Future cities in Ireland

Leif Johnson · 01-05-2015 7:46pm #1

Does anyone think places like Dundalk or Ennis will become cities in the future?

Frynge · 01-05-2015 7:47pm

No and no.

green jay · 01-05-2015 7:49pm

Considering they down graded Kilkenny one of our oldest cities, i don't think so

fleet_admiral · 01-05-2015 8:14pm

Sligo may, imo

newmug · 01-05-2015 8:17pm

They should be making cities smaller and denser. We only have a finite amount of agricultural land, the amount of land wasted around Meath and Kildare to accommodate dublin during the boom is just scandalous. "Planners" me backside!

D Trent · 01-05-2015 8:27pm

Athlone definitely will

Subpopulus · 02-05-2015 12:23pm

The criteria distinguishing a city from a town in Ireland is essentially an administrative one. As far as I know there's no particular legal route that could be used to create a new city, presumably since there's never been any need to create new cities since the founding of the Free State and there was never any legislation created to do so.

So for a town to become a city there would have to be some good administrative reason - perhaps the town was too large to be properly run by the county council. But with the current system of uniting city and county councils I don't see how this might happen. You could also offer ceremonial city status, essentially a mark of prestige, and run the city as before, but again, there's no legal precedent and you'd need new legislation for that. None of that is insurmountable, but I'd wonder what conditions would need to be in place to require the government to legislate for the creation of new cities.

If you were looking at population as a gauge to a town becoming a city I'd imagine that they've have to be the size of Waterford for that to happen. Waterford has 50,000 people. In another twenty or thirty years perhaps Dundalk and Drogheda may be the same size that Waterford is now, but it will require adding about 10-15,000 people to the population of each. They both have about 38,000 people in each town. They're both fairly well placed to grow to that level - they're on the well-populated east coast and have good access to transport infrastructure. Swords also has ambitions for city status, but I can't really see that happening - it's really just a suburb of Dublin. I also remember some South Dublin County Councillors campaigning a few years back for Tallaght to be awarded city status, which was a bit mad.

I don't see too many other places that might become cities in the near future. Some people (mostly Sligo County Councillers) like to think of Sligo as a city, or at least aspire to becoming one. Ennis and Carlow I've also heard of having notions of gaining city status. You could of course just designate them as cities for the craic, like they do in the UK. Newry and Lisburn became cities in 2002 as part of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Liz, but they're not really cities in my mind. Lisburn is just a sprawling suburb of Belfast, and Newry is still a grey and dreary town.

Subpopulus · 02-05-2015 12:30pm

green jay wrote: »

Considering they down graded Kilkenny one of our oldest cities, i don't think so

It was hardly downgraded. It's not had a city council since the mid-nineteenth century and has been run like any other large town in Ireland ever since. It's still allowed to refer to itself as Kilkenny City, even if it doesn't have any of the legal trapping of city status.

dubhthach · 09-05-2015 12:47am

Subpopulus wrote: »

The criteria distinguishing a city from a town in Ireland is essentially an administrative one. As far as I know there's no particular legal route that could be used to create a new city, presumably since there's never been any need to create new cities since the founding of the Free State and there was never any legislation created to do so.

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1937/en/act/prv/0003/print.html

Superceed by the conversion of Galway to County Borough in 1985
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1985/en/act/pub/0007/print.html

Galway in 1985, it had been upgraded from UDC to Borough in 1937 (though still described as a "Town")

dubhthach · 09-05-2015 12:54am

Dún Laoghaire from it's formation in 1930 was for all intensive purposes a seperate city, even though it was regarded as just a "Borough"

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1930/en/act/pub/0027/print.html

Mr_Muffin · 09-05-2015 12:58am

Waterford could easily be labelled a town and i don't think anyone would challenge it.

Subpopulus · 09-05-2015 1:06am

dubhthach wrote: »

Galway in 1985, it had been upgraded from UDC to Borough in 1937 (though still described as a "Town")

Hmmm. So was 'borough' just another way of saying 'city' in Irish legal terms?

dubhthach · 09-05-2015 1:18am

Subpopulus wrote: »

Hmmm. So was 'borough' just another way of saying 'city' in Irish legal terms?

Technically no, as a Borough such as Galway (post 1937) was still under control of the local county council. Galway thus only became legally a city with 1985 act when it became a county borough.

