Are they cities at all?

Hagar

How many real cities are there in Ireland?
What defines a city? Is it simply population?
Having a University or a Cathedral ?
Put a university/cathedral in Ballivor and it becomes a city? I don't think it's that simple.

You hear of Waterford City, Galway City, Limerick City etc but are they really cities or just glorified towns?

Figures from the 2002 Census.

Dublin City - 495,781
Cork City - 123,062
Limerick City - 54,023
Waterford City - 44,594
Galway City - 65,832

The capacity of Croke park is 83,200 +/-, how can the entire population of a so called "city" not even fill a sports stadium to 80%?

Is it the grandiose notions of local councillors that creates cities out of what are really towns?

murphaph

Hagar wrote:

How many real cities are there in Ireland?
What defines a city? Is it simply population?
Having a University or a Cathedral ?
Put a university/cathedral in Ballivor and it becomes a city? I don't think it's that simple.

You hear of Waterford City, Galway City, Limerick City etc but are they really cities or just glorified towns?

Figures from the 2002 Census.

Dublin City - 495,781
Cork City - 123,062
Limerick City - 54,023
Waterford City - 44,594
Galway City - 65,832

The capacity of Croke park is 83,200 +/-, how can the entire population of a so called "city" not even fill a sports stadium to 80%?

Is it the grandiose notions of local councillors that creates cities out of what are really towns?

Totally agree, but at least we're not as bad as the United Kingdom for renaming Mickey Mouse towns as cities.....City of erm, Newry anyone? City of bloody Lisburn? That's like making a suburb of Dublin, such as say, Tallaght or Dundrum into a city in its own right. Nonsense.

There's no doubt however that the city boundaries deceive us-Dublin really has a much larger population than that contained within the city boundary, as does Limerick and to a certain exent Waterford. I submit that to be a city you should have 100,000+ inhabitants in your metropolitan area.

road_high

Spare a thought for Kilkenny...Population of just around 25,000 but our 'official' borough boundary is just 8/9000 people!!! Yes we are a glorified town but I like being called a city:D

oscarBravo

murphaph wrote:

I submit that to be a city you should have 100,000+ inhabitants in your metropolitan area.

What makes that a more useful definition than having a cathedral? It seems equally arbitrary.

In the US, a city is defined as being "incorporated" - it elects a mayor and a city council.

irlsurreal

Look at Armagh City which seems a bit strange as well!
In sligo we're a bit confused-70% of the time the local authorities and local media refer to us as a city(not saying I agree) and then sometimes we're a town!
Think cities are there moreso for regional development so they need to have cities in certain places.Since there's such a small population in this country some of the cities are going to be smaller in population than one would imagine?
As far as I know a town can still only become a city if the Queen of England says so-and unless th brits are planning any more invasions I can't see that happening!:D

murphaph

oscarBravo wrote:

What makes that a more useful definition than having a cathedral? It seems equally arbitrary.

Not really. I believe Germany uses this figure to define what places get Stadt prefixes. This means when you look at a map and the placename is in all capitals or in a green box (depending how the mapmaker does things) you'll have a fairly good idea of what services/amenities/potential market will be available to you there, whereas the cathedral method gives no information about such things and requires census figures as well as a map. It's much more useful information in 2007 than some historical religious significance a place may have.

irlsurreal

irlsurreal wrote:

As far as I know a town can still only become a city if the Queen of England says so-and unless th brits are planning any more invasions I can't see that happening!:D

She doesn't do it very often.. (often enough)
There are many towns in England that have populations of 250k + Northampton for example has tried several times to get city status.

Flukey

mfitzy wrote:

Spare a thought for Kilkenny...Population of just around 25,000 but our 'official' borough boundary is just 8/9000 people!!! Yes we are a glorified town but I like being called a city:D

Kilkenny is tiny. You can walk from John's Castle to the Smithwicks brewery in minutes, which is basically the length of the place. Calling it a village would even be stretching the imagination.:)

road_high

Flukey wrote:

Kilkenny is tiny. You can walk from John's Castle to the Smithwicks brewery in minutes, which is basically the length of the place. Calling it a village would even be stretching the imagination.:)

Ha ha but Galway and the rest aren't exactly huge either;) !!
You mean Kilkenny Castle (Johns Castle in Limerick?), the town extends a bit further now than that in fairness..'City' sounds better than town for the tourists too...

europerson

Schedule 5 of the Local Government Act, 2001 defines which urban areas are cities, etc. Clonmel, Drogheda, Kilkenny, Sligo and Wexford are officially boroughs. Personally, I'd always refer to Kilkenny as a city.

icdg

You can take either view. Either the Local Government Act defines cities (as political entities), in which case Kilkenny is not a city, or you define them by Royal Charter, in which case it is (but questions then arise over Galway!!!) Either way, Sligo is not, despite its Unilateral Decleration of Cityhood (check out the "Gateway City" and "City Centre" signs next time you're there.)

