Ballymun

Ballymun is more than just a collection of buildings and roads. For the people who live here it means home and community. It means playgrounds, schools and other amenities. It means shops and places to socialise. It is the shared space associated with the milestones in their lives.

Ballymun (in Irish, Baile Munna) was for centuries a small, rural community with a village centre located a few miles north of Dublin city. This all changed in 1964 when the Minister for Local Government announced the Ballymun Housing Project as a response to the acute public housing shortage in Dublin. This new initiative was in the minds of the planners to be:

‘a new and closely integrated community enjoying from the beginning all the facilities of a new small town. It is intended that the development within the site shall be treated as a community, virtually self contained with the exception of industry and playing fields and provided with all the shopping, community, and primary school facilities.’
– Muldowney and Mulhall, 1975

The area covered approximately 1.5 square miles in size with an intended population of 12,000. However, by 1996 it had reached 20,000 due to the continued housing shortage. Between 1965 and 1974 construction included seven 15-storey blocks, each named after signatories of 1916 Proclamation (Sean MacDermott, Thomas MacDonagh, Eamonn Ceannt, Patrick Pearse, Oliver Plunkett, Thomas Clarke and James Connolly), ninety flats to each tower, six to a floor. The other 2,190 flats were built in rows around 2,400 houses and were named Shangan Road, Shangan Avenue, Coultry Road, Balcurris Road, Balbutcher Road, Balbutcher Lane, Sillogue Road, Sillogue Avenue and Sandyhill Avenue.

However, disillusion and deterioration soon set in and by the early 1970s, there was already a tenancy turnover rate of 50 per cent. By the 1980s, the vacancy rate had risen to disturbing levels and the community had reached its lowest point.
Ballymun was experiencing high rates of unemployment, transience, vacancies, social problems.

The reasons for the deterioration of Ballymun include the following:

Infrastructure	The original design was poor, with dense housing set in large open spaces; Much of the original plan was not realised in relation to services, social and recreational resources, and other amenities; General maintenance of the built environment was poor from the start; Without adequate transport links, Ballymun was too far from Dublin, and posed difficulties for employed people getting to areas where there was work.
Community	Many initial residents came from poor communities torn apart by the resettlement. They found it difficult to recreate a sense of community, and experienced social and physical isolation; The pressure to just get people off the housing list was far greater than carefully selecting tenants to build a stable and sustainable community; Rapid expansion of local authority house-building and new incentives for house-buying led to couples with children leaving the estate, leaving a surplus of vacant flats.
Economic and social forces	Bad timing due to global economic turndown of 70’s and 80’s. The economic downturn of the 1970s and 1980s impacted the whole country, but had a disproportionately large affect on Ballymun; The heroin epidemic of the 1980s was particularly devastating in Ballymun, the legacy of which lives on to-day.

The Emerging Community

This period also saw the emergence of structures and organisations from within the community to advocate for change, often focused on practical issues of living in Ballymun such as lifts, central heating and amenities, as well as wider issues such as jobs, health and education. During this time, Ballymun developed its strong sense of community and social activism which remains a fundamental feature to-day. Emphasis on self empowerment and advocacy through a loose network of community groups and organisations has resulted in a strong sense of resilience in the face of adversity.

Ballymun regeneration
In 1997 Government funds made it possible for the City Council to create a company to work with the community to develop and implement a plan to transform the housing stock and environment. The decision was made to demolish the flats and build an entire new town from scratch. Ballymun Regeneration Ltd was established to perform planning and implementation.

The Master Plan includes the following strategies: main street strategy, sports and leisure strategy, neighbourhood strategy, economic development strategy and landscape strategy.

The physical environment of Ballymun is in the process of re-development, and visitors who have not been there for a few years are often stunned by the scale and quality of the physical transformation it has undergone.

Where serious social regeneration accompanies the physical, meaningful transformation can be achieved. youngballymun is working alongside the community on this agenda.