects as currently conceived should be scrapped. “To build a new area in the same place as the Southill they are pulling down, but with higher density and little chance of creating a mixed community there, may make things worse.”

Given that private sector investment in the regeneration areas has failed to materialise, the chances of breaking down social segregation are practically non-existent – without a radical change of direction. And this can only happen if Limerick begins to “re-imagine itself”.

Hatz cites case studies of other cities that “decided not to follow the mainstream and die, but to build on their own character and assets, whether these are considered odd or not. With Limerick, people have to start getting together around a vision, a strong idea – now.”