Inner city renewal must involve local people

THERE'S something very comforting about the old, the familiar. I suppose this fact rings especially true when you've been apart from them for a while, albeit a small while. I know that is what was brought home to me with a vengeance upon my return to Dublin from abroad recently. I live with the Stanhope Green community, just off Smithfield, so while the Dublin I see on a daily basis may not be as visually stunning as many of the cities in Venezuela, I found it extremely pleasing to behold once again all the old sights Liffeyside and beyond.

Well, those of the old sights that were remaining - sometimes the haste with which the old face of Dublin is being changed is almost indecent. There is no more recent example of this, and the rear guard action of our planners in response, than in the call by the planning committee of Dublin City Council for an urgent inquiry into the removal of the roof of a listed 18th century building on the corner of Parnell Square and Gardiner Row. Is it not ironic that this attempt to disembowel part of our capital's inner city was on that part which lies almost directly opposite the city's Garden of Remembrance?

That fact set me thinking about Dublin, old and new, and about the people who live out their lives in it and the problems they face on a daily basis - problems undoubtedly similar to those faced by the inhabitants of other large urban centres, but unique to Dubliners in their sense of the city's history and its centrality not only to those who dwell in it but also to the heartbeat of this nation. Why is it, then, that so many are anxious to leave? Wherein lies the success of the rural resettlement scheme?

There is a sense about the city now that all is not as it should be. The streets provide anonymity for the homeless, the refugees, the children who sponge the windscreen of your car in the traffic jams; those nameless ones who now wear the mantle of the old city's characters' - So what has changed? Why are there many who will not walk down O'Connell Street at night; many women who will simply not venture abroad in the city at all after dusk? I know of friends who fear for their personal safety, and who are loath to visit me at home once darkness has fallen. It may be true to say that there has been an important shift in attitudes towards city centre living and working, but the gardai know there is difficulty in policing large parts of inner city Dublin. Tourists are warned as a matter of course that there are some places on the edge of complete lawlessness, where even the residents experience the environment as hostile.

It is a sad truth that, despite the huge tax incentives encouraging redevelopment, and despite the Corporation's more intensive policy of estates management, Dublin's inner city will never reach its full potential unless its problems of economic deprivation, social exclusion, long term structural unemployment and poverty among the existing community are tackled. There may well have been 5.400 new dwellings developed in the inner city over the past seven years; there may even be a further 2,250 in the pipeline. But if the indigenous communities in the city centre believe themselves powerless and ignored, wherein lies the positive contribution of urban renewal?

A conference organised last June concentrated on this very fact. The Dublin 2020 Vision conference brought into focus issues such as this by addressing the factors which give rise to alienation and its attendant problems of crime and drug abuse. Urban renewal, it was concluded, must include the development of social and community services, and must be seen to have the positive advantage of improving the quality of life in an area, of restoring that sense of pride all Dubliners once had in their city.

In an effort to be responsive and responsible, we are informed that Dublin Corporation is now putting social issues on the top of its agenda. I know full well that its Housing Department has been a long time stalwart of the principle of voluntary social housing. Indeed, we were recently told that in the past 12 years Dublin Corporation has made available to this end and under the auspices of its capital assistance and rental subsidy schemes almost £33 million in the form of non repayable loans.

But with private development, land is now at a premium in Dublin city.

Designated areas schemes have thus become a double edged sword: the quantity of new private residential units being completed in all parts of the inner city leaves few available sites for additional social housing projects, either public or voluntary, and the units themselves are primarily only of interest to those in employment who can qualify for mortgages and benefit from tax relief. There are many who would choose to live in the inner city but who cannot afford to buy a home there; and most of those who do become new owners have little long term commitment to the communities in which they find themselves living, their eventual residential destination being suburban Dublin. Where does this train of thought lead but to the frightening question that, in building all these new apartment blocks, may we not well be creating ghettos for the future?

The building of modern private apartments and houses in inner city Dublin, therefore, should not be allowed to eclipse the lives of the people whose families have lived there for generations. Their future must be guaranteed by a commitment to translate short term financial gain for private developers and investors into long term social and personal benefits for inner city residents.

Local communities must be involved in preserving and enhancing their own environment, for Dublin's heritage will be saved not by individual initiatives such as the Temple Bar or HARP projects, but by asking what kind of Dublin city Dub liners really want, and by inviting their involvement in the process of change, in the transition from old to new.

I AM conscious that tomorrow will see the opening of Dublin city centre's largest retail development, the Jervis Street Shopping Centre. Over the next two years, the city will acquire an extra two million square feet of retail space, adding to the 3.6 million built over the previous 30 years. At the end of the day, I suppose there is no getting away from the fact that we live in an economic society, one which looks to the value of its punt and an outlet in which to spend it. But I am reminded of all the small family owned corner shops that are no more and I can't help but feel sad at their demise. I can't help but wonder at a city which no longer espouses the individual or the family as the basis on which its society is being structured, and whose intent seems to be to the dismantling of the integrated community system as part of its planning process.