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GRANBY PARK IS an initiative of the Upstart collective, turning a vacant space on Dominick Street in Dublin’s north inner city into a temporary park hosting various creative arts, educational and food events between the 22 August and 22 September.
It sounds great, and it is – but if we’re going to have a real debate on transforming our city we need to think about the problems here too.
Upstart says it will convert a space which would ‘otherwise be vacant’ into a public park. But every space in the city has its own history, and the Granby Park site particularly so.
The site was originally ear-marked for a significant regeneration project. Under government guidelines the project (like many others including O’Deaveny Gardens and St Michael’s Estate) was set up as a Public-Private Partnership (PPP). The land on which Dominick Street flats were located, and encompassing the Granby Park site, was to be given to private property developers, on condition that the developers would build new housing and commercial units, a portion of which would be social housing.
According to this model, the City Council could make use of a valuable asset (the land) to secure social housing development at no cost to the public purse. The whole concept of PPP, like so much of public policy during the boom years, was predicated on the possibility of developers extracting profits through future price increases in housing. The housing needs of the residents were thus subject to the fortunes of one of the most unstable property speculation bubbles in history.
Sadly, but not surprisingly, as property prices declined in 2007/2008 the developer (McNamara/Castlethorn) pulled out. Several flat blocks had already been demolished – leaving the residents high and dry and resulting in the continuing vacancy of the Granby Park site. In a very concrete sense, then, the fact that the site remains vacant is the result of national policy choices which were underpinned by, and reinforced, the logic of property speculation.
In this context, the idea that Granby Park is about turning a vacant site into a public park is a little misleading. It would be more accurate to say that the city council has decided to make the space available for one month instead of living up to its long-term promise of providing housing for those excluded from the debt-driven private property market.
Recalling this recent history is not just important because we don’t want the experiences of the people who lived there, and continue to live there, to be forgotten, but also because the logic which underpinned the failed regeneration on Dominick Street continues to apply: private-led, profit-driven development is still seen as the only game in town.
NAMA, for example, the single most significant government intervention in the real estate sector, is wholly focused on harvesting the monetary value of real estate, even if this means sitting on vacant properties for the next decade.
Granby Park will last for only one month. The ‘pop-up’ phenomenon has become popular in Dublin – and many other cities around the world – over the last few years. The attraction of a temporary space or project is obvious. It’s not as burdensome as an ongoing commitment and it can be more exciting and inspiring.
Granby Park is a good example: there is enthusiasm for a project which can suddenly transform a vacant space into a functioning park. While all of this activity and buzz can be a good thing, it is also important to recognise that some things need more than temporary access to space.
The park’s plants and flowers that will brighten up an otherwise grey, concrete site. This is part of the organisers’ mission to turn the site into a place of ‘nature, imagination, play and beauty for everyone’. The problem is that nature doesn’t speed up to suit the quick turn-over of a month long project. The plants, flowers and vegetables were all grown somewhere else, and will all have to be removed in September. They will have to be in pots rather than in the ground.
This isn’t the fault of the organisers – the City Council would never have let them break up the concrete to grow directly in the soil – but it should make us ask what it would actually mean to have nature in the city: what length of time would be required for a garden to be established and vegetables to be grown for people to eat?
Connected to this question is another aspect of the project which the organisers have highlighted as important: community involvement. No doubt those volunteering in the park will form their own community, and this is an important contribution. But what about the relationship with the local community, the long-term residents of the north-inner city?
From what we can gather so far, the local community is enjoying the park – and this is great in a city which is often divided along class lines. But what will happen when Granby Park goes? It takes time to get to know people, to develop relations of trust, to identify common problems and solutions – community takes time.
The Granby Park project is a great start, but the limitations of temporary spaces in terms of building diverse urban communities also have to be recognised, especially if we want to overcome those limits.
Temporary spaces and ‘pop up’ solutions have found favour with city planners across Europe: they allow developers and city councils to harness urban creativity in order to drive up real estate prices without ceding control of a given site. Those who produce the space through hard work, collaboration and passion move on, making way for property development and speculation.
The international research is clear on this point and it has been documented in places from Lower-East Side Manhattan to Berlin’s Kreuzberg. Worst of all, increased property prices make it even more difficult for creativity to flourish and end up driving out long-term working class communities, migrants and young people.
Whenever we try to make change happen, the kinds of complexities and contradictions we have discussed here arise. There is no pure path to change and we have to get our hands dirty in the messy business of transforming our city for the better. This begins by recognising the effort that has made the Granby Park project possible. But in doing this, it is vital that we not only critically reflect on, but actively work towards finding ways to respond to the kinds of challenges and concerns which we confront.
To sleepwalk into a general enthusiasm for ‘pop-up solutions’ to chronic and complex urban problems is to fall victim to a form of group-think not unlike that which has led us to the situation we find ourselves in today.
Let’s hope future changes in Dublin city start to look more like the Granby Park project, but let’s also hope they are accompanied by a more critical, a more radical and a more ambitious project of urban change that will allow us to take control of the city we love.
To read a longer version of this article, click here.
Mick Byrne and Patrick Bresnihan participate in the provisional university, a Dublin-based independent research and education project, empowering the production of knowledge within and for social movements.
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The problem is you cant have nice things in a welfare state, bored youth and idle parents all funded by the government welfare slush fund is a recipe for disaster , all the drug use and heavy drinking by dole-parents rubs off to create violent anti-social criminals of their children which means that any investment in ‘urban renewal’ will be destroyed and back to the same rundown area the land will return.
Thats right wing horseshit right there. Pretty sure it’s well educated, well respected and well off folks that have brought this country to its present state, not the long term unemployed.
