There are almost 30,000 preschool children living in Dublin City [1], but a brief stroll with a toddler in hand can be a perilous journey. You clutch that hand tightly for fear of traffic trundling past, sometimes having to step out onto the road to bypass cars parked on the footpath. These safety concerns are compounded by the trip hazards of poorly maintained footpaths, which can lead to cut little knees and lots of tears. Research shows that the views of young children and their caregivers are rarely considered in urban planning and design decisions [2]. Meanwhile caregivers living in Dublin City report that environmental hazards often leave them with little choice but to drive, even short distances, rather than walking [3].  

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However, short walks through and around their local neighbourhood are of significant developmental value to young children [4]. Each excursion is a potential world of wonder and amazement for a toddler, whether they’re watching the slow meandering of a snail across a footpath, or a truck driver unloading a delivery. Along the way there might be small chats with neighbours, one or two steep steps to climb, or maybe a puddle to splash in. These encounters and experiences support children’s social, physical, and cognitive development.

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Urban95, a global programme funded by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation [5], is advocating for cities where preschoolers can thrive, by posing the question: “If you could experience your city from 95cm — the height of a three-year-old — what would you change”?

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Urban95 works with LSE Cities (at the London School of Economics) to explore this question, offering the Urban95 Academy, an educational initiative where city leaders can learn to plan and design cities that address the needs of toddlers and their caregivers. Through the Urban95 Academy, a delegation from Dublin City Council, including Liz Coman, DCC’s Assistant Arts Officer and Cllr Cat O’Driscoll, Chairperson of the Arts, Culture, Leisure and Community SPC [6], has been exploring the possibility of a city designed with young children in mind.  

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This exploration has resulted in the Dublin Urban95 Pilot Project, an innovative art-based project seeking to raise awareness within DCC of how the city is experienced by young children and their caregivers. Four artists were supported to creatively engage directly with children and create work in response to that engagement. O’Driscoll describes the project as a unique opportunity to access the views of preschool children. “Young children are a voiceless group on urban planning and design, but so good at showing what they like,” she says.

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For Coman, using creative practices to engage with children was key. “We knew we would get very rich data if we worked with artists to explore the city from the perspective of young children, and we are in a very unique situation to have a number of artists in Dublin whose whole practice involves working with young children,” she explains.

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The project focussed on the theme of mobility. With that in mind, Lucy Hill, one of the participating artists, explored comfort objects children take with them on trips they make in the city [7]. Comfort objects shared with Hill include: a hand-knit teddy; a little blue torch decorated with embossed love hearts; cars and dollies; and of course, some much loved soothers. These precious items support what Hill describes as “a feeling of ease and belonging” for young children as they venture out into the city.

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The three other artists involved in the project were Michelle Browne, Helen Barry, and Órla Kelly. Browne curated three geolocated audio essays developed by three writers, each of whom explored the adult experience of moving through the city with small children in tow.

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Helen Barry created Sculptunes in the Park, a multisensory sound installation made both for and with children to support curiosity and play. Órla Kelly developed Mapping My City with a group of young children attending an urban preschool. The children mapped out their everyday walks, identifying hazards such as broken glass and dog waste on the paths. They also mapped a parallel imaginative experience which included encounters with a tiger, witches’ hats, and doors where zombies hide.

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Together the various artworks shed valuable light on the everyday experience of young children in our urban environment. To enrich the qualitative data gathered through this project, the council issued a survey [8] on young children and mobility. The responses show a pattern of difficulties with cars blocking footpaths, dog waste, and poorly maintained footpaths. Using these data sets, O’Driscoll says the next step is to develop a toddler manifesto for Dublin, which is an “articulation of the needs of babies and toddlers” in the city. She says she is committed to advocating for this manifesto to be resourced and fully implemented.

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The Urban95 programme describes the presence of children as “a measure of a city’s vibrancy and dynamism” [9]. This is supported by research from Arup which identifies the presence of children in the urban public realm as an indicator of how well a city is performing [10]. DCC’s work in exploring preschool children’s views and experiences through the Dublin Urban95 Pilot Project is a positive step toward ensuring the city meets their needs. In turn, an increased presence of young children in the urban public realm will foster a more vibrant, dynamic Dublin City.

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A report of the Dublin Urban95 Pilot Project and its findings will be available on the DCC website in the coming months.

“You can pass through streets almost every day of your life and hardly notice the changes that are taking place until one day, suddenly you realise that everything is different… It’s quite irrational but you do get the feeling of being dispossessed. In that warren of streets behind the quays you were safe from the world” [1].

