Niamh Moore-Cherry

University College Dublin | UCD · School of Geography

Recent planning frameworks and policies have formally recognised the significance of the urban in contemporary Ireland and put in place the groundwork to accommodate, facilitate, and accelerate ‘metropolitanisation.’ If implemented, this new strategic positioning can move Ireland in the direction of more balanced development. However, the new spati...

Community Foundation together with The Sunflower Charitable Foundation commissioned the UCD School of Geography to undertake a scoping study to investigate how philanthropic Place Based Giving (PBG) could potentially add value to existing sustainability/climate initiatives or galvanise climate action at county level in Ireland. Place Based Giving (...

While central to the origins, evolution and provisioning of cities, traditional markets are under threat globally as urban renewal supporting particular forms of economic development comes centre-stage. Design-led placemaking and built heritage policy have become tools of local, regional and national development, and urban heritage has become econo...

The dynamics and politics of metropolitanization in Ireland have received limited attention, attributed in part to Ireland’s historic culturally embedded urban–rural divide. The publication of the National Planning Framework (2018) demonstrates an effort by the Irish government to centre spatial thinking on Ireland’s five major cities. However, des...

Geographers have a responsibility to address the major challenges of our time by engaging with and shaping policy. The paper introduces three ways this might be achieved – through critical engagement with policy; through occupying liminal spaces that foster agenda setting; and through empowering others to shape policy-from-below. Drawing on a range...

Recent research has identified the potential of the metropolitan scale, and indeed metropolitan bodies, in achieving greater coordination and more effective land-use management. In this paper, we have undertaken a systematic scoping review of the English-language literature (2014–2019) on metropolitanisation and metropolitan governance, with a view...

This collection critiques the rhetoric of ‘smart cities’. It seeks to engender a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies...

Equality in the city is an aspiration. Cities have never been equal, equitable or fair. Now, optimum efficiency is celebrated as progress, and reconfigurations of urban spaces are focused on the clean lines of punctual service delivery. Smart cites are controlled cities, where data is the fuel that pumps through the heart. The common denominator in...

Housing-related urban development has become a core plank of China’s economic policy since the mid-1990s. Reports of resistance to displacement and resettlement associated with urban restructuring, once widespread, have dissipated since the early-2010s. Using the framework of governmentality and through qualitative empirical fieldwork in the histor...

Increasing emphasis in recent years has been placed on how faculty, staff and students in higher education can be drawn into more collaborative learning relationships through partnership working. The significant challenges in terms of negotiating shifting roles and responsibilities have been well documented. Less attention has been paid to the affe...

Mapping Green Dublin is a transdisciplinary, collaborative action research project led by University College Dublin’s School of Geography in collaboration with arts organisation Common Ground, artist Seoidín O’Sullivan, and event facilitators Connect the Dots. It took place in an inner-city neighbourhood of Dublin 8 between 2019 and 2020 and was fu...

Traditional markets represent vital spaces of opportunity for livelihood-building, intercultural contact and for developing familiarity with the city. Yet, worldwide, markets are under pressure due to redevelopment agendas driven by neoliberalised forms of urban governance. Although precarious sites of occupation and employment, markets still maint...

This chapter discusses the experiences of lockdown on inner city Dublin, which are contextually dependent, and rely on a normative interpretation of the home as a safe, comfortable space. It emphasizes that already-disadvantaged communities were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, compounding their vulnerabilities. It also highlig...

‘All the bloody student accommodation in Dublin 8, I don't think they have one park, you know, they haven't given back, they’ve put up all these buildings but they haven't given back to the community in terms of space.’ (Social Service provider for Fatima Groups United, personal interview, July 9, 2020) Introduction Since its initial appearance in...

The concentration of economic growth into large metropolises is widely documented across Europe. Yet, planning of this growth at the strategic metropolitan scale shows significant variation. This paper documents the evolution of Opportunity Areas within Greater London. Through statistical and documentary analysis, and participant observation, we re...

