The Impacts and Implications of Irish National Economic Crisis Recovery Policy on Municipal Planning Policy

Abstract

Planning professionals must build cities and societies within the fiscal and social reality that is dealt to them, and as the last five years has shown, these realities can and have changed drastically. While not all nations around the world have been impacted by the economic crisis that began in 2007 equally, those nations that have felt the strongest economic blow are seeing policy changes at the national level that are impacting the ways cities grow and develop. Ireland is one of these nations, where the economic impacts of a collapsed capital market and resulting housing decline have caused uncertainty and decline across all fiscal and social spectrums. As such, the overriding research question for this report is: How has municipal planning policy and practice in Dublin Ireland responded to, or been impacted by, national-level social, economic and spatial recovery policy which has emerged as a result of the 2007-2012 financial crisis?