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Elizabeth Leslie’s words from her 1965 Irish Times article "A northsider’s lament" demonstrate a dejection and a disillusionment among city dwellers with the mass urbanisation projects of their day. Dublin of the sixties was indeed a city in flux: a potent mix of crumbling tenements and newfound free-trade prosperity had gifted Sean Lemass’s government with the opportunity to raze 1,200 Georgian terraced houses in just eighteen months between ‘63 and ‘64 and ship the residents to peripheral suburbs, leading to an estimated reduction of 10,000 in the number of people living between the canals [2]. The Georgian city’s ‘warren’ of mews lanes was disappearing as the country sought to rid itself of the remnants of its colonial past and rebuild under the influence of new capital.

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Almost sixty years on from Leslie’s unanswered lament, not much has changed. Dublin’s built environment has grown ever more in service of the international market rather than its people, fostering a paradoxical city in which technocratic fantasies of steel and glass shroud realities of vacancy and vagrancy. The forgotten urban lanes embody this modern economic disparity. To many in power, the inner-city lanes are fetid spaces of dereliction, detritus, and drug use that offer no value within the urban system. This is reflected in Dublin City Council’s recent decision to close Harbour Court off Abbey Street [3], an unsatisfying "out of sight, out of mind" move that fails to address the underlying issue of disuse. Not only is this a crudely reductionist approach to a deeper systemic issue, but it comes in the wake of a 2018 laneway improvement strategy, Reimagining Dublin One Laneways, developed by Sean Harrington Architects for DCC [4], which has been woefully underutilised since its publication [5]. While the plan’s proposals to ameliorate blank facades and low footfall by improving surfacing and lighting remain relevant, it makes little reference to resolving the source of these blights: vacancy.

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In autumn 2023, Aisling Ward and Sophie Reid, two architecture master’s students at UCD, conducted an exercise in vacancy mapping of the Dublin 1 area that showed a high concentration of dereliction in three local lanes: Charles Lane, Grenville Lane, and Rutland Place (figure 1). Judging by a 1985 photograph (main image) of the house on the corner of Grenville Lane, some of these buildings have been slipping into ruin for almost forty years. Without meaningful intervention, the lanes’ dysfunction will only deepen, leaving them vulnerable to becoming what urban theorists call “terrain vague”: unproductive, unsafe, and uninhabitable voids alienated from the city around them. However, as architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales declared in his 1995 essay, Terrain Vague, the void can represent absence, but also hope: “the space of the possible, of expectation” [6]. While these lanes clearly expose the symptoms of negligent ownership and property speculation under capitalism, they also offer fertile testing grounds for the potential reclamation of abandoned city space. Applying the logic of Solà-Morales, the lanes’ absence of utilisation is what now makes them spaces of opportunity, opportunity that may flourish with a change of use and a change of ownership.

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Of the estimated eight vacant commercial properties sitting immediately on these three lanes, only one at Rutland Place is listed on the Vacant Site Register and therefore subject to the vacant site levy [7], a tax that has been widely ignored by property owners who owe up to €50 million across the country in unpaid levies [8]. In the context of the climate emergency and current housing exigencies, the council should – instead of maintaining a cycle of negligence based on the unwavering sanctity of private property ownership – take real action and start issuing Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPO) to vacant properties that have eluded taxation over the course of at least two years, which is the minimum period a building must be vacant for to be exempt from planning permission for a change into residential use [9]. Purchased properties could then be redeveloped by the council or an Approved Housing Body (AHB) for social and affordable housing schemes that will return much needed density and human activity into the abandoned lanes, in turn improving the permeability and spatial diversity of the surrounding communities.

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In the inevitably long period between purchase and redevelopment, the council could invoke a “meanwhile use” mechanism that gives temporary guardianship of properties to grassroots organisations like community groups or artists collectives. Meanwhile use is a loose designation for activities that occupy empty space, while waiting for another activity on site. These are usually cheaply produced events like markets, exhibitions, or installations that exist on an ephemeral basis. It is an alternative city-making solution that has enjoyed much success in similarly priced cities abroad like London, which boasts a thriving pop-up economy and many temporary-turned-permanent spaces such as the Young Vic theatre and Gabriel’s Wharf market in Southbank [10]. If a truly inclusive development process is devised to create a similar variety of programmes and uses, the impacts of footfall and activity would immediately breathe new life and identity into the lanes.  