Over the last three decades, state intervention through urban regeneration has focused on ‘fixing’ perceived social and spatial vulnerabilities within particular neighbourhoods, communities or city spaces but has often generated new urban crises. Previous research examining regeneration over significant periods of time in the UK and Ireland, sugges...

Across Europe, economic development is increasingly focused on large city regions intensifying processes of metropolitanization. However, the trajectories and experience of these processes are context dependent, shaped by the broad political-economic context and public policy frameworks. Drawing on case studies of Warsaw (Poland) and Dublin (Irelan...

Background: Our planet is currently experiencing the largest wave of urban growth in history, with 55% of the world’s population (4.2 billion people) currently living in urban areas, a figure set to rise to 70% by 2050. Primary care is the first point of treatment for most mental health disorders. Since the urban environment and health are intrinsi...

Through an empirical focus on Metropolitan Boston, this paper examines the effects of territorial politics and fragmented metropolitan governance on an urban data ecosystem and endeavours to enact a smart city-region. The fragmented governance of Metro Boston reduces scales of economy and produces interjurisdictional data incompatibilities that lim...

The growing concentration of production and population in capital cities in Europe is accompanied by metropolitan governance reform with two policy objectives in mind. First, capital cities are promoted as 'national champions' in the context of global territorial competition. Second, metropolitan regions are characterised by recurrent crises of 'go...

Whether urban redevelopment is considered a “success” or “failure” is dependent on the temporal framings that we privilege. Until relatively recently, geographers have neglected the temporal politics that underpin urban redevelopment despite space-time being a crucial aspect framing the urban experience under capitalism. In this paper we argue for...

In less than 20 years the housing system in China has been transformed from one based predominantly on the public provision of housing to a market-based system, to the extent that more than 80% of households in urban China are homeowners. The sheer scale of this change, compressed into such a short time, is impressive. However, the move to a commod...

The austerity that followed the recent economic and financial crisis has led to impassioned debates across the social sciences and the public at large. Although Ireland was not its only victim, the depth of the interacting economic, banking and budgetary crises has meant that the level of public interest has been especially intense. Among the hotly...

Since the 1980s, city governments have increasingly focused on the adaptive reuse of brownfield sites to address urban dereliction through top-down policy guidance and funding initiatives. Since the onset of the economic and banking crisis in 2008, this approach has become more difficult and one response has been the encouragement of 'meanwhile use...

This commentary explores the spatialities, and in particular, the urban legacies, of the 1916 Rising from the perspectives of 1916 and 2016. The focus is on Dublin’s north inner city and especially O’Connell (formerly Sackville) Street and the adjacent thoroughfares – the epicentre of the 1916 Rising. This commentary is presented as three short pap...

This commentary explores the spatialities, and in particular the urban legacies, of the 1916 Rising from the perspectives of 1916 and 2016. The focus is Dublin’s north inner city and especially O’Connell (formerly Sackville) Street and the adjacent thoroughfares – the epicentre of the 1916 Rising. This commentary is presented as three short papers:...

Niamh Moore-Cherry and John Tomaney look at planning issues emerging from the tensions between Dublin’s attempts to become a city of global significance and the intense localism that shapes the political environment

Moore Street market in Dublin comprises the city's oldest food market. However, the area is also of significance to Ireland's national history being deeply embedded in historical narratives of the 1916 Rising. Since 1998, the future of this street has been subject to speculation and recently Dublin City Council have announced plans to redesign the...

Temporary land uses have become the focus of much debate within academic and policy circles in recent years. Although the international literature contains numerous case studies of temporary interventions, little attention has been paid to the dynamics of the interactions among different stakeholders. This paper reports on a stakeholder workshop th...

Partnership is currently the focus of much work within higher education. Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. HEA: York; Higher Education Academy (2014). Framework for partnership in learning and teaching. Author. Retrieved from www.heacademy.ac.uk/students-as-partners; Engaging students...

