Centralities in Metamorphosis

Abstract

Dublin’s urban development is increasingly challenged by uneven liveability, spatial inequality, and the persistent over-reliance on a dominant city centre. Despite sustained population growth and extensive suburban expansion, many areas beyond the historic core continue to lack well-functioning peripheral centralities capable of supporting everyday life through access to services, employment, public space, and civic infrastructure. Liveability, understood as the quality of the relationship between people and their living environment, has a strong spatial and social dimension and is closely tied to neighbourhood structure and urban performance (van Dorst, 2012). The underperformance of Dublin’s peripheral centralities places growing pressure on the city centre and highlights structural weaknesses in the city’s planning and governance framework.

While suburbanisation in Dublin began in the nineteenth century with the outward movement of affluent populations beyond Georgian Dublin, these early spatial patterns were later significantly reinforced and expanded through state-led housing provision, infrastructure investment, and planning policy. Through a diffusion–coalescence process, suburban growth spread outward before gradually consolidating into the metropolitan region, shaping the spatial structure of the city over time (Dietzel et al., 2005). However, this growth occurred largely without a coordinated strategy for the development of robust and liveable centralities. As a result, many peripheral centres exist in form but do not adequately function or perform in meeting high standards of liveability, reflecting broader conflicts between activity, regulation, and everyday life (Roberts & Turner, 2005).

Despite long-standing planning concepts that promote local centres, walkability, and mixed-use development, such as the urban village model, these ideas have often remained inconsistently applied or idealised, rather than embedded within a coherent metropolitan strategy (Biddulph et al., 2002). Literature on peripheral centralities has highlighted the historical and contemporary importance of suburban centres as key sites of urbanity, governance, and socio-spatial performance, challenging city-centric planning approaches and the representation of space (Phelps, Keil & Maginn, 2025) (Lefebvre, 1991). Nevertheless, the relationship between suburban expansion, fragmented governance, and liveability outcomes in contemporary challenges of liveability and spatial equity. The aim of the project is to develop a strategic framework plan that integrates spatial and policy design to strengthen peripheral centralities and support a more liveable, coordinated, and polycentric Dublin metropolitan area. Dublin remains insufficiently examined as a strategic planning issue.

This thesis addresses this gap by examining the evolution of suburbanisation and planning governance in Dublin, linking historical development patterns to contemporary challenges of liveability and spatial equity. The aim of the project is to develop a strategic framework plan that integrates spatial and policy design to strengthen peripheral centralities and support a more liveable, coordinated, and polycentric Dublin metropolitan area.