Housing Conflicts in the Irish Countryside: Uses and Abuses of Postcolonial Narratives

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore how collective memories of place have framed contemporary planning conflicts in a rural arena. Specifically, the paper charts the emergence of the Irish Rural Dwellers Association (IRDA) as a vocal campaigner for private property rights and a laissez-faire approach to accommodating new housing development in the open countryside. For the IRDA, postcolonial narratives and national(ist) identities provide an important vocabulary for protest and opposition to state regulation by: 1) providing a discursive device to create a shared storyline of rural struggle; 2) providing an exclusionary device, whereby drawing on ‘memory’ and representations of rurality creates an insider/outsider discourse where some voices are cast as illegitimate; and 3) providing a frame for placing emotional knowledge at the centre of planning and landscape policy-making. This paper questions the authenticity of this policy narrative and addresses the validity of self-acclaimed knowledge within the landscape and rural policy arena. More broadly, the paper attempts to enhance understanding of how memory shapes policy narratives in the (re)production of cultural landscapes.

Key Words:

• rural housing
• contested landscapes
• postcolonial
• Irish Rural Dwellers Association (IRDA)

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support for this research by the Royal Irish Academy's Third Sector Research Programme. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

Notes

Opponents include An Taisce (Irish National Trust), environmental NGOs and professional planning organisations. See Scott (2005) for details.

Indeed, rural iconography was institutionalised within the new state as the new coinage for Ireland drew on images of the countryside.

A recent census of Irish professional planners revealed 1000 planners in Ireland: 600 in local government; 100 in other areas of the public sector; and 300 in private practice. Approximately 270 are members of the RTPI.

The RTPI Irish Policy Panel responds to concerns and issues generated by RTPI members working in Ireland (approximately 450 members), rather than driven by RTPI HQ initiatives in relation to planning practice in Britain. The Policy Panel employs a Policy Officer in Ireland who facilitates RTPI (Irish Branch) members' representations to public consultations on planning in Ireland (interview with Member of Irish Policy Panel).

The design of contemporary bungalows in the Irish landscape has been largely associated with architect Jack Fitzsimons's (1971) publication ‘Bungalow Bliss’. The book, which became hugely popular in Ireland, provides a manual of architectural plans and contracts for affordable and simply constructed bungalows, dormer and two-storey houses. As a reaction against this perceived standardisation of rural house design and rates of house-building in rural areas, the Irish Times journalist, Frank McDonald, coined the term ‘Bungalow Blitz’ (Irish Times, 26 June 1997).