Because this latest volume in the series of historical geographies, Making Dublin records the city’s development during my lifetime, there is an intimacy with its pages and their contemporary photographs and newspaper ads. The familiarity of the place is compounded here by a lack of temporal distance.
Covering the 1970s and 1980s, the book and its author, Joe Brady, seem to jostle with this recent past: it’s not quite history and yet, it is. Through Brady’s stimulating accounts of Dublin and its hinterland developments, coming out of peerless research into the everyday and official record alike, we undeniably gain insight into our present situation.
The patterns and the rhythms of Dublin in 2022 – where we live, where we shop, how we connect – can be sourced in these pages. Even the series editor and Brady’s longtime collaborator, Ruth McManus, proposes the link, hoping that the book will “jog memories, inspire insights and give some hope” for the post-pandemic resilience of Dublin.
So maybe this discomfort with the not-so-past “past” is mine and not the book’s?
Of course this is history or rather, historical geography. Brady begins by setting out his stall, comparing the censuses of 1946 and 1971 to expose a city centre emptied of residents: where there were 46,096 dwellings in Dublin’s inner city (between the canals) in 1946, there were 26,123 by 1971. Thus, the 1970s portrait of Dublin is sketched out with a decaying core and a thriving periphery. And from that sketch or premise, Brady goes off on various jaunts, the most poignant of which, “Dublin’s Environment” charts the city’s oil and solid fuel dependence, and related smog problem. For the first time in the Making Dublin series, the connectedness of building and infrastructure to river, coast and air is made plain.
Shopping centres
While stories like Gardiner Street’s transformation from a gap-toothed crone to a pastiche dandy or the introduction of the Imp minibus, built in Co Donegal are enriching, the book’s highlight for me, as a child of 1970/1980s Dundrum, is “The Challenge of the Suburbs” chapter. With a focus on shopping centres, it is a treat to find these Shangri La’s of our childhood positioned beyond their fluorescent-lit immediacy; positioned indeed in relation to American prototypes and planning forecasts. For that’s the magic of Joe Brady and this, his fourth instalment to the Making Dublin series, is typically jam-packed with facts and statistics (gleaned from Dublin Corporation and other reports), alongside personal insights and local histories.
Brady has no interest in obscurity and his writing is generous in its tendency to share and to educate. Favouring pragmatics over poetry, and conversational tone over elegant prose, he specialises in bringing the non-specialist on board. Like a folklorist with his Dublin lore, he collects and uses maps, compiles tables and demographic studies. So that, while Brady may lament the loss of local guidebooks and the Dublin Opinion cartoons in this period under examination, his account sparkles with lesser-known sources like the Metropolitan Streets Commission of 1987 which underpins the “City Centre Strikes Back” discussion. Furthermore, throughout the book, illustrating Dublin’s eponymous transformation, are the author’s own photographs. With these pieces of proof – from reports to photographs – the reader feels included. We’re partway on a walking tour with the author/partway in his study, looking at his collection of Dublin-related artefacts. Importantly, we trust and believe him.
Social landscapes
Perceiving his task to be one of description over analysis, Brady is not afraid of detail or the mundane. In fact, with this volume, Brady is clearly a champion of the hyper-local. Betimes though, he overwhelms the narrative with the mundane, felt especially by this (non-motorist) reader in the descriptions of the 1971 Dublin Transportation Study. Beneath and around such overviews of road types or lane quantities, we do find the emergent trend. We can pin down the arc explaining the city’s social landscapes. Always led by the evidence, Brady brings us to important conclusions. The derelict centre trajectory is beginning to U-turn by the end of the book, for instance, with Brady’s accounts of population increases in inner suburbs such as Marino and Sandymount from 1986.
Population pyramids delight and coloured demographic maps enrich the reading experience. Some histories turn full circles, such as the rise and fall of central motorway proposals or the wanton decay of the traditional city and the growth of conservation and preservation concerns by 1990. And other histories, still only half-known, around religious lands and their sale, reveal the colonisation of inner-suburban green fields for housing in the late 1980s. We want more on this please!
Arising from its familiarity and recentness, Dublin from 1970 to 1990 is intimate and sometimes surreal to uphold. In keeping with the Making Dublin series, it is a text book, guided by excellent research so it may be too clunky and detailed for the casual reader. If nothing else though, and conversely, it is a profoundly informative and provocative read for all Dubliners in 2022.
Ellen Rowley is assistant professor in the UCD school of architecture, planning and environmental policy
