Planning by Crisis

Describing itself as ‘an organisation with an open membership, founded on cooperative lines, to afford facilities for the study and investigation of those problems of Civics which affect the lives of all people’, the Civics Institute of Ireland was established in 1914. That same year, it organised an international competition ‘to elicit designs and reports of a tentative nature on a plan for ‘Greater Dublin’ calculated to suggest measures for the development of the City, and especially to outline proposals for meeting the housing needs of the population’.

A total of eight entries were accepted for consideration by the three adjudicators, pioneering town planner Patrick Geddes, Dublin City Architect Charles J. McCarthy, and American landscape architect and planning consultant, John Nolen. Frank Arthur (usually abbreviated to F. A.) Cushing Smith was the sole US entrant and one of only two single-person entrants. He submitted three sheets of drawings for consideration. The first was this General Plan for the development of Dublin. The second expanded on elements of the General Plan, including a proposed new civic centre running from City Hall via a new plaza on the site of Parliament Street and a widened Capel Street to a new Catholic Cathedral on a circus at the junction of Capel Street and Bolton Street. The third drawing detailed no less than nine different house types, ranging from two-bed bungalows to two-storey apartment blocks, all designed in a hybrid Arts and Crafts/Beaux-Arts style.

The outbreak of the First World War delayed the completion of the competition process. It was only in September 1916, as a deliberate contribution to the debates about rebuilding and urban planning swirling around Dublin in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, that the results were finally announced. Cushing Smith was one of four entrants given honourable mention by the adjudicators. The winning scheme by Patrick Abercrombie, Sydney Kelly and Arthur Kelly was finally published in 1922 under the optimistic title Dublin of the Future.

Dublin’s Housing Crisis, 1900–1930. From Tenements to Garden Suburbs and Modern Flats

Anthony Reddy

In the midst of our current housing crisis, it is sobering to realise that for Ireland, and for Dublin in particular, housing has been a recurring problem for over two centuries. Indeed, as serious as our current crisis is, it pales in comparison to the situation which existed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

There was a complex interplay between socio-economic decline, housing crises, and urban planning efforts in Dublin from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, by which point Dublin possessed some of the worst urban housing conditions in Europe. The city was notorious for its overcrowded tenements, high mortality rates, and repeated building collapses. Between 1900 and 1930, however, Dublin underwent a profound transformation in its housing landscape. This period witnessed the slow reform of the nineteenth‑century tenement system and the emergence of municipal housing, garden suburbs, and modern planning principles. The crisis was not merely architectural or demographic in nature; it was the outcome of deep‑seated economic decline, political paralysis, and social inequality. Structural neglect created extreme urban suffering; it was sustained state intervention which ultimately addressed the issue and reshaped the city.

Dublin’s housing crises cannot be understood without reference to the city’s long economic decline following the Act of Union in 1801. The removal of the Irish Parliament drained Dublin of political influence. Wealthy households, professionals, and investors gradually abandoned the city centre, depriving it of capital and employment. Unlike Belfast, which benefited from linen production and shipbuilding, Dublin failed to industrialise on a comparable scale. Employment was dominated by casual labour, small workshops, and domestic service, offering little stability for the working poor.

As the predominantly Unionist wealthy merchant, professional and business classes departed the urban area within the Royal and Grand Canals, Dublin’s built fabric deteriorated. Particularly in the north inner city, the Georgian houses built for the eighteenth‑century elite were no longer economically viable as single‑family residences. Instead of being replaced or comprehensively redeveloped, they were cheaply subdivided by speculative landlords into tenements, generally one‑room dwellings each occupied by a single family (15.1). This process maximised profit while requiring minimal investment. Rooms typically lacked running water, cooking facilities, or ventilation. Tenants shared a small number of outdoor taps and latrines, often located in yards or basements. These facilities were frequently blocked, overflowing, or inaccessible, forcing residents to dispose of waste in yards, stairwells, or nearby streets. Over time, maintenance was neglected and the buildings began to decay (15.2).

A month after the Housing Inquiry report was published, in March 1914 the Civics Institute of Ireland was established. In August 1914 the Civics Institution organised the Dublin Civic Exhibition, an event which introduced contemporary planning theory to Irish audiences. Influenced by the work of Patrick Geddes, the Exhibition emphasised the importance of comprehensive surveys linking housing, health, employment, and environment. Geddes argued that cities should be understood organically, with planning guided by social needs rather than speculative profit.

Alongside the Exhibition, an International Town Planning Competition was launched to envision Dublin’s future. The competition produced ambitious proposals, with entries coming from as far away as the United States (15.4), but the promulgation of these ideas was delayed by the outbreak of the First World War. It was not until the aftermath of the 1916 Rising that the entries were exhibited, and it would take until 1922 for the winning entry to be published under the title Dublin of the Future. The winning scheme by architect and town planner Patrick Abercrombie, with surveyor Sydney Kelly and his brother Arthur Kelly, advocated extensive slum clearance, low‑density garden suburbs, improved traffic circulation, and a rationalised civic centre modelled on Haussmann’s urban interventions in central Paris (15.5). These ideas challenged the incremental approach that had previously dominated municipal policy, as urban reformers increasingly embraced modern planning ideas that viewed housing as part of a wider social and spatial system rather than an isolated technical problem.

The establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 marked a turning point in housing policy. The new government inherited a city burdened by severe shortages and dangerous buildings. Housing reform became both a social necessity and a symbol of state legitimacy. Although resources were limited in the aftermath of civil war, the government recognised that inaction would perpetuate humanitarian disaster. The 1922 ‘Million Pound Scheme’ of the first Free State government sought to stimulate construction and employment while addressing housing need. One of its most significant outcomes was the Marino estate, built between 1924 and 1929 (15.7). Marino represented Dublin’s first large‑scale garden suburb, combining low density, green space, and high building standards. Houses included indoor sanitation, baths, and gardens, offering a dramatic improvement on tenement housing.

While Marino demonstrated the potential of state‑supported housing, it also exposed important limitations. Many houses were sold rather than rented at low cost, excluding the poorest families. As a result, the inner‑city slums remained heavily populated throughout the 1920s. The garden suburb improved conditions for a segment of the working class but did not yet resolve the crisis at its core. The experience highlighted the need for more direct municipal intervention and greater subsidies if slum clearance was to succeed on a meaningful scale. These lessons would shape policy in the following decade.

A decisive shift occurred after 1932 with the election of a government committed to large‑scale social reform. New housing legislation significantly increased subsidies for local‑authority building, particularly for rehousing families displaced by slum clearance. City Architect Horace T. O’Rourke implemented a series of initiatives to address the challenge and meet the Government’s housing programme. He expanded Dublin Corporation’s architectural department and created the role of Housing Architect, a position to which Herbert Simms was appointed in late 1932. O’Rourke and Simms oversaw one of the most ambitious municipal housing programmes in Europe. Thousands of houses were constructed in suburban estates such as Crumlin, Cabra, Drimnagh, and Kimmage (15.8). These developments provided three‑bedroom houses with gardens, modern sanitation, and access to light and air.