Counter-cartographies of the city: July 4th 7.30pm

We’re delighted to announce this talk with urban researchers Stephen Rigney and Eoin O’Mahony, dealing with issues of vacancy, property speculation and the possibilities of thinking the city from below.

Loom Studios, July 4th 7.30pm

Counter-Cartographies of the city

In the aftermath of the Celtic tiger, the contradictions of debt-fuelled property speculation as a means of economic growth are materialised in the abundance of empty buildings and vacant lots in Dublin’s north inner city. Ironically, this part of the city has a shortage of community spaces and faces an emerging housing crisis, at a time when so many spaces lie idle and closed off from use by virtue of their designation as private property. This begs the question, whose city is this?

Development plans and maps suggest a city of privately owned places connected by thin and vulnerable veins of public space. But Dublin can also be mapped in a way that represents alternative relations across space, such as the city as a place of occupations, of needs and of community. Used this way, maps, which so often are used to justify the appropriation of collective labour by private capital, offer a tool to reimagine Dublin as something more than terrain for property investors.

 Stephen Rigney and Eoin O’Mahony are PhD students in the department of geography at NUI Maynooth. They are currently working together to map derelict spaces around Dublin’s north inner city and to develop a counter-cartography of Dublin.

This event will take place in Loom Studios, which is located in The Hendrons Building, 36-40 Dominic Street Upper, Broadstone, Dublin 7 – here’s a map. BYOB.