The Living City Initiative was meant to breathe life back into the historic hearts of our cities. Instead, 10 years on, it stands as another monument to bureaucratic failure – a well-intentioned idea undermined by poor design, timid ambition and a lack of understanding of the urban fabric it sought to restore.
Since its launch in 2015, just 242 applications have been made in Dublin. Only 141 projects have actually been completed. Even after successive tweaks – extending eligibility to landlords, removing floor-size limits, expanding the age of qualifying buildings – the scheme has barely stirred public interest. The numbers speak for themselves: 12 applications so far this year, in a city gasping for housing and riddled with dereliction.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was half right with his scathing observation that “whoever designed it must have had an objective of making sure it didn’t work”. The structure of the scheme betrays a chronic lack of realism. The maximum relief for business properties, now raised to € 300,000, is still derisory when the true cost of restoring a four-storey Georgian or Victorian townhouse can run to several million euro.
As Dublin Civic Trust’s Graham Hickey has pointed out, the scheme from the start has been confused about whom it was supposed to be targeting: homeowners or developers; small landlords or commercial players. That fatal flaw doomed it from the start. The city centre market is driven by the logic of commercial property, not homeowners. Any plan that ignores this will fail to move the needle.
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Expanding the initiative to regional towns, where costs are lower and owner-occupiers predominate, may yield better results. But the failure in Dublin remains a serious indictment. The capital’s historic core is steadily hollowing out, its upper floors empty, its fine buildings decaying.
Urban regeneration requires clarity and capital. The State has so far provided neither. Until it matches aspirations with practical investment, the “living city” will remain a glib phrase rather than a real place.