Before anyone says anything Royal Charters are still legally binding in ROI, though no more could really be granted. It is getting to the wierd stage where NI will have more cities than ROI though.

Really there should be a logical way (say a population threshold) which would define a city. Problem is that any logical way will either exclude Kilkenny or have the effect of making any medium-sized town in Ireland a city, the latter not really viable for logical purpose and the former not a runner for political purposes. And so the problem will remain. If you think it is a problem, that is...

dubhthach

icdg wrote:

You can take either view. Either the Local Government Act defines cities (as political entities), in which case Kilkenny is not a city, or you define them by Royal Charter, in which case it is (but questions then arise over Galway!!!) Either way, Sligo is not, despite its Unilateral Decleration of Cityhood (check out the "Gateway City" and "City Centre" signs next time you're there.)

Before anyone says anything Royal Charters are still legally binding in ROI, though no more could really be granted. It is getting to the wierd stage where NI will have more cities than ROI though.

Galway has a Royal Charter dating from 1484, that's why they did the whole 500year anniversary celebration back in 1984.

philologos

murphaph wrote:

That's like making a suburb of Dublin, such as say, Tallaght or Dundrum into a city in its own right. Nonsense.

Tallaght is actually trying to apply to become a city. (from what i've read in some local papers). They won't though imo.

Edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallest_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom
St.Davids in Wales is the smallest with nearly 2,000 people

MLM

If Tallaght can be a city then I see no reason why Glanmire can't become one as well. It already has a mayor.

Danno

Should it not be calculated by Urban area?

dubhthach

Jakkass wrote:

Tallaght is actually trying to apply to become a city. (from what i've read in some local papers). They won't though imo.

Edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallest_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom
St.Davids in Wales is the smallest with nearly 2,000 people

If Tallaght was granted "City status" then it would be the third largest city in the state. As for Dundrum, in my opinion it should be within the City Boundaries.

The big problem with Dublin City is the boundaries don't reflect the current situation, i believe only half of the area within the M50 on the southside is part of the City, the rest been divided between the two county councils.

Victor

dubhthach wrote:

The big problem with Dublin City is the boundaries don't reflect the current situation, i believe only half of the area within the M50 on the southside is part of the City, the rest been divided between the two county councils.

I think that statement doesn't show the whole truth. Area is largely meaningless and even population wise, there is a big difference whether you use the South Dublin or DL-R areas. This map shows it reasonably well.

http://www.constituency-commission.ie/Images/map_c.jpg

jesus_thats_gre

Surely it is down to the population a town/city serves as part of its hinterland that really determines whether a town should have city status. Take Dundalk for example, the town officially has a population of 30k or so but serves a population of 100k or so. Within 20 miles there 220k people while within 30 miles there is in excess of 400k people.

Dublin, Waterford, Limerick, Cork and Galway would all be serving more people I imagine - well considering Dundalk is apparently next in line to be granted city status.

silverharp

It's a scam to help the construction industry, why build motorways if there is only one "real" city in the country.

jjbrien

So let me get this straight in order to become a city in Ireland you need to either have a cathedral or a university? is there is count on population?

That mean Trim is a city??? or Mullingar?

Bards

jjbrien wrote:

So let me get this straight in order to become a city in Ireland you need to either have a cathedral or a university? is there is count on population?

That mean Trim is a city??? or Mullingar?

local governmenht act of 2001 defines what the five cities are

Waterford
Galway
Limerick
Cork
Dublin

all have city Councils

Solair

Cork's population is also grossly underreported by the census as the city boundries are very narrow. Hardly any of its larger immediate suburbs are taken into the city at all. E.g. most of Douglas, large chunks of the Western Suburbs etc. I mean, in the census it officially shrank which couldn't be further from the truth, it's more a tale of a small central core with ageing expensive residential areas and aging council estates. All of the growth is on the fringes.

Dublin's population's often given as the population of the entire county. It's rather more difficult to define the Cork "metropolitan area" as it doesn't have a handy small county to fit into.