Dún Laoghaire in comparison basically was a corpus separatum as Dublin county council had no authority within the Borough boundary (which in 1991 had a population bigger than either Galway or Limerick).

Basically it was a "county Borough" in all but name.

househero · 09-05-2015 1:23am

If we cut income & corporation tax in half. We could have a huge amount of cities and a population more suitable for our land mass. With more diversity.

Nobody lives here. Which is the main reason why no towns/cities will expload in population any time soon.

newmug · 09-05-2015 6:03am

househero wrote: »

If we cut income & corporation tax in half. We could have a huge amount of cities and a population more suitable for our land mass. With more diversity.

Nobody lives here. Which is the main reason why no towns/cities will expload in population any time soon.

Good! Ireland is too small to have cities. We only have 4 million people, there are "towns" in other countries with bigger populations. We only have room for 1 major city, that is enough.

jd · 09-05-2015 11:19am

newmug wrote: »

They should be making cities smaller and denser. We only have a finite amount of agricultural land, the amount of land wasted around Meath and Kildare to accommodate dublin during the boom is just scandalous. "Planners" me backside!

It's politicians that do the zoning - it's a reserved function!

Fiskar · 09-05-2015 11:37am

newmug wrote: »

Good! Ireland is too small to have cities. We only have 4 million people, there are "towns" in other countries with bigger populations. We only have room for 1 major city, that is enough.

Think you need to check your figures

http://www.cso.ie/multiquicktables/quickTables.aspx?id=cna13

given the next census will be 2016 we are probably at 5 million and growing fast. Add to that the imigrant population over the next 30 years away from desert areas we will probably be at 8 million

Rock of Gibraltar · 09-05-2015 12:20pm

newmug wrote: »

Good! Ireland is too small to have cities. We only have 4 million people, there are "towns" in other countries with bigger populations. We only have room for 1 major city, that is enough.

I think you've got to take an all island view on these things which puts us at 6.4m as of the last census, its reasonable to think that the population will be above 9m and maybe close to 10m by 2030.

In my view we should be trying to build up the towns in the Dublin-Belfast belt to make things a bit more Randstad-y, a conurbation, a improving the transport links to achieve that.
Similarly in the south centred on Cork.

monument · 12-05-2015 9:13pm

newmug wrote: »

Good! Ireland is too small to have cities. We only have 4 million people, there are "towns" in other countries with bigger populations. We only have room for 1 major city, that is enough.

Country/area | Area size | Population
Republic of Ireland | 70,273 km2 | ~4,609,600 people
Randstad (total), Netherlands | 8,287 km2 | 7,100,000
Randstad (urban), Netherlands | 4,300 km2 | 6,600,000
Netherlands | 41,543 km2 | ~16,912,640 people

Top ten Dutch cities:
Amsterdam 741,636
Rotterdam 598,199
The Hague 474,292
Utrecht 290,529
Eindhoven 209,620
Tilburg 199,613
Groningen 181,194
Almere 176,432
Breda 167,673
Nijmegen 158,732

* Some of these cities have larger metro populations, just as Dublin City is not the full population of Dublin etc, does not take conurbation into account ect

Gonzo · 13-05-2015 12:22am

newmug wrote: »

Good! Ireland is too small to have cities. We only have 4 million people, there are "towns" in other countries with bigger populations. We only have room for 1 major city, that is enough.

I kinda agree with this, while our population is growing very slowly Dublin is the only real city in the country in terms of population and size. Places like Galway, Limerick, Cork and Sligo are only equivalent to medium/large towns in other European countries. Belfast would be the second largest city on the island but is still a small city and not part of the Republic so doesn't really count.

If we were to develop a second major city I would choose Athlone as it's in the center of the country, only an hour from Dublin by motorway and rail, as well as quick to get to from most parts of the country.

Darkest Horse · 13-05-2015 12:39am

dubhthach wrote: »

intensive purposes

Sorry, I don't like to do this, especially to a mod, but it has to be pointed out. It's:

'intents and purposes'

Aard · 13-05-2015 12:45am

If we're talking about administrative cities, that's a hugely complicated argument about economies of scale and regional governance.

