IT MIGHT BE a reasonable expectation to find somewhere to sit in the sun or shade on O’Connell Street, Dublin, Ireland’s capital city.
A series of photographs by Dominic Daly taken as lockdown was lifted reveal that sitting down required imagination. Daly’s photographs present people, many still masked, sitting on statues; leaning on telecom boxes, perching on the GPO’s columns; straddling bicycle racks. No one sits on a bench because none were available then and three years later, none are available now.
So, what is the issue with benches? Recent reports tell of benches being removed because “of the behaviour they attract”. One was removed from the canal near Portobello and another outside the Powerscourt Town House centre disappeared overnight. Of course, all cities contain challenging behaviours, but to strip a city of seating is curious and an impoverished, pessimistic view of a city and those who hope to call it home.
Gathering on or at a bench is an ordinary event, but benches have a role to play in our social and mental health. Benches are the cheapest of infrastructure, encouraging people to go somewhere and wait there, thus participating in city life. As Mary Law notes, “Through participation, we acquire skills and competencies, connect with others and our communities and find purpose and meaning in life.” A 2010 review showed that increasing opportunities for social interaction resulted in an improved sense of people’s social capital and better mental health.
Yevgeniy Kotenko documented 10 years of life on one bench in Ukraine, revealing it as a place for lovers to meet, friends to gather, or watch the world go by. Others suggest the provision of benches in public spaces is an effective social and cultural strategy for the inclusion and welcome of refugees.
Decades of promoting Dublin as a site of private enterprise, endless consumption and market-led housing, have all but traded the reality that a city and its people are in a delicate, supportive relationship of mutual care and respect.
There are many reasons people live in cities, but once in them, people and city will thrive if the city takes care of them and if people are enabled to take care of it back. Dublin is no different.
Benches are small in scale and of course, cities are far more complex. Yet, how benches are debated, viewed and ultimately removed by those in charge of the city, begs the question if Dublin today is a city that cares.
The evidence of the opposite mounts and after almost 30 years in Dublin, I have rarely felt the city so menacing or heard people so despondent. When it comes to care, actions speak louder than words: prioritising streets on the South over streets on the North; stopping street cleaning; removing a bench because the ‘wrong’ people might linger; discouraging kids from playing; removing trees; putting the provision of public toilets out to private tender; thinking it is fine that buildings today can just fall down; letting buildings lie vacant while people are homeless; legislating to make living rooms as small as can be, shrinking people’s spatial lives and potential; renting public squares as yards to private builders; together these acts by design or omission, bit-by-bit erode the quality of the built environment, but – and this is a point little discussed – they also erode our humanity.
These acts and more have together built a malevolent momentum that is prompting people to give up, to avoid places and people they feel are not safe.
Frustrated and stripped of all civic pride, people find it easier to withdraw their commitment to their place, limiting their participation in city life; instead, they look elsewhere, to Paris or Copenhagen for guidance.
Paris is a city often mentioned in discussions on the future of Dublin, particularly when it comes to a directly elected Mayor. A Mayor, who can offer leadership and vision for the next century is a compelling idea. But the Paris Mayor has impressive systems, support, power and, in 2017 a reported budget of €7.7 billion at their disposal. A Dublin Mayor needs more than the title to succeed. In Paris too there are a total of 34 Deputy Mayors, each of whom takes individual responsibility for things such as architecture, urban planning, housing, public construction and sites, transport, gender equality, tourism, nightlife, LGBTQI+ people and more. In 2020 the Mayor’s office gave €2.4m to the Pavillon d’Arsenale, which it funds annually. The Arsenale is Paris’s own venue for architecture and urban design and runs a non-stop talks and exhibition program to advance engagement and debate on local and international issues relating to Paris’s past, present and future.
Noting a drop-off in people’s engagement in democracy, the Mayor began ‘participatory budgeting’. In 2017, €70m was available to individuals and communities for projects to change their own area. And while Anne Hildago, Paris’s current Mayor, famously capitalised on a car-free post-Covid city to rid the city of more cars than ever, it is fair to say the often-controversial, locally divisive plans for a bike-led, car-free city, more trees and parks, riverside beaches and a healthy, green environment for which Paris is justifiably lauded, began decades ago under Bertrand Danelö and years of successive, socialist, political focus.
If nothing else, Paris reminds us that urban change and growing civic pride and commitment is slow, hard work, demanding both vision and tenacity. If Dublin desires a Mayor, they cannot ride in solo on the Luas, the other carriages must be packed with reinforcements. Among other things, Dublin needs strong, well-funded local government; meaningful, inclusive and patient public participation and a venue or house to advance the culture of architecture for local inhabitants and visitors alike.
This generation’s ‘care plan’ for the glorious city of Dublin needs to be written and the priority is clear: national and local collective civic pride in the city must be respected, restored and sustained. And to stand up and care now for Dublin, might be as simple as just sitting down.
Emmett Scanlon is an architect and the Director of the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF), Ireland’s independent organisation for the advancement of culture and discourse in architecture.
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