Taking Liberties : entrepreneurial governance and gentrification in inner Dublin

Abstract

This thesis is centrally concerned with the relationship between capital, the state and disadvantaged inner-city communities. The overall objective of this research is to review the structural forces underlying the recent and dramatic transformation of inner Dublin and to examine how disadvantaged inner-city communities have fared under an entrepreneurial-planning regime which has come to adopt policies of place promotion and competitiveness on the one hand and, on the other, has employed a rhetoric of holistic regeneration and formal participatory structures promising to embrace community goals. The theoretical approach for this thesis drew on two main strands; gentrification and entrepreneurial governance. Theories of gentrification were employed to examine the ways in which capital uses the built environment to make a profit and to examine the impacts on the social profile of inner-city neighbourhoods resulting from uneven temporal and spatial capital flows. In many cities, governments play a crucial role in initiating and bolstering urban regeneration. A central focus of this research was therefore an examination of the role of the state. The literature on urban entrepreneurial governance examines the recent shift by states to adopt more entrepreneurial or market-led approaches to managing and shaping the city, often involving policies of place promotion and partnership with the private sector. Furthermore, it traces how new structures and instruments of decision making have been established whereby formal structures of local government have often been supplanted by networks of non-elected decision makers. The empirical research employed both qualitative and quantitative methods, drew on a wide range of primary and secondary sources and adopted a case-study approach in order to chart the extent of physical and social transformation and to review the impacts of different plans and policies on inner city communities. These case studies focused on a number of geographic scales including the delimited inner-city area, an inner-city quadrant and an inner-city locale, with the more localised case studies allowing for a more in-depth examination of recent housing and planning policies. Among the methods employed were participative research, interviewing, focus groups, land-use observation surveys, questionnaire surveys and archival research