ABSTRACT
In recent decades, traditional patterns of urban growth and rural decline have changed dramatically in most advanced capitalist societies. In this transformation, the key factor has not been any important shift in the natural balance between births and deaths in either urban or rural areas, but rather it is the reversal from net loss to gain in the transfer of people from town to countryside that has been the crucial factor. The dominant net movement in advanced countries, Perry et al. (1986) argue, is now generally away from the older and larger towns and towards their rural fringes and the less densely populated outer regions. The purpose of this chapter is to explore in-migration trends to the rural hinterland of the Dublin city-region. 1 Recent trends have been characterised by population increases in Dublin’s surrounding rural areas, resulting in urban sprawl and an increasingly dispersed city-region, which in turn fuels greater car dependency and longer commuting distances. This trend is not unique in Ireland, as similar spatial phenomena have been observed in most western societies and, in part, reflects changing demands for rural space (in an increasingly post-agricultural society) and consumer preferences towards rural areas and environmental amenities. However, in the case of Dublin, housing growth in the rural hinterland of the city not only includes the growth of rural towns and villages, but also of dispersed single dwellings in the open countryside – a distinctive feature of Irish settlement patterns. This chapter will begin with a discussion of the counterurbanisation concept, followed by a brief overview of counterurbanisation in a European context. The national and regional policy framework for managing settlement will then be reviewed. Drawing on recent census data, the chapter will then examine recent spatial trends in residential development in the Dublin city-region to consider the extent that residential growth has been occurring in the rural hinterland of Dublin City. This will involve four components: demographic changes; house-building activity; house prices; and travel-to-work commuting 133patterns. Finally conclusions are developed, in particular highlighting the need for further research.
