The study of urban form in Ireland

Abstract

Urban form is studied in a variety of disciplines in Ireland, but it has not, until recently, been central to urban studies. Histories of individual towns have usually been preoccupied with political, socio-economic and cultural issues. Archaeological excavations have made an important contribution to the reconstruction of Viking and Anglo-Norman towns. Map evidence is good for early-modern plantation towns. The Irish historic towns atlas provides detailed cartographic and topographical information for a growing number of towns within a chronological and thematic framework. Urban form is often considered as a container for socio-economic processes or as a marker in the search for cultural identity. Architectural studies have focused by and large on buildings of importance. While no Irish scholar has in a strict sense adopted Conzen’s method of town-plan analysis, there is evidence for the emergence of a new focus on the fabric of the urban area rather than on the special event represented by the particular building. The ‘cultural turn’ in the social sciences has favoured discussions on town plans as ideological constructs and on the importance of urban space for civic society. There appears to be an increasingly strong morphological perspective in urban studies which is likely to be a reaction to the loss of historical fabric in the context of large-scale urban renewal schemes.