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Take Back the City! Urban policy as if people mattered: A discussion document from the Dublin Region of the Workers’ Party

The city and socialism

The city occupies contradictory roles in modern Ireland. The opportunities it provides for big business and for job seekers alike mean it is the place where economic inequality is most pronounced; the IFSC, the crowing glory of Celtic Tiger neoliberalism, is packed against some of the most entrenched poverty in the state. Cities are also, however, the birthplaces of the most radical challenges to the elite status quo, and a tolerant refuge for those who don’t fit with society’s norms: in Ireland, so long a deeply conservative state, this is all the more the case.

Urban geographer Neil Smith has placed city building at the heart of late twentieth century capital accumulation strategies, saying “the present crisis is a crisis of city-building.” Urban development, and the speculation and financialisation of land and property that accompany it, have been central both to consolidating the neoliberal project over the past decades, and to its most recent downfall. Ireland’s dependence on the property market compounded this. Haunted Landscape, a 2010 report examining the contribution of the planning system to the property bubble concluded, “Planning should have acted as the counter-balance to the excessive pressures for development, working for the common good to produce sustainable patterns of residential and commercial property. Instead … policy formation, implementation and regulation were overtly shaped by the neoliberal policies adopted by the state, particularly in the period from 1997 onwards.”

For those seeking to articulate a socialist politics, then, the

development of Dublin and other cities is a key battleground. What is often deemed “progressive” urban planning is little more than genteel window dressing to prettify the continued commodification of each space we occupy. Instead, the challenge is to directly confront the structural factors that perpetuate this commodification, and offer a vision of the city that is public and inclusive.

Nonetheless it is equally important that the limits of what decent urban planning can achieve also be recognised. ‘Urban planning’ was too often in Dublin seen as a panacea for social decay, as the problem and solution to entrenched poverty and exclusion. This has resulted in the failed ‘regeneration’ projects we know too well in Dublin. Bricks and mortar do not cause exclusion, and cannot solve it. Much of what is written here, then, must be accompanied by a decent and equitable economic policy, to have its desired impact.

‘Developer-led’ planning in Dublin since 1963

In Ireland, urban planning has been consistently dominated by neoliberal economic concerns, most predominantly those of property owners and developers. The 1963 Local Government (Urban Planning and Development) Act set out the first government strategy on urban planning. Responding to concerns that the Act would impinge on individual property rights, Minister Neil Blaney emphasised that, under the act, “property values must be preserved and, wherever possible, enhanced.” The foundations of Irish urban planning, then, were from the outset built not around the public good, but private ownership.

The fundamental impact of this ‘developer-led’ model has been that, where there are profits to be made, development has happened regardless of appropriateness, and where there are not profits to be made, nothing has happened regardless of need. Ultimately, the state’s reliance on private speculators for investment means all cards are in the hands of developers. An excellent example of this is the social housing quotas demanded of private developers; despite legislation, these quotas were rarely filled and, being so reliant on developer-led funding, the state has little means to effectively ensure their fulfillment.

Now, in post-boom Dublin, there is apparent political consensus that developer-led urban planning cannot return, but there are few signs that much has changed. The recently announced Office of Planning Regulation has been criticised by An Taisce as falling well short of what was recommended in the Mahon report. Calls for an investigation into how the planning system contributed to the property bubble have not been heeded.

Meanwhile, NAMA, the largest property and land owner in the state, continues to pursue its primary objective of recouping the maximum amount of state investment possible, and has taken the route of encouraging international investors to achieve this aim. It depends for its success on a continuation of the “developer-led” model of planning, and any attempts to reform planning in ways that make courting international property investors more challenging are likely to be met with intense resistance. The body’s influence was already seen

in the sway it held in preventing any change to the damaging Irish system of upward-only rent reviews.

Some proposals on how urban policy can be improved in Dublin are described below.

solutions

1. Introduce measures to control the value of land

Controlling the value of land is the cornerstone of enabling decent, equitable urban planning, and there is substantial evidence that land value is the most critical determinant to what type of development does or does not happen. For developers, land has a speculative value as an asset that allows borrowing, bringing a vested interest in seeing its value increase, regardless of whether or not it is developed. Currently, this is facilitated by the fact that the value of land accrues to a developer/owner even when left idle, owing to how it is zoned or the infrastructure developed around it (often with public money).

As a commodity in fixed supply, however, it is inappropriate to apply supply and demand assumptions to land. Instead, it is critical that some form of policy to control the value of land be enacted. Moreover, it is a nonsense to suggest the owner of one plot of land should alone benefit from its increased value. It is the spectrum of services, infrastructure and other externalities that determine any increase in value, none of which result from a landowner’s actions.

