After 30 years of relative success, is Dublin city going backwards again?

In 1992, I moved into a flat on Parliament Street in Dublin city centre. Back then, the four residents of the refurbished 18th-century building were the only people living on the street.

Yes, you read that right. Bar one small newsagent down towards the Liffey, the old Parliament Inn (one of the few gay bars in the city) and what was Read’s Cutlers, Parliament Street was a residential and commercial wasteland, enlivened only by the roar of buses sweeping up from the quays. The contrast with today’s bustling boulevard couldn’t be more stark.

Although I didn’t realise it then, 1992 marked the low point in the urban population of Dublin city. In the three decades to 1991, the inner city saw its population cut in half. A massive change in the nature and structure of employment was a major factor. Up to the 1960s, the city was home to small industrial companies, which closed down or relocated to such an extent that the total area of industrial floor space in the inner city declined by 550,000sq m, or 30 per cent between 1966 and 1974.

Without jobs, the inner city shrank. Nobody wanted to live there. The inner city was a vision of urban desolation. According to a report commissioned by the Dublin Inner City Partnership: “The deterioration of the physical environment was exacerbated by the blight caused by long-term roads proposals and by inadequate conservation policies or rehabilitation incentives. Derelict sites stood like open wounds in the urban fabric, once-grand Georgian houses crumbled: the city was dying visibly on its feet.”

All that has changed in the past three decades. Dublin city has transformed itself, aided by urban renewal development incentives. The population between the canals began to increase and the place became increasingly vibrant for locals, tourists and immigrants, changing the essence and feel of the city.

Unfortunately, the atmosphere is changing. Time and again, I hear people, young and old, say “I don’t go into town any more”. Something has shifted in recent months and this could be the beginning of an extremely negative urban trend. A combination of high rents, crime, a lack of venues, far too many commercial offices, a lack of residential developments and, of course, exorbitant prices are slowly throttling the city. After 30 years of relative success, are we going backwards again?

The data isn’t reassuring. Dublin’s hospitality sector experienced a 2.5 per cent decline in entertainment spending at hotels, bars and restaurants during the first quarter of 2024 – the most significant contraction since the tail-end of the pandemic in 2021. Tourists are still coming, but locals are not. Since the riots last year, it’s clear that Dublin has an image problem, if not a full-blown safety one.

A new survey by Amárach Research (for the Irish Daily Mail) found that more than half of Dubliners are going into town less due to safety concerns and 40 per cent of people polled across the country have either limited or entirely cut out visits. Eighty-two per cent of those who are reluctant to visit say they’ve stopped shopping in the city, while 60 per cent say they’ve stopped eating out. Retailers in town saw a 90 per cent drop in “Black Friday” sales compared with last year, due to the riots.

According to figures from the Licensed Vintners Association, 96 per cent of pub owners are worried about the current level of policing on the streets, with customers concerned about their safety. Almost half of all Dublin publicans said their customers have expressed security concerns about being on the city streets in the past year. A poll carried out by Fianna Fáil reveals more than 70 per cent have witnessed drug-dealing in public, with 65 per cent having personally seen antisocial behaviour in the city centre. Almost 1,500 people in Dublin were interviewed for the survey, which found that 90 per cent of those interviewed believed antisocial behaviour in the city had become worse over the past 10 years.

Cities are fragile ecosystems that can go into decline rapidly. Dublin is no exception. San Francisco, until very recently one of the leading cities in the USA, exemplifies the phenomenon called the “doughnut effect”, whereby a once vibrant, bustling centre becomes hollowed out, leaving behind an empty core surrounded by thriving outskirts. This trend, intensified by high rents and prices, pushes people and businesses out of city centres – and it happens quickly.

Since the pandemic, office occupancy rates in downtown San Francisco have plummeted to below 50 per cent, drastically reducing the city’s tax revenue and exacerbating issues such as homelessness and public service funding shortages. This decline has created a self-reinforcing urban doom loop as reducing economic activity leads to budget cuts for essential services, which in turn makes the city centre less attractive for businesses and residents and a downward spiral takes hold. Large parts of once beautiful San Francisco are today visions of a dystopian metropolitan nightmare. This could already be happening in Dublin.

Apart from the feeling of insecurity, one of the most accurate financial leading indicators of the “doughnut effect” is office occupancy and vacancy because commercial development is characterised by cyclical booms and busts that happen quickly. Take a walk around the city and it is abundantly clear that Dublin’s commercial property market is in the midst of a downturn. Office blocks lie empty, vacancies are on the rise, the incessant investment and building has stalled. Money is walking away and once money moves, people do too.

As well as a daytime commercial slump, the nighttime economy in Dublin is frankly awful. Younger people, who still want to go into town for the craic, lament the lack of venues and clubs and any alternatives to the traditional skinful of pints. A country with a similar sized economy to us, New Zealand, estimates its core nighttime economy is worth almost $10bn (€5.6 billion) in economic activity and supported more than 180,000 jobs – 7 per cent of total employment. By contrast, in Ireland the pubs and nightclubs industry only pulls in €2.6 billion in revenue (as of 2023) and employs 43,316 people.

These various challenges can be summed up by one simple fact: there are not enough people living between the canals, and the flight of people and money out of the city reflects this. Residents, not visitors, make a city. The city should set an inner city population target and, around this, other things flow: planning, transport, social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and sports/entertainment facilities. The ratio of residential to office developments needs to be flipped in favour of homes – by legislation. And yes, blunt instruments that favour residents over tourists are essential, which means severely limiting Airbnb and very short-term letting.

Healthy cities are diverse cities where residents live, work and play. The renowned American urbanist Jane Jacobs argued that successful cities are underpinned by living streets, characterised by mixed-use development, integrating residential, commercial and cultural spaces. People on streets where they live also police those same streets while mixed-use zones help the city roll with the punches, adapting to changing lifestyles, revitalising the inner city, creating a dynamic and safe urban atmosphere.

There is no time to waste. That feeling that many have is real; the city is being hollowed out, slowly, but urban decay happens like Hemingway’s famous description of how bankruptcy happens – “gradually, then suddenly”. Dublin transformed itself in the past 30 years, it now needs a 30-year plan to make sure it continues to develop rather than stagnate.