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In most European countries, the 20th Century witnessed a growing interest in urban conservation as both a social movement and public policy domain, and by the 1960s urban conservation had emerged as a key planning and urban policy goal and a central feature of how cities positioned themselves within the globalised economy. However, where it evolves in contentious political contexts, urban conservation can be framed by competing priorities reflecting collective remembering, cultural politics and identities intertwined with the symbolic representation of the built environment. Ireland provides a unique lens to examine these themes in a western European context. Ireland is the only western European country to experience colonial domination. In relation to built heritage, Ireland’s urban centres have their historical roots in successive waves of colonial settlement, and buildings within these urban centres were inevitably perceived as tools of colonial oppression, representing the colonial state and power and domination of colonial capital interests. The built environment was also shaped by the tastes and preferences of the colonial elite, particularly in relation to prominent residences in the urban landscape, and outside of the main urban centres, landlord estates represented domination of landownership and agricultural production, manifested in large estate houses (referred to as the ‘big house’) and remodelled rural villages. This context provides an important backdrop to the evolution of conservation policy and practice in Ireland and to how representations of heritage have been continually (re)shaped in the urban development process. The aim of this paper is to chart the shifting representations of built heritage in Ireland, and their relevance in the emergence of conservation and heritage policy, set in the context of broader social, political and economic change over time. This is achieved, firstly, by a review of secondary source material to identify key events, eras and trends. Discourses of heritage are then examined in debates of the Oireachtas (the Irish legislature), which provide a consistent record of national heritage debates in the Irish state. This identifies tensions around the emergence of built heritage policy in a historic environment largely associated with colonial power and identity, and shifts in how the historic built environment was represented in different eras. These representations range from outright antipathy, towards a more positive revalorisation of heritage, and a recent awakening amongst policymakers to the potential of heritage as a driver of urban regeneration. We then relate these shifting discourses to policy evolution, particularly the late adoption of comprehensive legislative framework for conservation (in 1999) and the important influence of international charters rather than bottom-up or national priorities in policy agenda-setting. Finally, conclusions are developed to identify wider lessons from the production of urban conservation priorities in the context of contested heritage., International Planning History Society Proceedings, Vol. 17 No. 5 (2016): HISTORY URBANISM RESILIENCE: Historical Perspectives

Le logement offre une excellente illustration de la difficulté à définir et à promouvoir un « modèle social européen ». Cet ouvrage, issu des travaux d'un atelier du GIS Réseau socioéconomie de l'habitat, est consacré à l'analyse des transformations du logement social dans l'Union européenne au cours des trois dernières décennies. Centré sur les pays d'Europe de l'Ouest qui furent à son origine : Angleterre, Allemagne, Autriche, Danemark, France, Irlande, Suède et Pays-Bas, il offre aussi un aperçu de la situation du logement social dans les pays d'Europe centrale et orientale, ainsi que dans les pays méditerranéens, où la propriété d'occupation domine, et où le logement social est soit inexistant soit très marginal. Même lorsqu'il reste une pièce essentielle de la politique du logement, le constat est celui d'une « révision générale » du logement social, dans ses missions comme dans ses modes de financement et de gouvernance. Au-delà de la distinction désormais classique entre modèles résiduel, généraliste et universaliste, il en ressort que les évolutions récentes vont parfois à l'encontre de certaines idées reçues. On relève ainsi l'importance maintenue du parc social britannique, malgré vingt ans de privatisations, qui contraste avec la quasi extinction du logement social traditionnel en Allemagne. La Suède a connu de profonds bouleversements, tandis qu'en France l'intervention de l'État reste forte. Le public averti trouvera ainsi de quoi nourrir sa réflexion sur la diversité des expériences européennes, et les profanes des informations jusqu'alors dispersées.

Cet article a été écrit avant que la crise immobilière en Irlande prenne l’ampleur que l’on sait. L’analyse qui y est faite du fonctionnement du logement social dans ce pays reste cependant entièrement valable. Quant aux problèmes d’accès au logement abordés dans l’article, ils restent également entiers : la très forte baisse des prix et des loyers intervenue depuis deux ans est certes de nature à restaurer la solvabilité des locataires et des accédants ; mais cet effet est largement compensé...

There has been significant research undertaken examining the 'creative class' thesis within the context of the locational preferences of creative workers. However, relatively little attention has been given to the locational preferences of creative companies within the same context. This paper reports on research conducted to qualitatively analyse the location decision making of companies in two creative sectors: media and computer games. We address the role of the so-called 'hard' and 'soft' factors in company location decision making within the context of the creative class thesis, which suggests that company location is primarily determined by 'soft' factors rather than 'hard' factors. The study focuses upon 'core' creative industries in the media and computer game sectors and utilises interview data with company managers and key elite actors in the sector to investigate the foregoing questions. The results show that 'hard' factors are of primary importance for the location decision making in the sectors analysed, but that 'soft' factors play quite an important role when 'hard' factors are satisfactory in more than one competing city-region.

In this paper it is intended to place the recent experience of the Irish housing market in the context of economic and property market cycles, how these interact over a property cycle and lessons from recent policy experience including interventions in the housing area. In spatial terms the currenthousing market can be seen as the result of an ad-hoc development led urban growth pattern which contributed to a dispersed development pattern with problems in oversupply. It is clear that alternative options exist to this approach and that evidence based management systems in terms of planning, development and financial decisions will be required to reduce the severity of future property market corrections. The incidence of rapidly increasing residential property prices has been a feature of many international economies in the past decade. This has resulted in house price surges and corrections across much of the industrialised world. Factors associated with such surges include growth in housing demand often supported by relaxed monetary policy stances, planning and zoning systems and fiscal regimes which encourage the investment in residential property acquisition anddevelopment. The falling prices for housing in Ireland in 2007-2010 nationally has created a stagnating effect with purchasers reluctant to enter the market while the price correction is worked through. In turn suppliers, construction interests and vendors are highly reluctant to accept lower bid prices in the market due to often unrealistic expectations created during the long boom. The result of oversupply is falling prices, reduced occupation demand and decreased investor demand, leading to lower building activity and profitability. In addition the banking and liquidity crisis have contributed to a radical deterioration in economic circumstances and increasing out-migration. As part of the Urban Environment Project at UCD this working paper considers the current evidence of a market correction and oversupply in the Dublin region and Ireland based on data available up to March 2010 including the authors’ working projections for 2010.