Urban resilience: the regeneration of the Dublin Docklands

Abstract

Resilience, and more specifically ‘urban resilience’, is a ‘fuzzy’ concept, which has gained increasing public, political and academic interest over the past two decades; particularly in the context of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. This paper adopts an understanding of resilience as the ability of cities to change, adapt and, crucially, transform in response to stresses and strains. Yet how have cities – and urban planning – responded to the recent economic crisis; and how can one examine this in practice? This paper investigates the case of Dublin, Ireland. In particular, it utilises the resilience concept to explore the regeneration of the Dublin Docklands between, and following, two ‘crises’ periods – the economic crises of the 1980s and the late 2000s, respectively. At the same time, the paper is concerned with the related and parallel evolution of Irish urban planning during the same period; and the ‘adaptive capacity’ of the planning system in responding to or mediating the recent, and greatest, economic crisis in the country's history.