Sir, – David McWilliams makes a compelling case for public intervention to spruce up Cork (“Cork could be Bilbao if regenerated by a type of Tidy Towns competition on steroids”, Opinion, Weekend, September 28th).
He mentions Bilbao as the benchmark for urban renewal, It is a city I know well, having had the pleasure of spending a year there on the Erasmus education programme in 1996-97. The finishing touches were being put on the Guggenheim, and the metro had just opened, but the city was still a sooty, post-industrial wasteland.
What Bilbao had then were two visionary mayors in succession – something Cork, or almost all Irish cities for that matter, does not have.
The difference lies in decentralisation and local government.
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Bilbao is not alone in Spain. Málaga has been transformed into a museum-laden cultural mecca, a welcome change from the seedy, postindustrial port city it once was. Again, a visionary mayor has been key to this metamorphosis.
Both cities have metros, despite being smaller than Dublin.
In fact, even Palma in Mallorca, where I now live, has a metro – just one line running from the edge of the old town to the university campus. But it has been built, and it is expanding. Once again, local government was the catalyst for this initiative.
There are pitfalls, such as the potential for white elephants and corruption, which have beset Valencia, for example. But overall, having local administrations, rather than central government, drive urban renewal has enabled Spain’s cities to become the tourist attractions they are today.
I sincerely hope Limerick’s experiment with a directly elected mayor is a success that helps transform the nature of local government in the State. – Yours, etc,
ÁLVARO REYNOLDS,
Mallorca,
Spain.