Keaveney, Karen
(2009)
Contested Ruralities: Housing in the Irish countryside.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
The countryside has undergone major transformations over recent decades as a result
of global economic restructuring, state intervention in agriculture, and changing
demographies. These changes are often contested and the source of conflict and
tensions, which in Ireland have manifested in the debate on living in the countryside.
The Irish rural housing debate is an illustration of wider rural change in a country with a
strong tradition of farming on small to medium sized holdings, each owner-occupied. In
addition, the media popularisation of the debate, rather than establishing the facts of
rural housing, has rested In anecdote and emphasised the emotive. The housing
debate strongly contests issues, such as who has the right to live in the countryside,
how traditional settlement patterns can be sustained into the future - and indeed, what
these traditional patterns are to begin with - and what interventions should be made in
relation to rural housing developments. In order to inform the contested discourse of
living in the countryside this thesis adopts a multi-scale, multi-method approach for the
examination of rural housing in Ireland that investigates the complex relationship
between settlement patterns, policy interventions and community dynamics. This
involves an examination of broad scale, national data for dispersed dwellings in the
countryside. The second stage of the methodology explores the institutional context
within which Irish rural settlement patterns operate, critically assessing the hierarchy of
spatial planning policies and processes from European to local levels. Finally, the third
stage investigates local, small scale housing processes in three contrasting study
areas. The overall objective of the thesis is to gather together a body of evidence that
will advance our understanding of the nature and characteristics of contemporary rural
housing In Ireland, thus facilitating the advancement of the rural housing debate in
Ireland and contributing to the wider literature.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(PhD)
|
| Keywords: |
Contested Ruralities; Irish countryside; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography |
| Item ID: |
5062 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
27 Jun 2014 12:31 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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