Tales of hope and survival from Ballymun through the decades

Derek Hand reviews Memories, Milestones and New Horizons: Reflections on the Regeneration of Ballymun , edited by Aibhlín McCrann…

Derek Handreviews Memories, Milestones and New Horizons: Reflections on the Regeneration of Ballymun, edited by Aibhlín McCrann, Blackstaff Press, 289pp, £16

BALLYMUN HAS been, and continues to be, both a place and an idea, both a concrete actuality and something that generates meaning: a signifier of different things to different people.

The impetus for this collection is the ongoing comprehensive regeneration of the area. The collection necessarily offers a fascinating historical overview and context in which to understand what went wrong in the past and how the future might be different. This is an opportunity, well taken, to begin to reflect on the nature of how, from its inception in the early 1960s after the death of four residents in Dublin's inner city slums, Ballymun became a nexus where the realities of space and environment, and the realms of politics and of culture, came together.

The underlying narrative running through these essays is one of hope. In the 1960s it was hoped that this kind of created living space would embody all that was progressive and new and be a beacon of Ireland's modernity. It was trumpeted as the future of progressive living, a modernist dream of clean lines and order.

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Such aspirations foundered amid the basic reality that this was an experiment in high-rise living, and not the actual answer that so many were in search of.

So initial hope led to failure. There was ignorance and short-termism on the part of politicians and planners about how such a community would actually function on a day-to-day basis on the outskirts of the city with no facilities - no playgrounds or shops - and no material backup. Ignorance was followed by wilful neglect as all elements of the State failed Ballymun and its inhabitants over and over again.

But hope was never too far away. The visible public face of dysfunction was epitomised in the iconic dehumanising tower blocks, but it was the invisible, the private interior lives of the inhabitants that, despite the stereotypical image of a community on a downward spiral to extinction, meant that Ballymun and its people survived. Indeed, one central element of the regeneration project is the absolute need for interaction between public and private spaces so that outer reality might begin to match inner desire.

All aspects of the regeneration process are covered, with contributions from those involved in the project like Ronan King, to residents such as architectural historian John Montague. Experts like Duncan Stewart and Peter Wyse Jackson consider landscaping and green issues. Artist Robert Ballagh and writer Dermot Bolger discuss the role of arts and culture in fostering a sense of ownership for present and future residents. Ballagh argues how civic responsibility - lacking in Ballymun as well as many other places in Ireland - needs to be striven for so that all people from every walk of life may feel a part of, and have access to, all that society has to offer.

John Waters suggests Ballymun is a memory town: a place through which we might know our past. He is only half right. Because hope is the dominant sentiment at work within the regeneration project and within these reflections, it is hope's corollary, the future, not the past, which is the goal moved toward.

Much is made of commerce and capital investment as being key to the success of Ballymun Mark II. Certainly, as recent Irish history has shown, money makes the world go round. But the money has vanished and the future looks bleak. One wonders if the aspirations on display in this book will come to pass. As was the case 40 years ago, hope is still the basic ingredient in the bricks and mortar actuality of Ballymun. Some things never change.

Derek Hand is a lecturer in English in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. He is writing A History of the Irish Novel: 1650 to the Presentfor Cambridge University Press