Dublin docklands. The urban fabric as cultural heritage

Introduction

Since the 1980s there have been major policies and projects for the redevelopment of Dublin Docklands. These projects were mainly aimed at profitable development of office, commercial and residential space, without a sound plan that would preserve the identity or community of the area. The recent shift in policies and urban design principles in the Dublin Docklands Area Master Plan 2008 shows that policy makers have acknowledged that mistakes were made in the last decades of the 20th century. The current map of the Dublin Docklands Area Master Plan 2008 gives us useful information about these changes. The Ringsend/ Irishtown area, which has kept a great part of its urban form and community identity throughout centuries, is described as an ‘area of protection of residential and services amenities’ (DDDA, 2008, map A). Meanwhile, the area of the Grand Canal Docks, recently developed, is described with the objective ‘to seek the social, economic and physical development or rejuvenation
within an area of mixed use of which residential and enterprise facilities would be the predominant uses’ (DDDA, 2008, map A). This classification shows that recent development has been unable to achieve the cohesion and complexity of existing neighbourhoods, revealing flaws not only in policy, but also in the built environment and approaches to urban design.

The shift towards the consideration of more community participation reveals a need to understand the tradition and past of these communities, while the urban fabric of small plots in the existing neighbourhoods, therefore, seems to have a very important role in the conservation of identity of place and providing the opportunity for difference within regularity. On the other hand, the new fabric of residential block developments in the docklands denies the possibility of developing a sense of community, and by providing only regularity, does not leave space for difference.

This paper will address questions related to urban morphology and town analysis in the case of Ringsend and Irishtown. This will provide a tool to learn from the past and perhaps find new models of development that might be less detrimental for the heritage of cities and urban communities. One of the ideas of this paper is to adhere to the new tendency in conservation policies to provide a broader analysis of urban areas, not only considering individual monuments in cities, but also analysing the significance of urban morphology and intangible heritage. It forms part of an OPW Post- Doctoral Fellowship in Conservation Studies and Environmental History.1 Research has been carried out in different areas of urban history of Dublin’s southern waterfront, including infrastructure history and a thorough analysis of the letters of the Pembroke Estate of the 19th century, which included the areas of Ringsend and Irishtown. However, this paper focuses on the study of urban form of the area and its significance to Dublin’s heritage.

Deliberative Equality and the Transgovernmental Politics of the Global Financial Architecture

Revisiting the concept of transgovernmentalism, originally developed by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, can shed considerable light on the nature of interstate cooperation in contemporary global financial governance. Transgovernmentalism highlights how certain technocratic policy communities, composed of finance ministries, central banks, and regulators, dominate the global financial architecture. It also provides insights into the political and social basis of these actors' interactions and deliberations. Most importantly, renovating the concept of transgovernmentalism brings the participatory deficits in the current global financial architecture into sharp focus and points us in the direction of a workable reform agenda that would expand inclusion and participation. This article advocates basing future reform on efforts to achieve a closer realization of the principle of “deliberative equality.” Unfortunately, “transgovernmentalism” is incompatible with deliberative equality, meaning that it is precisely the transgovernmental characteristics of the current global financial architecture that have to be challenged and overturned if we are to arrive at anything approximating deliberative equality.

Beyond the shadow space: architecture as a professional and creative process; during and post-conflict.

Introduction

Much has been written about the impact of conflict on the physical nature of cities; most obviously perhaps the damage, destruction, defensive construction and spatial reconfigurations that evolve in times of conflict. Set within the context of Belfast, Northern Ireland, this paper will focus on three areas. First, a closer reading of the long-term physical impact of conflict, in particular, the spatial forms and practices that persist conceptually and culturally, and/or resist re-conceptualisation. Secondly, the effect of conflict on the nature of architectural practice itself, considering whether issues such as appointment and procurement impacted on architectural expectation and the context of operation. Thirdly, the effect of conflict on people, in particular in relation to creativity and hence the psyche of practice itself. This section will also identify the conditions that undermine or support design quality and creativity not only within times of conflict but also as society evolves out of the shadow space. 1
Twelve years on from the Peace Agreement,2 it may seem remarkable from an external perspective that Northern Ireland still needs to be reflecting on its troubled past. But the immediate post-conflict phase offered the communities of Northern Ireland place and time to experience ‘normal life’, begin to reconcile themselves to the hurt they experienced and start to reconfigure their relationships to one another. Indeed, it has often been expressed that probing the issues too much, at too early a phase, might in fact ‘Open old wounds without resolving anything’ and/or ‘Destabilise the already fragile political system.’3 This tendency not to deliberate or be too probing is therefore understandable and might be the reason why, for example, Northern Ireland's first Architecture and Built Environment policy, published in June, 2006, contains only one routine reference to ‘the Troubles’.

