Bucolic bliss or inner city convenience? Catherine Cleary meets two families who wouldn't consider living outside the city centre, and one couple who moved back to town after a spell in suburbia
KAETHE BURT-O'DEA
LONGTIME RESIDENT OF STONYBATTER
On her street in Dublin's Stonybatter, PhD student Kaethe Burt-O'Dea has seen the houses go from places where nobody but the elderly wanted to live to revamped city pads for lawyers and financial planners.
After 12 years in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, where she was an organic farmer and horse breeder, she raised four children in the terraced brick house. Her eldest is 31, and with a household of six at times over the years things were a tight squeeze. Now it is the "perfect space" for herself and her youngest daughter. If she could have afforded it, she would have bought a bigger house, but only in the city centre.
"I don't think you need a lot of outdoor space to make the city family-friendly. It's the type of spaces you provide, the intimate spaces rather than the extensive ones. Looking at places such as Meeting House Square, in Temple Bar, it works well on market day but is a bit bleak on other days."
She would love to see urban corridors of green, with paths for cycling and walking, and areas for growing food and drinking coffee, rather than Richard Rogers-style Mediterranean plazas, "which only work if you have a Mediterranean climate. Here the only people out in the spaces are engaged in antisocial activities, such as drinking or smoking, because they can withstand the temperatures."
After growing up in suburbia outside New York city, Burt-O'Dea could not contemplate repeating the pattern in Dublin, even when she started a family. "Inner-city life for me is about culture. It's ideal as a single parent to have theatre, music and film available.
"The more we move into the model of strip development, where you have to get in a car to get a bottle of milk, the more people become reclusive. They throw fewer dinner parties, watch more television, are no longer active members of groups."
For the past year, a small strip of soil that started out as a compost facility at the bottom of her street has become a hub of community. With the permission of the letting agent acting for the landlord who owns the house and small garden, she and several neighbours have been tending the railed corner plot and have installed a large compost roller to let householders on the street recycle their vegetable waste.
Just one pot has been broken in the year since the garden opened, and many of the vegetables are being fertilised with rabbit droppings from a resident rabbit breeder who keeps dozens of rabbits in his house.
The garden, which had been a dumping ground for bottles, cans and syringes, is growing an impressive array of vegetables and fruit, "although it's really about cultivating community rather than food", Burt-O'Dea says. Some of the produce will probably be eaten at the twice-yearly street parties. And last Halloween an impressive set of pumpkin lanterns was grown. Because of the garden's position on the corner, "you're guaranteed to have a conversation with someone. With a private garden there would not be the same pleasure. Without even trying, you meet all sorts of people."
JOEY AND CATHERINE FEELY
MOVED FROM BALBRIGGAN BACK TO DUBLIN 15
Joey Feely, a Dubliner, made a dramatic U-turn in his plans after trying the commuting lifestyle for four months. He and his wife, Catherine, bought a house off-plans in the north Co Dublin town of Balbriggan two years ago. The 30km (20 miles) to the city centre seemed manageable, but with drop-offs in Finglas, where Catherine is a primary-school teacher, and back to his artist's studio in Balbriggan, and evening trips to town for night courses or to visit his father, Joey was clocking up 130km (80 miles) some days. Train fares and petrol costs began to add up to €200 a month.
Out one night, in the city centre with friends, Joey began to do some figures. Adding the €200 a month commuting costs to a mortgage could get him somewhere more central, they reasoned. Four months after moving to Balbriggan, he and his wife sold the house and bought a two-bedroom apartment in Royal Canal Park, in Dublin 15, close to his father's home on Navan Road and a few minutes' drive, or a manageable cycle, from Catherine's job.
"One of the big factors was a documentary we saw last October called The End of Suburbia," Joey says. "It changed our lives." The Canadian documentary, made in 2004, predicted the downfall of the American suburban lifestyle and raised the spectre of the suburbs as the ghettos of the future after oil stocks go into decline.
The move means Joey can return to college in the autumn. He has no regrets about their change of heart and return to the city. "There is one difference I do miss: the niceties. When we were in Balbriggan people in the bank smiled at you and talked to you; not in Dublin."
At his local supermarket in Balbriggan, he once went searching for rhubarb. Someone passed the query to the customer-service desk, and one of the shop's employees offered to bring some in from his back garden the next day. "You'd never get that in the city."
GARY LYSAGHT AND MICHELLE FAGAN
EXTENDING IN THE LIBERTIES AND STAYING N THE CITY CENTRE
Architects Gary Lysaght and Michelle Fagan have adapted their two-up, two-down terrace in the Liberties to make the most of space and light for their two sons, three-year-old Saul and six-year-old Jude. When they moved in, six years ago, the house was typically laid out, with living space downstairs and two bedrooms above.
Their initial plans for a study, bedroom and bathroom downstairs, with bright airy living space on the first floor, were rewritten slightly when Fagan found out she was pregnant. The study became the baby's room and is now the boys' bedroom. They have just been given planning permission for a small first-storey deck at the back of their upstairs kitchen, surrounded by opal glass to protect the privacy of neighbours.
With Fagan's family based in Newbridge, Co Kildare, there was a strong pull to the suburbs when her first son was born, but neither she nor Lysaght wanted to leave the city centre. "We've enjoyed it here," she says, despite a few problems typical of inner-city living. Their car has been a favourite for break-ins, because it is an easy model to crack. On the flipside, their monthly petrol bill is about €40 for a short school run and a creche drop-off and collection. "There's no point in having the 4x4 or the second car. Our small car is incredibly fuel-efficient."
There are playgrounds near St Patrick's Cathedral and in Harold's Cross, and the gardens of Dublin Castle are a favourite retreat from the streets. Weekend trips to Newbridge give the boys "a full day in the garden hitting things with sticks".
But a vacant park just a few minutes walk from their home, where a much-loathed steel sculpture was once located, would make an ideal playground and community garden.
At just 62 sq m (670sq ft), their cleverly-designed house is smaller than many of the apartments being built in the area. "When you are in a small house you do tend to get out and use the city a bit more." Now that the boys are bigger, they envisage a move in the next two years, but not to the suburbs. They hope to develop a city-centre site.