A site value tax, a recurring annual tax on the value of a site excluding the value of any improvements or properties,

might be considered as one measure to proactively control the price of land.

2. reform local government

Tellingly, Ireland ranks amongst the highest countries in terms of numbers of national politicians per capita, but much further down the scale of local politicians per capita.

A city organized on democratic lines would hold much power, in the Irish scenario potentially allowing for the implementation of policy proposals more radical than could be passed nationally. Currently, the city of Dublin divided into four local councils, and authority in each lies largely with unelected chief executives (formerly city managers). In 2014, for example, despite the almost unanimous vote by all elected councillors on Dublin City Council, the chief executive chose to proceed with a controversial waste-to-energy incinerator project. A directly elected mayor, replacing unelected chief executives, and an expansion in the functions of local councillors, is essential to breathing democratic accountability back into urban planning.

Excessive economic centralization is regularly cited in Ireland as the root cause of local government’s absence of power. The city’s ability to collect revenue are limited to raising or reducing commercial rates and housing rents, which in turn means local government has little ability to think strategically about economic investment. Ability to raise revenues at a local level could be used to enable participatory budgeting activities; in Chicago, citizen direction regarding where policing budgets should be spent was credited for significant reductions in crime

levels. Such civic participation measures additional build a (rightful) sense of ownership over a city, enhancing the drive and demand for a democratically accountable planning system.

A caveat ought to be that, whilst decentralization in the Irish context appears necessary to achieving progressive urban aims, it should not be confused with localism, which would risk reinforcing inequalities by not allowing planned redistribution.

3. keep Dublin public

Private competition for land Dublin has resulted in gentrification, with entire areas of the city becoming unaffordable to many. The use of Special Development Zones in places such as the docklands, Adamstown and Cherrywood is of particular concern, effectively removing standard planning and consultation practice in order to better facilitate international investment by providing “predictable” planning situations. The management and maintenance of entire tracts of land in such instances are transferred to private companies. David Harvey has spoken about in increasing number of private spaces of consumption – from private apartment blocks, parks, footpaths, play spaces – as being central to capitalist urbanization, in that it facilitates the absorption of surplus value.

Municipalisation of service provision and infrastructure would have the advantage both of allowing for local government investment and employment creation, and of maximizing the amount of services and amenities which are accessible and affordable to the entire population.

The priority consistently granted to private property rights in Ireland has also contributed to an epidemic of dereliction and vacancy in Ireland. The use of compulsory purchase orders where dereliction and vacancy impinge on the public good should be considered, alongside legislation similar to that in place in the Netherlands which limits the property rights of those who leave a premises vacant after a defined period of time.

4. Use urban policy to maximize inclusion

‘Plan-led’ (as opposed to Dublin’s ‘developer-led) urban policy is essential to achieving a socio-economic mix across the city which can maximize inclusion. Only through plan-led development can an adequate balance of varying types of housing be provided in the one community with the services which the community needs to avail of – childcare, schools, green spaces, shops, entertainment, meeting places. Since housing and retail will always provide a greater return on investment, only a more active planning system can guard against this. Moreover, achieving an adequate social mix requires actively mixing varying housing types. Neoliberal housing and urban policy is often based on the assumption of the perfect family. An inclusive model should plan services in a way which recognizes diversity and the need for public support for diverse needs; planning for the types of services and housing required by old people, disabled people etc.

Enhancing inclusion would also require significant improvements to how communities input into planning processes, which currently are tokenistic and bound within the need to identify a private investor in any proposed project.

5. Using urban policy to maximize environmental sustainability

In Dublin four proposals to enhance the environmental sustainability of the city merit particular attention. These are; • The establishment of a

municipal waste management co-operative, with responsibility for both waste disposal and environmental education, to tackle illegal dumping;

• A public transport system

which moves Dublin away from the limited “city to suburb” it currently operates. The city of Curitiba in Brazil is cited as a positive example;

• Effective measures to tackle flooding in the city – including enhanced public works, and legislation to curb exploitation by insurance companies of victims of flooding;

• The creative use of vacant space to increase green space in the city;

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Further reading

Rob Kitchin, Justin Gleeson, Karen Keaveney & Cian O’Callaghan (2010: National Institute for Regional & Spatial Analysis / www.nuim.ie/nirsa)A Haunted Landscape: Housing and Ghost Estates in Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland

Andrew McLaran & Sinead Kelly (eds.) (2014) Neoliberal Urban Policy and the Transformation of the City: Reshaping Dublin

Michael Collins (2011: NERI) Designing a Site Value Tax for Ireland