Clearly, however, there is a time in the development of a healthy, functioning society, when in order effectively to plan its future, it must also carry out a closer reading and deeper understanding of its past. As Maya Angelou puts it, ‘History, despite its wrenching pain/ Cannot be unlived, and if faced/ With courage, need not be lived again.’4

Increasingly, those within the creative arts sector and the built environment professions are showing interest in carrying out that closer reading, teasing out issues around conflict. This was led in part by the recent publication of the Troubles Archive by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.5 Those involved in the academic or professional development of future generations of architects are also concerned about the relevance of a post-conflict condition. As a profession, if architects purport to be concerned with context, then the almost tangible socio-political circumstances and legacy of Northern Ireland does inevitably require direct eye contact. This paper therefore aims to bring the relationship between conflict and architectural practice in Northern Ireland into sharp focus, not to constrain or dull creative practice but to heighten its potential.

Informalilty in the Social and Culture Life in the City Centre of Nairobi

We live in a world of advanced technology, stiff global competition and rapid transformation of all facets of life and as a result architecture has not been spared. These transformations affect the social relations, cultural consumption and political economy that have influenced the manner in which people perform in and out of space in the city centres. The residents have adopted strategies for negotiating through the spaces sanitized by authorities and other agents. The public spaces provide the background materials for informal urban practices that are sometimes deemed illegal yet are necessary for animating the city spaces. Cities market themselves ecstatically beyond the baroque with a more visible presence of the contending parties through trademarks, public relations invasively advertised in streets, monuments (signature buildings or projects), and language. This paper comes out of a research carried out in Nairobi in February and March 2007. It examined how the notions of globalisation are reflected in the life in the city centre; the impacts on the quality of life of users of the city centre and how informal urbanism has developed as copying strategy to deal with the transformations due to liberalization and globalization.

Intellectual Property management in publicly funded R&D centres—A comparison of university-based and company-based research centres

Recent thinking on open innovation and the knowledge-based economy have stressed the importance of external knowledge sources in stimulating innovation. Policy-makers have recognised this, establishing publicly funded Centres of R&D Excellence with the objective of stimulating industry–science links and localised innovation spillovers. Here, we examine the contrasting IP management practices of a group of 18 university- and company-based R&D centres supported by the same regional programme. Our analysis covers all but one of the Centres supported by the programme and suggests marked contrasts between the IP strategies of the university-based and company-based centres. This suggests the potential for very different types of knowledge spillovers from publicly funded R&D centres based in different types of organisations, and a range of alternative policy approaches to the future funding of R&D centres depending on policy-makers’ objectives.

The Architecture of Home in Cairo: Socio-Spatial Practice of the Hawari's Everyday Life

The hawari of Cairo - narrow non-straight alleyways - are the basic urban units that have formed the medieval city since its foundation back in 969 AD. Until early in the C20th, they made up the primary urban divisions of the city and were residential in nature. Contemporary hawari, by contrast, are increasingly dominated by commercial and industrial activity. This medieval urban maze of extremely short, broken, zigzag streets and dead ends are defensible territories, powerful institutions, and important social systems. While the hawari have been studied as an exemplar for urban structure of medieval Islamic urbanism, and as individual building typologies, this book is the first to examine in detail the socio-spatial practice of the architecture of home in the city. It investigates how people live, communicate and relate to each other within their houses or shared spaces of the alleys, and in doing so, to uncover several new socio-spatial dimensions and meanings in this architectural form.

In an attempt to re-establish the link between architecture past and present, and to understand the changing social needs of communities, this book uncovers the notion of home as central to understand architecture in such a city with long history as Cairo. It firstly describes the historical development of the domestic spaces (indoor and outdoor), and provides an inclusive analysis of spaces of everyday activities in the hawari of old Cairo. It then broadens its analysis to other parts of the city, highlighting different customs and representations of home in the city at large. Cairo, in the context of this book, is represented as the most sophisticated urban centre in the Middle East with different and sometimes contrasting approaches to the architecture of home, as a practice and spatial system.

In order to analyse the complexity and interconnectedness of the components and elements of the hawari as a 'collective home', it layers its narratives of architectural and social developments as a domestic environment over the past two hundred years, and in doing so, explores the in-depth social meaning and performance of spaces, both private and public.

