Two centuries ago, Dublin was the second city of the British empire but over the course of the 19th century it rapidly lost this status to growing industrial centres like Manchester and Birmingham.
Dublin, once it ceased to be the administrative capital after 1800, did not have a major industrial base to drive growth. Instead, Belfast became the major Irish industrial success from the start of the 19th century. In 1800 it was about the same size as Drogheda or Kilkenny, but the success of its shipbuilding and linen industries saw it grow rapidly to become the pre-eminent industrial city on the island.
Over the second half of the 19th century, census data showed Dublin’s population remained broadly static. However, the city began to grow once more from the turn of the 20th century, especially after it regained its capital city status from 1922.
Dublin’s economy has undergone significant change. From its historic reliance on industries such as biscuits and brewing, the city’s economy today is built on services, with externally traded sectors like financial services and computer services playing a leading role. These sectors predominantly employ skilled workers with high levels of education and varied experience.
Dublin has a diverse employment base, leaving it less vulnerable than cities such as Detroit to the decline of a single sector.
Looking across the successful economies of the modern world, the presence of substantial vibrant cities is at the heart of modern economic development – scale matters. Larger cities can provide a range of services for businesses, as well as varied cultural and social attractions for citizens, features that are not present in smaller centres.
Export enterprises
Dublin, while much smaller than leading European cities is still large enough to attract major export enterprises and to draw Irish emigrants home, as well as skilled workers with no Irish associations.
In Noah’s ark, the animals came two by two. So too, with a mobile educated population: people tend to come in pairs, with both partners seeking employment suitable to their qualifications. Cities are a more attractive employment destination for couples, who are more likely to each get a job than in a smaller town, where opportunities may be more limited.
In the days where women were expected to stay home and mind the family, towns that offered job opportunities to a single breadwinner could do well. Today, the cities that will thrive offer a breadth of employment opportunities to each one of a couple.
A senior Australian politician once asked me a question for which I had no ready answer. “What role in the Irish economic success story did Irish music play?”
While at first sight this may seem irrelevant, it does in fact touch on something of significance. In today's world, the workforce is highly mobile, well-educated and seeks a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Our young population has worked abroad in many attractive locations and they seek a similarly diverse cultural and social life if they are to return to Ireland.
Access to cultural and social activities is, if anything, even more important to attract foreign workers who have no family ties in Ireland. For businesses such as Google and Facebook, being able to attract top talent from a range of countries is important.
A city that is attractive for workers to live in is thus attractive for business to locate in.
A range of success stories in the sphere of music – the Dubliners, Horslips, Riverdance and U2 – raised Ireland’s profile abroad. People may not have heard of Ireland but they have heard of Irish music of some variety. This makes Ireland an easier sell as a location for business or workers.
Cultural offering
The quality of the lifestyle and varied cultural offering has helped other Irish cities prosper. It has helped
Galway
grow faster than a traditional industrial city like
Waterford
. Theatre such as Druid and Macnas are at the core of a lively cultural offering that makes Galway a desirable place to live. The city’s buzz is an attraction even for those who would never darken the door of a theatre.
That doesn’t mean that all cities need to excel in theatre. Rather, each city has to find its own distinctive features and work to make itself attractive, not so much explicitly to business, but rather to the varied range of people who might work and live there.
While central planning is not the route to deliver cultural diversity to Irish cities, there is a role for public investment to enhance cultural and community infrastructure. If Limerick’s role in 2014 as City of Culture makes a lasting difference, it could prove to have been an important investment.
The quality of education and of child-friendly infrastructure, whether childcare, playgrounds or a science museum, are other features that make cities attractive for young families to live and work in. Good public transport – an area where Irish cities lag well behind European counterparts – is another aspect of the good life that is also good for the local economy.
There is no simple answer to what makes a city attractive to a modern workforce. It could be the availability of diverse cultural activities. It could also be ready access to a good Indian restaurant. The one thing that is certain is that making cities good to live in is important economically as well as socially.