If it is true that welfare state provision leads to degradation of public spaces, we should expect to see drug use and heavy drinking in public spaces to be far more pronounced in Scandinavian countries, where welfare state provision is far more developed, than in Ireland, where charity and patronage are often preferred as a substitute for truly public goods and services.
However, we see no such thing in Scandinavian countries. This is because in countries where there is relatively ample welfare state provision, there are widespread practices of social solidarity and mutual respect, established and maintained through long generations of struggle.
In Ireland, however, where such practices are far less in evidence, and the State policy of keeping the financial sector sweet fosters political authoritarianism, people like ‘Ireland Uncensored’ are more likely feel free to pollute public discussion -just as others are inclined to pollute public parks- with unsupported assertion and class prejudice, and to try and pass it off as common sense.
@ Richard
The Nordic countries don’t have FG and FF, lucky them.
@ Mark, what do you think.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of THINKING. It keeps us busy debating thesis and anti-thesis (a concept of Hegelian Dialectic), without realizing the fact that reality lies beyond our illusions and assumptions.
What you believe to be true, is it true? Or do you just believe that it is true because you were taught that it was true and you never looked any further?
People are unable to get themselves out of the paradox created by the social engineers. They cannot see beyond these “isms” because they have lost the ability to think. All we see is fake intellectualism and absurd theories. Left, right, capitalism, communism, political parties, political figures … that’s our mental limit.
Read more: http://bitterrealities.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/sincere-ignorance-and-conscientious-stupidity/ <
actually Scandinavia has a very high rate of alcohol abuse as well as it being quite normal to drink in public, particularly in Denmark. Seriously, there is ample welfare provision in Ireland, maybe check in the local welfare office the provisions one can avail of. So you want more Social Welfare? THe kind of thinking that will never help Ireland recover.
You’re not Richard Boyd Barrett by any chance? I’ve heard him sprout similar bs…political authoritarianism? – its an elected government…ah why bother. Try living in Turkey, Syria or North Korea and lets see if you feel the same way about Ireland.
Dublin city council do not like nature. Nature costs money. Concrete over it seems to be their policy.
To be fair, Dublin has an abundance of well kept city parks, canals and green spaces
North inner city side has very little
If anyone is interested in exploring more about the culture, traditions & present social context of the North Inner City then please come to The Abbey Theatre next Thursday September 12th @ 2.00pm. The Abbey Theatre/ Inner City Assembly is a Speaker/ Performance series looking to celebrate and explore topics important to the Inner City Community. All speakers & performers are heavily involved in the community.
A longer version of this piece is available here: http://provisionaluniversity.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/thoughts-on-granby-park/
Find it hard to understand the practical implications of the criticisms weighted here when there’s no reference to the actual redevelopment plans for the area. It feels like the authors are suggesting an either/or situation e.g. they seem to suggest you can only have pop-up solutions followed by high property prices, you can’t have pop-up AND implement regeneration plans. Maybe there are plans to erect new housing in 2014 and it really is the creative occupation of an otherwise unoccupied site, rather than a sinister ploy by DCC to distract everyone from their ineptitude and inaction, or to drive property prices in the area up? Dolphin’s Barn Regeneration has just been granted 20 million for the first phase of their redevelopment; maybe there are similar plans for the Dominic St. complex?
Also, re. consultation / who really benefits? Are the authors saying that the people who benefit from this park are planners, and there was no consultation with the inner city community about the park? Have the authors spoken to residents in the area or local businesses to find out about consultation about and benefits from the park, or is it just speculation?
Interesting points raised here. Just a couple of quick comments. First of all, we agree that the practical implications are difficult to see. However, we think it is worth recognizing problems and bringing them into the public sphere even when an immediate solution or response is not at hand. We have already got a great repression to the article in terms of developing the discussion and imagining ways forward. Secondly, it certainly is not an ‘either/or’ situation – anything is possible and it’s all to play for. Granby Park has been a great success so far and if we can learn from it but also raise the critical questions than a lot can be achieved. International experience indicates overwhelmingly that real estate interests (and the complicity of local/national government) present a significant obstacle, but that doesn’t mean that obstacle is insurmountable. Thirdly, as we understand it there are plans to construct social housing for all of the communities effected by the failed PPS (i.e. Dominick St., St Michael’s, O’Deaveny Gardens, Croke Villas). However, as we understand it, in many cases no funds in place and therefore the plans don’t mean much to residents who saw their houses demolished 5 years ago or more. Finally, we very much believe the local community is benefiting (and we say as much in the piece), but we want to raise the question of the long-term benefits to real estate and local shops.
It is easy to forget just how many flats and poor living conditions are bang in the center of the city-very rare for any city these days i think. In many respects it is as bad as the tenement life of over 100 years ago. We have a pretty bad record for how the City has developed if you leave aside the Georgian period. Even Stephens Green is managed more like a museum piece than a living park with stalls and music and events. DCC would rather I think that there were no people-no bins, no public seating, no trees, no green space- just a concrete retail space.BTW there is tons of building space in Dublin sitting empty as so many buildings just have their ground floor used- a terrible waste.
Yawn.
Poorer people in Dublin want pop-up parks and wannabe socialists from nicer parts of Dublin pitying them for a few days. Killiney socialists are one of my favorite kind.
… let’s also hope they are accompanied by a more critical, a more radical and a more ambitious project of urban change that will allow us to take control of the city we love.
That’s more like it. Let’s hope.
The view in the accompanying site makes it look like an ideal location for a start to digging a Metro.
Gah!
* accompanying photo makes the site…
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