13 Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House
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Rachel McArdle
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the rise of radical actions as a response to the extreme austerity implemented by the Irish government after the global financial crisis of 2008. Globally, the presence and visibility of vacant spaces in urban sites contributed to their use by activists to imagine alternative futures (DeSilvey and Edensor, 2013; Németh and Langhorst, 2014; Ziehl and Oßwald, 2015). There has been an increase in using occupation-based practices as strategies to claim space and achieve political goals (Vasudevan, 2015, 2017; Wood, 2017). After the financial crisis, Ireland’s landscape was littered with vacant buildings and ghost estates – the ‘new ruins of Ireland’ (Kitchin et al, 2014). These ruins were physical reminders of ‘everything that had gone wrong with Ireland’ (Hosford, 2017). As Hearne et al (2018: 154) insightfully argue, ‘activism has been shaped by, and has acted as a response to, the main characteristics of each period and the different crises generated by them’. Ireland faced a ‘tsunami of austerity’ (Hearne, 2014: 18), resulting in a housing and homelessness crisis, with over 9,000 homeless people in April 2020 (Focus Ireland, 2020). As a response, there was an increase in movements in Ireland that used housing and occupation as strategies for political action (see also the chapter by Di Feliciantonio and O’Callaghan, this volume).
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the rise of radical actions as a response to the extreme austerity implemented by the Irish government after the global financial crisis of 2008. Globally, the presence and visibility of vacant spaces in urban sites contributed to their use by activists to imagine alternative futures (DeSilvey and Edensor, 2013; Németh and Langhorst, 2014; Ziehl and Oßwald, 2015). There has been an increase in using occupation-based practices as strategies to claim space and achieve political goals (Vasudevan, 2015, 2017; Wood, 2017). After the financial crisis, Ireland’s landscape was littered with vacant buildings and ghost estates – the ‘new ruins of Ireland’ (Kitchin et al, 2014). These ruins were physical reminders of ‘everything that had gone wrong with Ireland’ (Hosford, 2017). As Hearne et al (2018: 154) insightfully argue, ‘activism has been shaped by, and has acted as a response to, the main characteristics of each period and the different crises generated by them’. Ireland faced a ‘tsunami of austerity’ (Hearne, 2014: 18), resulting in a housing and homelessness crisis, with over 9,000 homeless people in April 2020 (Focus Ireland, 2020). As a response, there was an increase in movements in Ireland that used housing and occupation as strategies for political action (see also the chapter by Di Feliciantonio and O’Callaghan, this volume).
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
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Rethinking ruination in the post-crisis context
- Rem(a)inders of loss: a Lacanian approach to new urban ruins 21
- Dignifying the ruins: a former Jewish girls’ school in Berlin 35
- Traversing wastelands: reflections on an abandoned railway yard 53
- Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 73
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The political economy of urban vacant space
- Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’ 91
- Conflicting rationalities and messy actualities of dealing with vacant housing in Halle/Saale, East Germany 109
- Post-disaster ruins: the old, the new and the temporary 125
- The post-crisis properties of demolishing Detroit, Michigan 145
- Guarding presence: absent owners and the labour of managing vacancy 163
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Reappropriating urban vacant spaces
- Politicising vacancy and commoning housing in municipalist Barcelona 181
- Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo 197
- (Im)Material infrastructures and the reproduction of alternative social projects in urban vacant spaces 211
- Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House 229
- Conclusion: Centring vacancy – towards a research agenda 243
- Index 251
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Rethinking ruination in the post-crisis context
- Rem(a)inders of loss: a Lacanian approach to new urban ruins 21
- Dignifying the ruins: a former Jewish girls’ school in Berlin 35
- Traversing wastelands: reflections on an abandoned railway yard 53
- Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 73
-
The political economy of urban vacant space
- Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’ 91
- Conflicting rationalities and messy actualities of dealing with vacant housing in Halle/Saale, East Germany 109
- Post-disaster ruins: the old, the new and the temporary 125
- The post-crisis properties of demolishing Detroit, Michigan 145
- Guarding presence: absent owners and the labour of managing vacancy 163
-
Reappropriating urban vacant spaces
- Politicising vacancy and commoning housing in municipalist Barcelona 181
- Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo 197
- (Im)Material infrastructures and the reproduction of alternative social projects in urban vacant spaces 211
- Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House 229
- Conclusion: Centring vacancy – towards a research agenda 243
- Index 251
