Dublin Corporation's decision to spend £100 million on the regeneration of the Fatima Mansions complex in Dublin is to be welcomed in principle. Under the scheme, announced yesterday, the existing buildings are to be demolished in their entirety and a new project of mixed public and private housing installed in their place.
While some residents fear that a divided society may spring up, with those who live in the proposed privately-owned apartments keeping their distance from the residents of the 300 municipal houses, this type of mixed development has been shown to be successful in other countries.
The proposal does, in a small way at least, run counter to a trend which has been evident in Dublin by which a ghettoisation based on social strata has taken place over a number of decades. As a result, the city's east-west divide has begun to take on a greater significance than the north-south rivalries that have existed for centuries. Any attempt to develop areas in which people from differing social strata live in close proximity, will have a struggle for existence against market forces which usually work towards the opposite result. The progress of this imaginative project will, therefore, be closely watched.
The provision of a major indoor sports centre should attract outsiders to an area which in the past they would not have considered entering. This should not only provide an important facility for those living in the complex; it should contribute to reintegrating Fatima Mansions with the rest of the city.
Enterprise and training units, shops and local services, as well as child-care facilities, will undoubtedly make the complex a far better place in which to live. All in all, the new project is far better planned and financed than the attempt made in the 1980s which dealt only with physical refurbishment of the existing buildings and failed to take social problems into account.
The new initiative will, however, present its own difficulties. The proposed population density appears to be somewhat higher than might have been hoped for. The present residents will undoubtedly go through a period of upheaval and temporary rehousing in the period between the demolition of the old buildings and the construction of the new complex.
In the end, only a serious programme of consultation and participation by local groups can make the initiative a success and it is to be hoped that the Corporation will keep rigidly to its promises on this matter. Most of the improvements which have taken place in Fatima Mansions in recent years - and there have been improvements - have been brought about by local voluntary effort. The struggle against the heroin problem by these groups has set an example for future consultative and participative work in the area.
In the current era of prosperity, the provision of such substantial funding for urban and social renewal is a desirable development which should be extended to similar estates in Dublin and throughout the State.