Managing Cultural Diversity in Healthcare Partnerships: The Case of LIFT

Purpose: The National Health Service (NHS) Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) programme was launched in 2001 as an innovative public-private partnership to address the historical under-investment in local primary care facilities in England. The organisations from the public and private sector that comprise a local LIFT partnership each have their own distinctive norms of behaviour and acceptable working practices - ultimately different organisational cultures. The purpose of this article is to assess the role of organisational culture in facilitating (or impeding) LIFT partnerships and to contribute to an understanding of how cultural diversity in public-private partnerships is managed at the local level. Design/methodology/approach: The approach taken was qualitative case studies, with data gathering comprising interviews and a review of background documentation in three LIFT companies purposefully sampled to represent a range of background factors. Elite interviews were also conducted with senior policy makers responsible for implementing LIFT policy at the national level. Findings: Interpreting the data against a conceptual framework designed to assess approaches to managing strategic alliances, the authors identified a number of key differences in the values, working practices and cultures in public and private organisations that influenced the quality of joint working. On the whole, however, partners in the three LIFT companies appeared to be working well together, with neither side dominating the development of strategy. Differences in culture were being managed and accommodated as partnerships matured. Research limitations/implications: As LIFT develops and becomes the primary source of investment for managing, developing and channelling funding into regenerating the primary care infrastructure, further longitudinal work might examine how ongoing partnerships are working, and how changes in the cultures of public and private partners impact upon wider relationships within local health economies and shape the delivery of patient care. Originality/value: To the authors' knowledge this is the first study of the role of culture in mediating LIFT partnerships and the findings add to the evidence on public-private partnerships in the NHS

The social construction of illness:Key insights and policy implications.

The social construction of illness is a major research perspective in medical sociology. This article traces the roots of this perspective and presents three overarching constructionist findings. First, some illnesses are particularly embedded with cultural meaning--which is not directly derived from the nature of the condition--that shapes how society responds to those afflicted and influences the experience of that illness. Second, all illnesses are socially constructed at the experiential level, based on how individuals come to understand and live with their illness. Third, medical knowledge about illness and disease is not necessarily given by nature but is constructed and developed by claims-makers and interested parties. We address central policy implications of each of these findings and discuss fruitful directions for policy-relevant research in a social constructionist tradition. Social constructionism provides an important counterpoint to medicine's largely deterministic approaches to disease and illness, and it can help us broaden policy deliberations and decisions.

‘The “English Disease” is to Look for a “Solution of the Irish Problem”’: British Constitutional Policy in Northern Ireland after Sunningdale 1974–1976

This article reconstructs British constitutional policy in Northern Ireland after power-sharing collapsed in May 1974. Over the following two years, the British government publicly emphasised that Northern Ireland would decide its own future, but ministers secretly considered a range of options including withdrawal, integration and Dominion status. These discussions have been fundamentally misunderstood by previous authors, and this article shows that Harold Wilson did not seriously advocate withdrawal nor was policy as inconsistent as argued elsewhere. An historical approach, drawing from recently released archival material, shows that consociationalists such as Brendan O'Leary and Michael Kerr have neglected the proper context of government policy because of their commitment to a particular form of government, failing to recognise the constraints under which ministers operated. The British government remained committed to an internal devolved settlement including both communities but was unable to impose one.

Adaptive Measurement-Based Policy-Driven QoS Management with Fuzzy-Rule-based Resource Allocation

Fixed and wireless networks are increasingly converging towards common connectivity with IP-based core networks. Providing effective end-to-end resource and QoS management in such complex heterogeneous converged network scenarios requires unified, adaptive and scalable solutions to integrate and co-ordinate diverse QoS mechanisms of different access technologies with IP-based QoS. Policy-Based Network Management (PBNM) is one approach that could be employed to address this challenge. Hence, a policy-based framework for end-to-end QoS management in converged networks, CNQF (Converged Networks QoS Management Framework) has been proposed within our project. In this paper, the CNQF architecture, a Java implementation of its prototype and experimental validation of key elements are discussed. We then present a fuzzy-based CNQF resource management approach and study the performance of our implementation with real traffic flows on an experimental testbed. The results demonstrate the efficacy of our resource-adaptive approach for practical PBNM systems

Design and Implementation of a Measurement-Based Policy-Driven Resource Management Framework For Converged Networks

This paper presents the design and implementation of a measurement-based QoS and resource management framework, CNQF (Converged Networks’ QoS Management Framework). CNQF is designed to provide unified, scalable QoS control and resource management through the use of a policy-based network
management paradigm. It achieves this via distributed functional entities that are deployed to co-ordinate the resources of the transport network through centralized policy-driven decisions supported by measurement-based control architecture. We present the CNQF architecture, implementation of the
prototype and validation of various inbuilt QoS control mechanisms using real traffic flows on a Linux-based experimental test bed.