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In the imagined future of unlocked laneways, the role of the architect as a collaborative agent is imperative. Many laneways are home to older buildings, suffering from structural insecurities and lack of servicing. In the case of meanwhile use, the architect(s) can envisage interpretive and playful site-specific building systems designed for easy assembly – and equally, disassembly – by the groups transforming these spaces into viable loci of non-market activity (figure 2). In the long-term vision of providing housing on the lanes, architects must equally play a pivotal role in navigating the challenges of adaptive reuse. However arduous these processes of transformation may be, it is clear that the lanes offer small slices of enormous possibility for the making of a radically different city – one whose “warren of streets behind the canals” no longer speaks of vacancy, but of vibrancy and culture. Perhaps hope for change can be offered to us, and posthumously to Elizabeth Leslie, by the late David Graeber, who succinctly claimed that: “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently” [11].

Driving Ireland’s looping system of isolated rural roads, you'll spot a common sight: walkers decked out in hi-vis, singly or in groups, tracking the footpath-less edge, keeping out of your way and waving gratefully as you pass. Rural roads are the most dangerous in Ireland: the site of 71% of road fatalities in 2020, according to the Road Safety Authority (RSA) [1]. In that year, forty-four pedestrians were killed on Irish roads (the RSA didn’t differentiate between rural and urban deaths), more than passengers (thirty-four) and cyclists (eight) combined.

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People may choose to walk because they can’t drive, because it is the cheapest option, or simply for walking’s sake. If those living rurally haven’t access to private land, a footpath, or a designated public route, their only option is the roadside, with limited visibility around bends, speed limits up to 80km/h or 100km/h, and the fear of distracted drivers.

But there could be options beyond the roadside. In Scotland, people have a "right to responsible access" [2], meaning the public can access most private land and inland water for recreation and other purposes, including walking. Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria have similar statutory rights of responsible access to all land, regardless of ownership. They don’t have to call ahead, or worry that they’ll be reprimanded for walking through someone’s property.

In England, where open access to 8% of private land is legislated, there is a growing campaign to move closer to the Scottish model. The Right to Roam campaign proposes that while ownership of the land may allow landowners to "take rent, mine, and make money from the land", it should not permit them to exclude the public [3]. Some farmers, in response, argue that the public doesn’t know how to use the countryside, and could impact agricultural production [4]. Farmers in support of the Right to Roam suggest it should be accompanied by a public education programme.

Access in Ireland is at the discretion of landowners [5], and may be withdrawn at any time, even when access has been agreed with the state, and even to sites on which public money has been spent [6]. 78% of land in Ireland is private, while 8% is public (the remaining 14% is unmapped, likely residential). Most of the private land is farmland [7]. A 2009 study of farmers’ attitudes towards allowing walkers to access their land found that 51% were opposed to any such scheme [8]. Those opposing public access usually had limited experience of walkers passing through their land and were concerned about interference with farming activity. Farmers who were familiar with walkers were more willing to engage with the scheme, and more willing to do so for free. In general, it was found that farmers were more supportive of creating public access if paid about €0.27 per metre of walkway, if full public liability insurance indemnification were provided, maintenance costs covered, and no permanent right of way established.      

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The question of liability is an important one. Under Irish legislation, landowners are considered responsible for those on their land, meaning concerns around public liability are justified, though recent changes to the duty of care have given more weight to personal responsibility [9].

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The government’s National Outdoor Recreation Strategy acknowledges that access to the countryside rests on the goodwill of landowners [10]. The strategy vaguely aims to develop permissive access and "encourage innovative solutions". Creating a legal right of responsible access in Ireland would open up the countryside, allowing us to hop over fences and explore the land around us. Of course, for that to work, certain responsible behaviours would need to be normalised. Dogs should not be brought near to livestock, and walkers must respect the land, leaving no trace [11].

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There’s a strong environmental case for making land more accessible to all. Studies have found that connection to nature increases people’s willingness to protect the environment [12]. 84% of people surveyed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2020 thought walking in nature benefitted their mental health [13]. More places to walk safely in the countryside could foster a rural walking culture. Health benefits of walking in nature include stress reduction, cognitive development, and lowered likelihood of cardiovascular disease [14].

This map of walking locations in Ireland shows clear gaps in public access to land. Depending on where you live, the nearest public walking route might be a drive away, and an alternative one even further. These designated routes allow you to get out, to move your body and breathe the air, but what about your curiosity, your sense of adventure, your wish to follow your nose or the call of a bird? Those desires cannot be met by the same stretch of land every time, or by planning a round-country day trip to a faraway route. With the right to roam, people could explore nature and build custodianship with the land. Why should this require a pleasant interaction with a landowner beforehand?