Against a backdrop of rising interest in students becoming partners in learning and teaching in higher education, this paper begins by exploring the relationships between student engagement, co-creation and student–staff partnership before providing a typology of the roles students can assume in working collaboratively with staff. Acknowledging tha...

The role of creative workers in stimulating urban growth and employment has been the subject of intense recent discussions. This chapter reviews the lineage of the debate, illustrating that although there is no doubt that the cultural creative sector is an increasing part of the new urban economy, the wider concept of what creativity constitutes, h...

The value of mixed-methods research has recently re-gained impetus among geographers interested in the production of knowledge (Elwood, 2010). Key conversations have centred on efforts to blend traditionally viewed quantitative tools such as GIS with more qualitative practices and data. While discussions in qualitative GIS have demonstrated the val...

One hundred years ago, a complete census of Ireland was taken as part of a larger census of the UK. The information gathered included details on every person compiled by household and by house address. This data included the name, sex, age, religion, place of birth and relationship to others in the household. As it transpired, this was the last cen...

This paper charts out the relationship between China " s neoliberal urban transformation and grassroots resistance by looking at the ongoing urban renewal project in the historical inner city of Nanjing. The theoretical departure point of this paper rests on critically interpreting outcomes of urban renewal as " speculative urbanism " and " accumul...

Book review: Creating child-friendly cities: Reinstating kids in the city, edited by Brendan Gleeson and Neil Sipe, Oxford, Routledge, 2006, 176pp., £105.00 (hardback), ISBN 9780415391603, 2012, £27.99 (paperback) 978-0-415-64897-4

Ten years ago, in the 60th anniversary edition of Irish Geography, Rob Kitchin wrote a short commentary reflecting on the major transitions that geography in Ireland (hereafter, Irish geography) had gone through since 2000. His article, together with the range of responses written by a number of academics from across the island, published in Vol 37...

One hundred years ago, a complete census of Ireland was taken as part of a larger census of the UK. The information gathered included details on every person compiled by household and by house address. This data included the name, sex, age, religion, place of birth and relationship to others in the household. As it transpired, this was the last cen...

One hundred years ago, a complete census of Ireland was taken as part of a larger census of the UK. The information gathered included details on every person compiled by household and by house address. This data included the name, sex, age, religion, place of birth and relationship to others in the household. As it transpired, this was the last cen...

This paper reports on an Irish study examining first year students’ recollections of their concerns, motivations, level of preparedness and perceived skills on entry to university. The study aims to investigate and understand the implications of the attitudes of first year students as they make the transition to university. It also explores student...

Learning is a developmental journey, and geography curriculum plays a key role in supporting student progression. In this article, we argue that the concept of ‘self-authorship’ is a useful guiding principle in supporting curriculum revision and reform. A series of international case studies illustrate how self-authorship can be enacted in differen...

Internationally, recognition is growing that the transition between second and third level education is raising a number of challenges for both students and educators. As class sizes grow, resources become more constrained and the expectations of the 'ipod generation' are transferred to the educational environment, the context of university teachin...

Internationally, recognition is growing that the transition between post-primary and higher education is raising a number of challenges for both students and educators. Simultaneously with growing class sizes, resources have become more constrained and there is a new set of expectations from the “net generation” (Mohanna, 2007, p. 211) The use of e...

Globalisation – political, economic or cultural - is controlled from, but is simultaneouslyshaping, urban places. Much of the recent research on globalisation and urban transformationhas focused on the emergence of an international urban system. Within this system, therole and place of Dublin has been highly contested. This is due in part to the un...

Over the last two decades, economic restructuring has re-shaped both society and space, resulting in changes to urban form and an explosion in the number of brownfield sites. Increased socio-economic exclusion and the emergence of dualisms has become characteristic of the most recent period of industrialisation and has many policy implications for...

Irish planning legislation lias traditionally emphasised control al the expense of development. In response to widespread dereliction spreading across the city in the early 1980s. a shift in policy direction became imperative. The Urban Renewal Act. introduced in l986. marked a new departure in Irish planning practice signalling a more pro-active a...