Measurement-based Policy-driven QoS Management in Converged Next Generation Networks

Policy-based management is considered an effective approach to address the challenges of resource management in large complex networks. Within the IU-ATC QoS Frameworks project, a policy-based network management framework, CNQF (Converged Networks QoS Framework) is being developed aimed at providing context-aware, end-to-end QoS control and resource management in converged next generation networks. CNQF is designed to provide homogeneous, transparent QoS control over heterogeneous access technologies by means of distributed functional entities that co-ordinate the resources of the transport network through policy-driven decisions. In this paper, we present a measurement-based evaluation of policy-driven QoS management based on CNQF architecture, with real traffic flows on an experimental testbed. A Java based implementation of the CNQF Resource Management Subsystem is deployed on the testbed and results of the experiments validate the framework operation for policy-based QoS management of real traffic flows.

Transgressing Contemporary Boundaries:The Narrator as True Custodian of Cultural Knowledge in Ulster Society

Historically in Gaelic culture, the bard was greatly valued and admired as an important and integral part of society. Travelled, schooled and specifically trained in their art, the bard helped ensure identity and reassurance for Gaelic families by grounding them both temporarily and spatially into their landscape. Entrusted with the duty and responsibility of recording place and event, the bards worked without writing and by transgressing man-made boundaries, travelled throughout the land weaving their histories into the very fabric of society.

Now no longer with us, we find ourselves without the distinguished chronicler to undertake this duty. Yet the responsibility of the Gaelic bard is one still shared by all artists today; to facilitate memory and identity, whether good or bad. Many Ulster writers, by happenstance and geography have found themselves located in a place of painful histories. An immediate difficulty for those local writers becomes manifest by being intrinsically implicated into those histories – whilst having first-hand knowledge and comprehension beyond that of the outsider, the local writer is automatically damned by association and relationship, thereby tarnishing their voice in comparison to the perceived impartiality of others.
Some writers however have successfully sought ways to escape this limitation and have worked in ways that can transgress the restrictions of prejudgement. John Hewitt, by purposely becoming a self-imposed tourist was able to distance himself to write impartially about the past, recognising that ’the place without its ghosts is a barren place.’1 In ‘The Colony’,2 tradition, peoples and mapping of the land are all narrated by Hewitt in a similar way to the Gaelic bardic topographic poems of Sean O'Dubhagain and Giolla Na Naomh O'Huidhrin3 in compiling a rich cultural atlas.

Similarly the Belfast poet and novelist Ciaran Carson also writes and records the city from an intermediary position; that of translator. Mediating between reader and aisling,4 Carson himself takes the reader on a journey into name, meaning, time and place, focusing primarily on the city of Belfast, familiar in name but impenetrable in depth to most.

Furthermore, this once-forgotten tradition to chronicle is now being continued by the new breed of Irish crime writers where the likes of Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville and Adrian McKinty can, by way of the crime novel, accurately record contemporary society. Thus, ghost estates, listed buildings, archaeological digs, street and city have all provided setting and subject matter for recent novels. Moreover by choosing the ‘outsider from within’ as their chief protagonist, whether detective or criminal, each author is able to transgress the boundaries of prejudice and preconception that hinder genuine understanding and knowledge.

Looking in turn at the Gaelic bard, the twentieth century Ulster poet and the new breed of Irish crime writer, the authors will outline the real value of the narrator, by being able to act as cultural transgressor beyond the seeming and alleged as the true chronicler in society, and then with specific reference to city and countryside in Ireland, as a valuable custodian of knowledge in architecture and place.

Keywords
Architecture, Crime Fiction, Cultural Atlas, Place, Poetry.

1 From ‘The Bloody Brae’, a one act play written by John Hewitt in the 1930’s.
2 Hewitt, J. (1968) published in Collected Poems 1932-67. London:McGibbon & Kee.
3 Lengthy and detailed medieval Gaelic poems composed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries first edited by John O'Donovan in 1862 for the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society in Dublin.
4 The aisling is the Irish song or poem genre when the poet is visited by their muse in a daydream or dream-vision state.