MLM

Cork's metropolitan area has been clearly defined since the publicaton of the Cork Area Strategic Plan a few years back. It adopted the LUTS area as the metropolitan area. This stretches from Ovens to Midleton, taking in the harbour area. It has a population approaching 300,000. You can view the plan at http://www.corkcity.ie/casp/?reloaded. I think the Greater Dublin Area is harder to define as their are so many counties involved. Also many people are now claiming that it stretches from Longford to Gorey via Athlone and Portlaoise with a population of 1.5 million.

nesf

silverharp wrote:

It's a scam to help the construction industry, why build motorways if there is only one "real" city in the country.

Maybe because having only one "real" city in this country is generally not the best thing?

Gillie

icdg wrote:

You can take either view. Either the Local Government Act defines cities (as political entities), in which case Kilkenny is not a city, or you define them by Royal Charter, in which case it is (but questions then arise over Galway!!!) Either way, Sligo is not, despite its Unilateral Decleration of Cityhood (check out the "Gateway City" and "City Centre" signs next time you're there.)

I would consider it a city. The papers here get quite confused though!
Front Page: "New Shopping centre planned for City Centre"
Page 4: "Youth attacks Gardaí with bottle in town centre..."


Anyway. I thought Sligo was given Gateway City Status recently?

1huge1

Solair wrote:

Cork's population is also grossly underreported by the census as the city boundries are very narrow. Hardly any of its larger immediate suburbs are taken into the city at all. E.g. most of Douglas, large chunks of the Western Suburbs etc. I mean, in the census it officially shrank which couldn't be further from the truth, it's more a tale of a small central core with ageing expensive residential areas and aging council estates. All of the growth is on the fringes.

Dublin's population's often given as the population of the entire county. It's rather more difficult to define the Cork "metropolitan area" as it doesn't have a handy small county to fit into.

hate to continue this argument but it is limerick that is getting the worst deal in underreported population due to the city boundry which is missing like half of the city. As in the 2006 census which showed a population of around 52,000 when the actual figure is around 100,000 and is even claiming us to have less people than Galway.

gurramok

All the city\town boundaries are done arseways in this country where they dont include suburbs.
The CSO has included suburbs in recent listings
http://www.cso.ie/census/documents/Final%20Principal%20Demographic%20Results%202006.pdf (page 14)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland_by_population

Dublin 1,045,800
Cork 190,400
Limerick 90,800
Galway 72,700
Waterford 49,200

which look fairer!

On looking up for sizeable towns from http://www.cso.ie/census/documents/2006_prelim_table04.pdf

Swords seems to have 36k
Navan 27k
Balbriggan at 16k?

Drogheda has a part in Meath called St Marys, would it be fair to say that Drogheda(29k) including St Marys part in Meath(8.7k) has an urban population of nearly 38,000, that sound right??

Also, Ashbourne does not seem to exist in the census as its not listed!

gurramok

Stats out today from CSO on towns http://www.cso.ie/census/documents/census2006_Table_7_and_12.pdf

Cities are same as above

Drogheda & Dundalk at 35k each followed by Swords at 34k

mike65

Scary, so many people living in Louth!

Mike.

Dubh Geannain

Ballyjamesduff up 94% in 4 years :eek:

Whatever happened the nice wee village I grew up in?

loyatemu

Cities and towns over 10,000 people (from table 7 of http://www.cso.ie/census/documents/census2006_volume_1_pop_classified_by_area.pdf):

City

---

2002

---

2006
Greater Dublin Area 1,004,614 1,045,769
Cork City 186,239 190,384
Limerick City 86,998 90,757
Galway City 66,163 72,729
Waterford City 46,736 49,213

Drogheda 31,020 35,090
Dundalk 32,505 35,085
Swords 27,175 33,998
Bray 30,951 31,901
Navan (An Uaimh) 19,417 24,851
Ennis 22,051 24,253
Tralee 21,987 22,744
Kilkenny 20,735 22,179
Carlow 18,487 20,724
Naas 18,288 20,044
Sligo 19,735 19,402
Droichead Nua 16,739 18,520
Mullingar 15,621 18,416
Wexford 17,235 18,163
Letterkenny 15,231 17,586
Athlone 15,936 17,544
Celbridge 16,016 17,262
Clonmel 16,910 17,008
Balbriggan 10,294 15,559
Malahide 13,826 14,937
Leixlip 15,016 14,676
Portlaoighise 12,127 14,613
Killarney 13,137 14,603
Greystones 11,913 14,569
Tullamore 11,098 12,927
Carrigaline 11,191 12,835
Castlebar 11,371 11,891
Arklow 9,993 11,759
Cobh 9,811 11,303
Maynooth 10,151 10,715
Ballina 9,647 10,409
Mallow 8,937 10,241
Wicklow 9,355 10,070
Midleton 7,957 10,048

