Eoin O’Mahony and Stephen Rigney on Counter-Cartographies of the City in Dublin

Video via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfFOXCIwupY

Description

"In the aftermath of the Celtic tiger, the contradictions of debt-fuelled property speculation as a means of economic growth are materialised in the abundance of empty buildings and vacant lots in Dublin’s north inner city. Ironically, this part of the city has a shortage of community spaces and faces an emerging housing crisis, at a time when so many spaces lie idle and closed off from use by virtue of their designation as private property. This begs the question, whose city is this?

Development plans and maps suggest a city of privately owned places connected by thin and vulnerable veins of public space. But Dublin can also be mapped in a way that represents alternative relations across space, such as the city as a place of occupations, of needs and of community. Used this way, maps, which so often are used to justify the appropriation of collective labour by private capital, offer a tool to reimagine Dublin as something more than terrain for property investors." (http://provisionaluniversity.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/counter-cartographies-of-the-city-video-now-available/)