Integrating Ballymun? Flawed progress in Ireland's largest estate regeneration scheme

Urban regeneration in the Republic of Ireland takes place in the context of the rapid, ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic growth of the 1990s. The boom transformed Irish society and led to greater affluence for many people, along with continuing and arguably worsening inequality for those excluded from its opportunities. In particular, Ireland’s small social rented sector has become the focus of the country’s most concentrated poverty and social exclusion. The Ballymun regeneration programme in North Dublin aims to facilitate physical, social and economic change in order to integrate the area more closely with the
more affluent surrounding suburbs. This article reviews the issues involved in restructuring such a large area of social exclusion within a rapidly changing European capital city, using a framework that disaggregates the concept of integration into three elements: market, citizenship and reciprocity. With just over half the physical refurbishment complete, progress has been made but some fundamental issues remain. The article concludes that although substantial advancement has been made with physical regeneration, progress with wider economic and social integration has been uneven and in some cases flawed.

Early modern Ireland and the history of the child

Analysis of public policy on the care of children and youth in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland has generated a substantial historiography in recent years. By contrast there has been far less exploration of the state's attitude to young people in early modern Irish society. The historical dimension to the current debate on state care of minors is usually identified as beginning in the nineteenth century but the institutional custody of children originated in the sixteenth century. A central aim of this essay is to document the early modern context of public concern with children and youth in order to provide a more precise historical dimension to the contemporary debate.

Crystal Creatures: Context for the Dublin Blaschka Congress

The ‘Dublin Blaschka Congress’ was conceived as a gathering to bring together the diverse scholarly disciplines that are uniquely, if eccentrically, joined in the study of scientific glass models. Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka are best known for the ‘Glass Flowers’ of Harvard but in the nineteenth century they also invented techniques to sculpt anatomically accurate marine invertebrates in glass. In the course of preparing the Congress and a coordinated temporary exhibition, much new information was uncovered about the collections of Blaschka objects in Ireland, including a total of nearly 800 surviving models. The history of the artists shows a clever business model that was designed to tap a niche market in the contemporary fascination with natural history, and improved through the course of several decades with input from clients and their own passion for understanding their biological subjects. From a modern perspective, a single Blaschka glass model of a marine invertebrate can embody biology, the history of science, craftsmanship, glass chemistry, aesthetics and art. This ability to cross interdisciplinary bridges is a singular strength of the Blaschka works, and is evident in the published proceedings of the Congress.

Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis: A Geographic Information System Application of Material Flow Analysis in Ireland

This study concerns the spatial allocation of material flows, with emphasis on construction material in the Irish housing sector. It addresses some of the key issues concerning anthropogenic impact on the environment through spatial temporal visualisation of the flow of materials, wastes and emissions at different spatial levels. This is presented in the form of a spatial model, Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis (SAMFA), which enables the simulation of construction material flows and associated energy use. SAMFA parallels the Island Limits project (EPA funded under 2004-SD-MS-22-M2), which aimed to create a material flow analysis of the Irish economy classified by industrial sector. SAMFA further develops this by attempting to establish the material flows at the subnational geographical scale that could be used in the development of local authority (LA) sustainability strategies and spatial planning frameworks by highlighting the cumulative environmental impacts of the development of the built environment. By drawing on the idea of planning support systems, SAMFA also aims to provide a cross-disciplinary, integrative medium for involving stakeholders in strategies for a sustainable built environment and, as such, would help illustrate the sustainability consequences of alternative The pilot run of the model in Kildare has shown that the model can be successfully calibrated and applied to develop alternative material flows and energy-use scenarios at the ED level. This has been demonstrated through the development of an integrated and a business-as-usual scenario, with the former integrating a range of potential material efficiency and energysaving policy options and the latter replicating conditions that best describe the current trend. Their comparison shows that the former is better than the latter in terms of both material and energy use. This report also identifies a number of potential areas of future research and areas of broader application. This includes improving the accuracy of the SAMFA model (e.g. by establishing actual life expectancy of buildings in the Irish context through field surveys) and the extension of the model to other Irish counties. This would establish SAMFA as a valuable predicting and monitoring tool that is capable of integrating national and local spatial planning objectives with actual environmental impacts. Furthermore, should the model prove successful at this level, it then has the potential to transfer the modelling approach to other areas of the built environment, such as commercial development and other key contributors of greenhouse emissions. The ultimate aim is to develop a meta-model for predicting the consequences of consumption patterns at the local scale. This therefore offers the possibility of creating critical links between socio technical systems with the most important challenge of all the limitations of the biophysical environment.