OTK

Every town over 10,000 connected by rail apart from Navan and Letterkenny.

edit: and Midleton (coming soon)
edit: and Carrigaline

Dub13

OTK wrote:

Every town over 10,000 connected by rail apart from Navan

Thats what you get for giving us Hector Ó hEochagáin....:p

gurramok

OTK wrote:

Every town over 10,000 connected by rail apart from Navan and Letterkenny.

edit: and Midleton (coming soon)
edit: and Carrigaline

Not forgetting car-dependent Swords and its nearby Airport!:mad:

Victor

More correctly:

Letterkenny - no railway
Carrigaline - no railway

Midleton - no railway services
Navan - no passenger services

Swords - served by Malahide
Naas - served by Sallins
Parts of Dublin - served by nearby services

Celbridge - served by Hazelhatch
Clonmel - regional service only
Ennis - commuter service only

gurramok

Victor wrote:

More correctly:

Swords - served by Malahide

Err, you are taking the mick here?

Malahide is a few miles away from Swords or are you suggesting Swords residents have a decent train service so they all migrate with their cars to the 'park & ride' facility beside Malahide station bang in centre of Malahide town?

Maskhadov

The only proper city we have is Dublin.

IHowever by irish standards I think there are only 5 cities on the entire island. The same amount as Germany but no where similar. Belfast should be included and Waterford dropped. Limerick has the possibilty of a deep port and a major airport and Galway is the only location of consequence in the west of ireland but really is only a large town.

Bards

Maskhadov wrote:

The only proper city we have is Dublin.

IHowever by irish standards I think there are only 5 cities on the entire island. The same amount as Germany but no where similar. Belfast should be included and Waterford dropped. Limerick has the possibilty of a deep port and a major airport and Galway is the only location of consequence in the west of ireland but really is only a large town.

Belfast is not in the Republic of Ireland...yet!!

ah yes.. let's drop Ireland oldest and first City... not on your life...

we are the best located City to mainland europe and if we got parity of state investment we would far surpass the Galway's and Limericks of this world.



oh and believe it or not Waterford has a deep sea port. just look at the tall shippes in 2005.. they were able to travel right into the heart of the City. - seee below


Small snippet about Waterford Port - Bellview http://www.portofwaterford.com/
=============================================================
The Port of Waterford is the most modern port in Ireland. The Port is on the River Suir, 14 miles from the open sea, Waterford Port is the nearest major Irish port to mainland Europe, providing a saving to shippers of both time and fuel. The Port is strategically located in relation to the Republic of Ireland's main markets in the United Kingdom and Continental Europe and is a natural hub for the integration of port, shipping, road and rail freight services. Waterford is a very attractive location for Ireland’s importers and exporters.

Waterford Port handles lo-lo, bulk liquid, bulk solid and breakbulk/general cargoes. The Belview facility reduces sailing times between Waterford and the UK/Continent by about one hour and also achieves reductions in turnaround times for ships. Waterford Port operates 24 hours a day, seven days per week.

In 2005, 776 vessels called at the port carrying a total of 2.6 million tonnes of cargo. Container throughput in 2005 was 137,453 laden 20ft equivalent units.
Cargo throughput for 2006 is forecast to be 2.65 million tonnes.

mike65

Ignorance is no excuse!

Mike.

nesf

Maskhadov wrote:

The only proper city we have is Dublin.

Define proper. Do you mean by population?

Maskhadov wrote:

However by irish standards I think there are only 5 cities on the entire island. The same amount as Germany but no where similar. Belfast should be included and Waterford dropped. Limerick has the possibilty of a deep port and a major airport and Galway is the only location of consequence in the west of ireland but really is only a large town.

Where does Cork stand in your opinion? Out of interest.

merlante

Maskhadov wrote:

The only proper city we have is Dublin.

IHowever by irish standards I think there are only 5 cities on the entire island. The same amount as Germany but no where similar. Belfast should be included and Waterford dropped. Limerick has the possibilty of a deep port and a major airport and Galway is the only location of consequence in the west of ireland but really is only a large town.

