I still dream of a home in the concrete jungle
IN AN interview with Virgin Media One, Dublin’s Lord Mayor Hazel Chu likened the city to an “empty donut”. “There’s a hole in the centre and everything has gone to the periphery.” But Dublin isn’t dead, and neither are Ireland’s other cities and towns. Yes, for a third time in 10 months, our big urban centres have fallen silent. Dublin is often the epicentre of Ireland’s coronavirus crisis, wracking up high numbers of cases every week. And you’ve probably seen enough footage of foxes roaming Suffolk Street that it might seem like the city has been deserted by humans.
A recent Government report on remote working says 94pc of people surveyed last October want to work remotely after the crisis. The report acknowledges a rise in remote working could fundamentally change the nature of where, how, when and why people work and eventually empty out our towns and cities.
Ninety-four per cent is a lot of people who claim they are going to move to the country soon – mostly the middle classes who can choose to work from home and who can afford homes with gardens in the suburbs or countryside. This will slowly drive house prices up outside the capital, and so according to CSO figures in Dublin, residential property prices saw a decline of 0.9pc in the last year to November, while property prices outside Dublin were 1.2pc higher.
Depending on who you listen to, chain stores and office blocks are predicted to be our newest ghost estates. All the shiny co-living spaces will struggle to find tenants because the millennials have moved home and will never be back in town. Bars and restaurants won’t be back to normal for months, maybe years, and some will never reopen again.
Crises like this pandemic always lead to a reassessment. And in reality we needed a reassessment because all our so-called ‘economic recovery’ had achieved was rising homelessness, high living costs and rents, and a squeezing of those who have the least.
Last summer’s Cost of Living report showed Dublin was in the top 100 list of the most expensive places to live in the world at number 87. This placed the city above all cities in the UK and other notoriously expensive places like Vancouver as wages remained stagnant and the gig economy eradicated any stability from our working lives.
Even before the arrival of Covid-19, online shopping had been taking over from the traditional high street. We were always going to have to replace the big stores with something else. But there’s now a strong argument to be made that in the post-pandemic world, our towns and cities will emerge livelier and more liveable than they were before as niches and pop-ups, markets and street furniture fill the gaps left by old-fashioned shops and international coffee chains.
This pandemic has made me want to do a lot of things – like go to a rave and finally put my Russian degree to some use by reading The Idiot – but not one of them has been to leave Dublin. For a start, if I wanted a four bed and a garden and a car, I wouldn’t be raising two children in the north inner city.
When I first moved to Dublin as a young student, I was punch-drunk on how hectic and energetic it was, how many people were around, and how near I was to art galleries, spoken word nights and theatres. Back then I never had enough money to enjoy the city to its fullest but I knew that I’d spend the rest of my life making up for that.
Sure, I’m a bit jealous of your sprawling self-build in south Tipperary and mortgage that costs less than a city creche, but you have all those things without views of the Guinness factory on your morning run and a vegan fish restaurant that delivers straight to your door. And yes, I know a lot of those fleeing in search of more space have children, but I want to raise mine in the buzz and bustle of the city.
I don’t even miss the green spaces because not everyone who lives in the countryside often actually experiences the countryside. Growing up in Kerry, most people drove everywhere and rarely ventured outdoors in the winter. Meanwhile in Dublin, the Croppies’ Acre is always thronged, people are cycling by the canals and soaking up every scrap of nature they can.
We have to see what happens. But I’d like to think that when everything settles we will be left with towns and cities where the rents have come down and where we can have small businesses gaining access to space they couldn’t have before because the rents were much, much too high. And where we can walk down streets that team with diversity and life.
Either way, those of us who really value city living aren’t going anywhere until our cities shake themselves off and come back to life in all their shimmering vigour. As US author Fran Lebowitz says in her life-affirming new Netflix doc series Pretend It’s a City: “The concrete jungle is still where dreams are made of.”
In postpandemic world, our towns and cities will emerge livelier and more liveable than before