In the last number of days, The Irish Times has launched a competition seeking to designate the best place to live in Ireland. I have to admit to having mixed views about this competition. On one hand I feel perplexed about the need to attempt to measure the attributes of place to the extent to which, ala the X Factor, one place can be deemed ‘the best’, yet on the other hand, it forms a useful example of how to enrich discussion and debate about the importance of place and place attachment in Ireland. Each of these perspectives are discussed in turn below.
While to a certain extent, people shape the places in which they live, the everyday realities of place are also the outcome of processes that are largely outside peoples control and which have a significant impact upon their everyday lives. This, as emphasised through blogs such as IAN, is something that is currently a painful reality for many living with the consequences of the combination of poor planning and rampant speculation of the last number of decades. Perhaps it might thus seem like a positive move to attempt to measure the factors which contribute to those places which are deemed to be successful and then, in due course, attempt to replicate the factors which contribute to such. However, when it comes to the notion of place, it becomes difficult to measure what exactly success is, not to mind what is deemed to be the ‘best’. At its worst extreme, such sentiment pits people living in particular places against each other based on notions of superior or inferior choices about where people should live.
The manner in which people select a place in which to live is based on a wide range of factors, including proximity of job, shops, schools, and transport networks, but also including less measurable factors, such as personal ties, position in the life cycle, and attachment to particular localities. Moreover, the extent to which people can choose their place is directly connected to particular social and personal circumstances, often largely outside the control of an individual or, indeed, an entire population. Place is thus something paradoxical, where various factors are in constant tension with each other. This is something that is acknowledged by Maureen Gaffney, a judge for the Irish Times competition: “In the course of my work, I have been in many deprived communities that seem to have little enough going for them: no beautiful open spaces, no theatres, no inspiring public buildings. Sometimes, they seem to have little in the way of social capital. And yet the people living there will often have a very powerful sense of their own place and community.” When under pressure, community solidarity is strengthened yet the living environment is a daily struggle. It is thus somewhat telling, but perhaps, in light of the last number of decades, unsurprising, that those attributes which are sought after in the competition do not include the role of high quality affordable accommodation in shaping place (this is something that may however be acknowledged by the judges in making their selection).
In summary, I find myself wondering to what extent the desire to select the best place to live is useful in the context of the current difficulties facing many people in Ireland, particularly given the manner in which such challenges have become played out within place. I should however acknowledge that the competition is perhaps a more light-hearted endeavour than I have so-far given it credit for and that I should perhaps also wait for the outcome to make a final judgement on it. Furthermore, there are, of course, also positives associated with The Irish Times competition. Most importantly perhaps, and as emphasised by the early entries, it serves to celebrate the attributes which contribute to our notions of ‘place’ and ‘home’ and illustrates the importance of such concepts in understanding how we relate to our built environment, whether that be in Youghal, Limerick City, Stoneybatter or Strandhill. To take one example, a comment on Edel Morgan’s blog about the competition by someone identifying themselves as Kate Q eloquently describes a particular time and place as follows: “When I was little (being a girl) a small funfair would arrive at our seaside village every summer. For us (children) it was quite wonderful – out of this world; very extraordinary. “Swinging boats” for small people – vivid colours – swirling images; some kind of higher, double-decker swing boats for bigger people, and a rifle range – there were probably more “things” but that is what I remember – as well as non-stop music, which when I think of it now, all the songs reeked of nostalgia, wafting up and out from the funfair all day until quite late…” At the end of the comment (which I have not given full justice to here), we are told it refers to Laytown Co. Meath in the 1950s. Such sentiments – and this is perhaps the most positive aspect of the Irish Times competition – illustrate the importance of bringing notions such as place back to the centre of debates about planning in both the urban and rural environments. Getting the balance right between regulation, place attachment, and transformation is one of the key challenges in shaping the future of the built environment in Ireland.
Philip Lawton
Ireland after NAMA 
April 3, 2012 at 11:14 am
I was pleased to see the Irish Times putting the notion of place centre stage in an assessment of local quality of life. From a sociological point of view, place attachment and sense of belonging have much to offer in terms of providing us with insights into how people interpret, respond to and ultimately generate a memory repertoire about their immediate environment. This issue was treated in some detail in our book (Suburban Affiliations: social relations in the Greater Dublin area- Corcoran, Gray and Peillon, 2010) and in a paper in Urban Studies (Vol 47 (12) November 2010 pp. 2537-2554). One of our points of departure in the suburban study was the idea that place matters, and that despite all of the changes that have taken place in everyday life, people still seek an attachment to the local, and to varying degrees find solace in such an attachment. Our evidence-from the study of Ratoath, Leixlip, Lucan-Esker and Mullingar- suggested that local attachments based on identification with place and personal social relations persist, bearing out the argument that much of human experience does not transcend but rather continues to be bound by time and space constraints. We found that an ideal- type conception of the suburbs is extremely pertinent to the way in which many Irish suburbanites think about and interpret suburban living. People like places that have a village at their heart, a “country feel”, a sense of connectedness to the past, and that resonate with collective memories. They aspire to raise children within the contours of that ‘country feel’ which underpins their notions of what a safe, community- oriented, secure environment should be. These beliefs, values and attitudes are largely expressed through a suburban ideology which relies heavily on symbolic markers. In reality, however, the conditions of existence in suburbia frequently fall short of the ideal-type. Yet this disjuncture between real and imagined suburbia remains opaque for many residents because of the powerful constitutive role that pastoral ideology plays in the construction of place attachment. The ideology allows for place to be viewed, at least to some extend, in the abstract. It is seen as exhibiting a range of characteristics that may be quite divorced in the suburban imaginary from concrete, practical considerations and from the real, material conditions of everyday suburban life. Hence, residents can be very positive about the place where they live and articulate strong feelings of place attachment, while nevertheless articulating a critique of local service and infrastructural deficits. Pastoralism promotes attachment to place and ameliorates the kind of ‘landscape amensia’ that Duffy associates with suburban landscapes where rapid changes have taken place (2003: 25).