The other definition of city (i.e. a large settlement) is independent of its administrative boundaries. There have been many theses written on Ireland's projected spatial development. In very general terms, the north east of the country is likely to see the greatest rate of population increase. Dundalk, Drogheda, Navan, Dunshaughlin, Ashbourne, Swords, Balbriggan, Malahide, Maynooth, Naas, Newbridge, Kildare, Bray, Greystones. These places will see their populations grow much faster than the roughly 1% per annum that the rest of the country sees. Proximity to the global market (in other words, Dublin) and good transport links will facilitate this growth.

Ireland is missing a middle tier of cities in the 200k-500k region. Since Cork isn't gonna fill that void any time soon, population growth will concentrate in the well-connected Leinster towns. Maybe the first few to break the 50k threshold will be Dundalk, Drogheda, Navan, Swords, Sallins/Naas, and Bray.

KCAccidental · 13-05-2015 2:11am

Aard wrote: »

If we're talking about administrative cities, that's a hugely complicated argument about economies of scale and regional governance.

Ireland is missing a middle tier of cities in the 200k-500k region. Since Cork isn't gonna fill that void any time soon

it will if the boundary is changed.

SpaceTime · 13-05-2015 2:37am

KCAccidental wrote: »

it will if the boundary is changed.

Cork's 'metro area' is about 250,000 - 399,000 depending where you decide to draw the line.

You've basically got metropolitan areas of :

Dublin >1.27m (527,612 official city) - Boundary tight - excludes many suburban areas.
Cork 300,000 (119,230 official city) - Boundary very tight - excludes huge % of suburban areas.
Limerick 108,000 (95,854 official city) - Looser boundary
Galway about 80,000 (75,529 official city) - Looser boundary
Waterford 68,000 (46 732 official city) - Fairly tight boundary that excludes suburban growth.

(Those are the only official cities, Sligo etc, are towns and are significantly smaller than any of those)

Most Irish commentators grossly overestimate the size of Dublin by including the widest possible definition of metropolitan area while only taking in the official city pops of the other cities.

Part of the reason for this is some people will just take the entire population of Dublin City and what was Dublin County as "Dublin"

There are some utterly ludicrous comparisons done between Dublin and London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona etc all of which have metro areas >5m and London and Paris over 10m.

It's comparable to Glasgow, Manchester, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, etc... Not huge cities like the above.

Cork in particular is very definitely in need of boundary extensions.

Dublin itself needs them too. The Dublin City Council area should take in about 1m people.

The treatment of the cities other than Dublin as comparable to small towns in the way people discuss things here is completely ridiculous. It causes massive problems with planning and infrastructural development in those cities. They should be treated as major regional hubs.

Aard · 13-05-2015 2:44am

KCAccidental wrote: »

it will if the boundary is changed.

No - you refer to administrative boundaries as a definition of city. Urban Cork has about 200,000. No imaginary line is going to change that.

al22 · 13-05-2015 3:03am

Australia announced 5 million working visas in 2015 with a permanent residency option. It would be easier and cheaper to make Ireland a desert.

Darkest Horse · 13-05-2015 8:43am

al22 wrote: »

Australia announced 5 million working visas in 2015 with a permanent residency option. It would be easier and cheaper to make Ireland a desert.

I thought all of your kind had already left for that overrated country. If you prefer it there, why not seek out one of those visas.

dubhthach · 13-05-2015 9:50am

Technically speaking Belfast falls into the 200-500k category

(well or perhaps 200-700k would be better!)

The current all-Ireland population is approx 6.4million, there's some debate that we will be looking at a population of between 8 and 10 million by 2050 on current predictions. I'd be very surprised if the vast majority of this population growth wasn't in urban areas.

al22 · 13-05-2015 10:44am

My opinion - only a small parts of Dublin are really looking as a city, the rest is a big countryside called a Great Dublin area.

Aard · 13-05-2015 11:07am

dubhthach wrote: »

Technically speaking Belfast falls into the 200-500k category (well or perhaps 200-700k would be better!)

Yep - a very interesting situation. Research by Brian Hughes has looked at this particular anomaly. Zipf's Law can be related to settlement size hierarchies, and some of the gaps in the Republic's settlement hierarchy can be filled by taking an all-island perspective. Namely the inclusion of Belfast and Derry.

KCAccidental · 13-05-2015 11:47pm

Aard wrote: »

No - you refer to administrative boundaries as a definition of city. Urban Cork has about 200,000. No imaginary line is going to change that.

That is how Dublin's population is recorded.

Future cities in Ireland

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