You drop Waterford and you have no representative for one of the most populous regions of the country, and also a port with huge potential, due to location, modern and improving infrastructure and is as much of a deep port as Limerick. The five cities are natural regional capitals and well spread out around the only island. You could hardly plan a better collection of urban centres for spatial distribution of population on the island (except that Dublin has too great a share of the population).

Just as Galway is the only location of consequence in the west, Waterford is by far the largest centre in the south east, which has a significantly higher population and population density than the west.

In the republic the cities are and should be:
Dublin
Cork
Limerick
Galway
Waterford

and in the north there are two real cities:
Belfast
Derry

With the revival of Ireland's economy all these cities, or at least the ones in the republic, are growing strongly. There are no towns outside the Dublin commuter belt that come even remotely close in population to the regional cities.

1huge1

Maskhadov wrote:

The only proper city we have is Dublin.

IHowever by irish standards I think there are only 5 cities on the entire island. The same amount as Germany but no where similar. Belfast should be included and Waterford dropped. Limerick has the possibilty of a deep port and a major airport and Galway is the only location of consequence in the west of ireland but really is only a large town.

Forget belfast I dont care what will happen in the future the fact is they are in a different country as us now, and drop waterford? were did ya get this from

Victor

gurramok wrote:

Err, you are taking the mick here? Malahide is a few miles away from Swords or are you suggesting Swords residents have a decent train service so they all migrate with their cars to the 'park & ride' facility beside Malahide station bang in centre of Malahide town?

Quite a few people from Swords use Malahide, especially if they are heading for somewhere on the DART line past the city centre.

With the revival of Ireland's economy all these cities, or at least the ones in the republic, are growing strongly. There are no towns outside the Dublin commuter belt that come even remotely close in population to the regional cities.

Depending on how one defines "the Dublin commuter belt"

Waterford City 49,213
Drogheda 35,090
Dundalk 35,085

Happy Bertie

Victor wrote:

Quite a few people from Swords use Malahide, especially if they are heading for somewhere on the DART line past the city centre.
Depending on how one defines "the Dublin commuter belt"

Waterford City 49,213
Drogheda 35,090
Dundalk 35,085

Congrats Victor on reaching the 30,000 posts mark, I think if you compiled all the posts in one book, it would be a pretty heavy book albeit an interesting one.

JupiterKid

The problem with the Irish urban hierarchy is that Dublin is over 5 times the size of Cork, which itself is twice the size of the next largest city, Limerick. Dublin completely dominates the country and its total dominance is partially the result of failed regional policy in previous times - if Buchanan's 1968 spatial plan was implemented instead of being savaged in favour of scattergun development with a "factory in every parish" Ireland might have stronger regional cities today. Also, the disgracefully permissive approach to allowing one off rural houses to be built all over the countryside has held back the development of our rural towns.

Basically, Dublin in the only medium sized city in international terms in Ireland. It also is the only metropolitan area. Cork, Limerick and Galway are small provincial/regional cities that serve as foci for their hinterlands. Waterford is just about a city IMO - I would personally suggest a 50,000 population in the contiguous built up area and 100,000 in city plus hinterland as a minimum cut off for a city status.

Another problems I see it is that the North West has no city at all - just a largish town - Sligo - that actually LOST population for its entire area between 2002 and 2006 - not good and one major reason why the North West is lagging behind the rest of the country. New industries and businesses will no longer set up in remote villages - urban areas are the engines of growth. If a company intending on investing Ireland is not prepared to look beyond Dublin, then there is really little govt can do.

Actually, Galway was just really a big town in the early 60s before it underwant explosive growth. If goverment wanted, Sligo could do the same -and become the next Galway - but is the commitment there?

mike65

A few years back, someone had the 'mad' idea of creating a whole new city in the NW. Can't recall much detail right now.

Mike

Maskhadov

make that 1 city so.

JackieChan

mike65 wrote:

A few years back, someone had the 'mad' idea of creating a whole new city in the NW. Can't recall much detail right now.

Mike

I think this is the chestnut your thinking of

http://www.newcityforthewest.com/

mike65

Thats the sucker, boy what a load of old tosh! It caused quite a few giggles at the time. I'd forgotten some of its finer points.

Mike.

nesf

JackieChan wrote:

I think this is the chestnut your thinking of

http://www.newcityforthewest.com/

A Minister for the West? :eek:

Maskhadov

what would cork need to grow by in order to make it a proper city ? would 750,000 in the city limits make it a proper city ?