For those minority of residents for whom there were no salient signifiers or markers of place, who viewed themselves as confined to ‘boxes in the burbs’, place attachment was much more tenuous. They tended to express high levels of disaffection about the locality, and their everyday experience of suburbia was pervaded by a sense of disaffiliation from the locality and the community. Attachment to place helps to embed people in their communities. Placelessness has the opposite effect, disembedding people and rendering them susceptible to anomie and alienation.
It is a bit too glib to conclude that all four suburbs are simply dormitory suburbs of Dublin. They all have tendencies to be so, but their different histories, traditions, infrastructures and community composition make for very different experiences. Our study demonstrated that the stereotypical view of suburbs as non-places is both too sweeping and too reductionist. Leixlip, Co.Kildare comes closest to effecting what Rowe terms: “a rural-urban synthesis that ultimately combines and fuses a pastoral perspective and a modern technical orientation” (1991, p.218). In Lucan-Esker, Co. Dublin this combination is also pertinent, but the pastoral is considerably more compromised than in Leixlip. Concrete has replaced rural signifiers, and a pastoral ideology has much less resonance. Ratoathians in Co. Meath adhere most strongly to a straightforward ideology of pastoralism. They view signifiers of nature and rurality as forming a particularly pleasant and tranquil backdrop, that represents an alternative to urbanism. Once again, unfettered development has resulted in much of this pastoral environment being eroded. Nevertheless, the majority of residents continue to subscribe to a pastoral ideology when describing their place. Village life and the village identity is reified, even as residents live, work and commute within a much wider urbanized grid. While Rowe has argued that continuity with the past can act as a bulwark against social change, this cannot keep the implications of social change in check indefinitely. Continuity with the past (in terms of the natural backdrop, local geography, collective memory and tradition) has become increasingly attenuated over time in Leixlip, Lucan-Esker and Ratoath resulting in a lack of fit between the imagined suburban place and its material reality.
A strong pastoral ideology informed the decisions of many of the early pioneers who moved to Leixlip. Over time, they have helped to develop a vibrant community that retains a rural ethos through local sports organisations and parish networks. At the same time, Leixlip has good transport links to Dublin and is no longer an outer suburb within the overall Dublin configuration. In Ratoath the pastoral is also given a special place, but largely grounded in an anti-urban bias. There is a sense in which people in Ratoath are fleeing the problems associated with modern urban life by re-locating on the city’s edge close to a rural reality.
The sense of attachment in Mullingar is predicated on the connections that exist between family members and the local nature of those networks. It is likely, however, that over time residents who have originated in Dublin may try to move back closer to the city, while those who hail from Mullingar will deepen their attachment to the locality. Finally, in Lucan-Esker, which falls firmly within the city’s urban grid, pastoral and anti-urban ideologies are much less salient. There is some evidence of an orientation toward symbolic village life, but estate living rather than village living emerges as a signficant motif. Lucan works as a base from which to access the city, and other conveniences. It is a place that encourages mobility rather than attachment. Indeed, many of the new estates in Lucan-Esker are deemed as ‘first-time buyer’ estates implying that the population will by definition be transitory. In that sense it may be much more a harbinger of the future of Ireland’s suburbia than Leixlip, Mullingar or Ratoath. If as we have argued a sense of place is important for social identity and cohesion, the absence of a sense of place- placelessness in the suburbs- presages higher levels of disaffiliation and anomie in the future.
Mary P. Corcoran
April 4, 2012 at 1:41 am
Hi Mary,
thanks for your comment. I am familiar with your Suburban Affiliations book and have drawn upon it for my own work. For me, as summarised in your comment, it provided a useful account of living within suburban communities in Ireland.
Philip
April 10, 2012 at 11:13 am
I agree with many of your comments but also have a nagging doubt about the IT approach to this in general. Surely everyone who enters an opinion to this competition must by nature be very passionate about were they live.
What about dissenting voices?
Sure – the person who nominates [enter name of town] thinks it is a great place with great facilities but is that representative of the community in general? There is a similar site http://www.likeplace.ie allows people to say why their hometown is NOT a good place to live, and has a list of the worst places to live in Ireland.
Of course, that is open to abuse too but at least contrariness is allowed. How does the IT aim to ensure the loudest & most persuasive cheerleader does not simply win the day?
April 12, 2012 at 8:39 am
Hi Declan.
That is a good point regarding dissenting voices. One of the reasons I wrote this post was that I feel the competition (I assume unintentionally on behalf of The Irish Times) might seem like a cruel blow to those who feel they are currenlty ‘stuck in place’ so to speak.
Regarding your second point, I am inclined to think that the competition will be based more on what the judges deem to be representative of the qualities of place rather than the loudest voice.
Philip
October 16, 2013 at 7:28 pm
Reblogged this on Philip Lawton.