Gentrifying the Rural? Planning and Market Processes in Rural Ireland

Abstract

Rural gentrification represents an emerging research agenda in the context of social transformation of rural localities. Having as a case study the Republic of Ireland, which provides a case of a laissez-faire planning system, this paper first addresses supply-side factors that have provided key preconditions for gentrification to take place. Then, using survey data in case study localities, we examine the extent that gentrification is a factor in rural residential mobility. We argue that the changing rural condition of Ireland provides essential preconditions for gentrification to take place. However, the gentrification literature provides only a partial angle of rural residential mobility, given the nature of rural in-migration observed in our case studies (that is blue-collar and return rural in-migration) during a period of substantial rural housing growth.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the financial support of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Science (Project: Migration and Social Change in Rural Ireland).

Notes

By the time of the fieldwork, the 2006 census of population had already been conducted in Ireland, but as data from this census were not fully available, quotas were based on the most recent and available data at that time, i.e. the 2002 census.

For example, the electoral register is no longer publicly available for research purposes; there are no postal codes in Ireland; and the GeoDirectory of addresses do not provide accurate information in rural locations.