This article is part of Ireland’s Changing Suburbs, an Irish Times series exploring our fast-growing new towns, changing older neighbourhoods, and shrinking rural landscapes.
In 1938, the US sociologist Lewis Mumford observed that suburbia “is the collective effort to live a private life”. Suburbs first emerged in the mid-19th century with the rise of a new professional and managerial class who did not want to live in the same building as they worked, a common practice at the time.
Suburbs were clean and family-oriented, the opposite of the dirty and unhealthy cities people were trying to flee. In the original suburbia women tended to stay at home while men commuted to work on newfangled public transport such as the “omnibus”.
The fate of suburbs has ebbed and flowed, from refuges for the wealthy to new homes for the impoverished. Now, once again, the suburbs are changing.
RM Block
Denser districts
Dublin city in particular has seen an intensification of housing in its established suburbs (think Glasnevin or Terenure or Stoneybatter) driven by the proliferation of apartment blocks.
In the past 10 years, 55,602 new apartments have been built in Ireland, 99 per cent of them in the city centres and suburbia. Some 42,904 have been in county Dublin, which is mostly suburbs. Nearly 20,000 of these have been built in Dublin city alone, where for the past three years 95 per cent of all new housing has been apartments. These are mostly for rent.
Residents of these suburbs have mixed views on how their localities are changing. Some welcome new blocks in the hope that they will bring down house prices and allow their children to live near them. It hasn’t happened yet. Others worry about the effect of thousands of new residents on their communities.
As the new developments are expensive to rent (circa €2,500 per month) only high earners can afford them, and so there are concerns about the impact of large numbers of well-paid people on local services and prices, including rents.
‘Hill 16’ neighbourhoods
More than 36,000 new scheme houses have been built in the counties surrounding Dublin since 2015. With fewer options to buy homes in cities, new communities have been established themselves. There is more than one housing estate in the Greater Dublin Area known locally as “Hill 16”, due to the large number of Dubliners living there.
These are mostly people who, unable to find somewhere suitable to live near where they come from or work, have had to search farther afield to buy a house and build a life.
As it usually requires two incomes to pay a mortgage, when children come, both parents must juggle childcare and employment. Having moved away from their home place, they find there is no family support for things such as picking children up after school, or babysitting. So grandparents leave their suburbs to move near their own children.
It is the reverse of the tradition of children moving back to where they grew up to look after their parents. Now, the grandparents are upping sticks from their city communities (their houses often bought by well-paid gentrifiers) to live in the new suburbia. The new areas often have little public space or facilities and are usually car-dependent.
Border burbs
Related to this is the rise of commuting and the commuter suburb. Ireland has the third-longest average commute time in the EU (Latvia has the longest) and nearly two-thirds of all commuting is done by car (82 per cent in rural areas).
One quarter of all commuters (including those going to school) leave before 7am, and commuters in Meath, Wicklow and Kildare have average commute times longer than one hour. Long commutes are not good for road safety, with tiredness a contributing factor in one-fifth of all car crash fatalities.
The suburbs from which the commuting is done generally have more housing, at lower prices, than those closer to the city.
Counties Meath, Wicklow and Kildare have been very attractive places for people to move to, especially with the advent of hybrid working. But with prices rising, city-style suburbia is extending even further to Athy, Tullamore, Carrickmacross, Gorey, Portlaoise and, thanks to a good train connection, Thurles. The 11 counties in the east of the country, from Cavan to Wexford, are in effect commuter suburbs for Dublin.
The largest house price increases this year have been seen in the Border region, most of which has no rail connection to Dublin. Here, you can get more for your buck in housing, but must pay for a car, or two, plus fuel, insurance and maintenance.
Suburbs are often portrayed as places where dreams go to die, bland and conformist, neither city nor country, monotonous and oppressive. Nobody chooses the shape and character of suburbs – they are imposed by policy and the motive for profit. Yet, for many they offer an escape from poor quality, unsatisfactory and unaffordable city centre housing, and space for residents to be themselves, far from the madding crowd.
Dr Lorcan Sirr is a senior lecturer in Technological University, Dublin
