I see seven towers, but only one way out", Bono sings on one of U2's earlier albums, The Joshua Tree. Demolition is the only way out for Ballymun, the State's failed experiment in high-rise public housing.
"The breaking-down of Pearse Tower, the first of the seven to go, into bite-sized chunks was marked on Friday evening by a wake "to remember the history and the sadness of life here", in the words of Mr Ray Yeates, artistic director of the local Axis arts centre.
And life in the "brave new world" of Ballymun was sad and stressful. Just imagine being a young mother with small children on the 15th floor of a tower block where the lifts do not work - as they frequently didn't throughout the brief, 35-year life of this, the bleakest of our housing estates.
The 12,000 people living in Ballymun are all getting bright new homes, designed by some of the best architects in Ireland. Six hundred families have already moved into these homes and, according to the Taoiseach, a further 1,000 will be rehoused by the end of this year. All in all, the renewal programme being overseen by Ballymun Regeneration Ltd involves an investment of some €1 billion, which itself is a measure of the gargantuan scale of the initial mistake.
Some of this money will come from the private sector to provide homes for owner-occupiers and apartments for students at nearby Dublin City University. This should assist in achieving a more balanced community in the area. Indeed, broadening the social mix is one of BRL's most important objectives.
We have created far too many social ghettos in Ireland. Ballymun may be the most notorious, but there are many others. In truth, we are one of the most ghettoised societies in Europe - rich, middle class or poor, nearly all of us live in enclaves, whether privileged or deprived.
How many people in Foxrock would be able to find Fettercairn, or even locate it on a map? In this respect, Dublin is much more like Boston than Berlin. It is certainly nothing like Helsinki, where millionaires in penthouses can quite happily share the same building as single mothers on social welfare.
We may never reach such an egalitarian plateau, but it is a prospect we might contemplate while considering why there is such a deep level of alienation out there in the estates. Society, the way we relate to each other, must count for something.