This research investigates a range of short-term rental accommodation (STRA) models across Australia and their impacts on housing markets and communities. It identifies the policy responses most likely to resolve the competing demands for short- and long-term rental housing. Many communities are concerned about the housing market and neighbourhood impacts of STRA. Platforms like Airbnb have increased demand for residential property and enabled owners to finance housing investment in new ways. Understanding the range of STRA models, provider motivations, and impacts in different metropolitan and regional settings is key to effective policy development and regulation.

In countries where housing development is primarily market-driven, economic imperatives significantly shape the implementation of compact housing policies. By investigating the role of compact housing policies in facilitating apartment development in Ireland, with a focus on the 2018 amendment to the Apartment Guidelines, this article explores the relationship between sustainability objectives and market viability considerations. Through policy analysis and interviews with key stakeholders, this research finds that apartment development facilitated by these policies may undermine certain aspects of sustainable development, particularly social sustainability. The findings suggest that high-density development emerging from viability-oriented compact city policies is not necessarily equivalent to sustainable-led density. This study contributes to ongoing debates about the extent to which market-driven housing development can effectively deliver sustainability objectives, highlighting the need for more nuanced approaches to compact housing policies that better integrate viability considerations with long-term sustainability goals.

This paper examines homeless families' shelter stay records to better understand their patterns of service use and how they exit, or remain, within emergency accommodation. Little is known of how homeless families' stay patterns vary from the general homeless population, or how such variation might be explained by structural or individual factors. The paper utilises a cluster analysis of homeless families stay records from 2012 to 2016 in Dublin, Ireland. The data (n = 2356) is drawn from the 'Pathway Accommodation and Support System,' which provides 'real-time' information on homeless presentation and bed occupancy. The results demonstrate that family homelessness is a significant problem in Ireland, arising from wider challenges in the Irish housing system. However, the majority of homeless families experience a relatively small number of homeless episodes for short periods of time. Most do not exhibit the kinds of complex needs that might necessitate additional social services, but simply require support in accessing affordable housing. Inter-cluster differences were found on the basis of household composition, migrant status, race/ethnicity and the type of emergency accommodation placement. The findings have implications for the operation of homeless accommodation in Ireland, and have relevance for policymakers in similar housing-welfare regimes.

This article examines the impact of neoliberal political–economic orientations on urban planning policies through a case study of Ireland’s Strategic Housing Development (SHD) fast-track planning scheme. By evaluating SHD applications from 2017 to 2021, this study assesses the scheme’s effectiveness in housing development in County Dublin and addresses how neoliberal policies affect planning objectives. The findings reveal that, although the SHD scheme expedited planning approvals, it faced significant challenges, including high rates of judicial review and low commencement rates for approved developments. These issues hindered the scheme’s capacity to address housing shortages effectively. The research highlights that market-driven policies often shape urban development patterns in ways that misalign with policy goals, potentially compromising social equity and long-term sustainability. By exploring the tensions between planning efficiency, industry interests, and broader policy objectives, this study contributes to ongoing debates about the role of neoliberalism in urban planning. It concludes by advocating for a more integrated approach to urban governance—one that balances economic imperatives with social and environmental priorities to promote sustainable and equitable development.

In 2002, the Irish Government launched the National Spatial Strategy, aimed at achieving effective national spatial planning. A lack of political support and the primacy of localism in planning and development led to its demise in 2014. However, in 2018, the government launched the new National Planning Framework, which had compact growth at its core. It is supported politically by central government, is backed by legislation and must be adhered to by the regional and local layers of government. The National Planning Framework was accompanied by planning policies which sought to increase apartment development and to loosen restrictions on urban height, thereby creating the conditions for increasing residential densities. As the National Planning Framework sets out plans to 2040 and is subject to periodic revision, this article examines initial perceptions of its contents and the prospects for its implementation. Simultaneously, the ongoing housing crisis in Ireland impacts directly on planning policies, as the government introduces major market interventions to increase supply, which can conflict or undermine existing planning policies. This research is based on a critical reading of key compact growth planning policies and is augmented by semi-structured interviews with key players in policy implementation. These interviews analyse the viewpoints of senior built environment professionals who are involved in the implementation of compact growth policies in Dublin. The results indicate the complexity and difficulty of implementing compact growth policies where there has been a legacy of urban sprawl and where the attempts at centralisation lead to tensions with local planning. Starting again is not easy.

Ireland is beginning to emerge from an extended period of austerity following the global economic collapse of 2008. In this time, private sector investment in historic urban cores all but halted, and state funding for heritage was dramatically cut. However, both the state and civil society have placed a new emphasis on the potential of built heritage to act as a driver of economic recovery, reflected in both local and national policies and strategies relating to the conservation and regeneration of historic urban cores. Through a discourse analysis of local documentary material, and of semi-structured interviews with a range of key factors involved in the management of two historic urban cores in Ireland (Limerick and Waterford), the paper explores how conservation policy has been fashioned to suit its deployment as an instrument of local and national economic recovery within the context of entrenched entrepreneurial urbanism, and how local stakeholders have responded. The paper concludes on the implications for both conservation policy-specifically tensions between traditional conservation approaches and more flexible instruments utilised in heritage-led regeneration.

This chapter argues that Ireland's property boom and bubble during the 'Celtic Tiger' (1994–2007) with its unprecedented levels of speculative housing development, enabled by global flows of finance, provides a salutary tale of massive, unregulated, and unplanned suburbanisation and suburban transformation. During this time, residential development transitioned from suburban dream to suburban nightmare with Ireland scarred by 'ghost' housing estates, skyrocketing debt, mortgage arrears, and negative equity. Particular attention is focused on the Greater Dublin Area, which is home to around 40 per cent of the Irish population, as it is here that the Celtic Tiger economy gave birth to a 'new' suburban constellation within Ireland, and, where the Global Financial Crisis wreaked havoc across the housing development market and unsettled the lives of many new homeowners.

Where conservation evolves in contentious political contexts, it can be framed by competing priorities reflecting collective remembering, cultural politics and identities intertwined with the symbolic representation of the built environment. Ireland provides a unique lens to examine these themes as the only western European country to experience colonial domination, which forms a key aspect of the context for the evolution of conservation policy and practice. The aim of this paper is to chart the shifting representations of built heritage in Ireland, and their relevance in the emergence of conservation and heritage policy, set in the context of broader social, political and economic change over time. This is achieved, firstly, by a review of secondary source material to identify key events, eras and trends. Discourses of heritage are then examined in debates of the Oireachtas (the Irish legislature), identifying tensions around the emergence of conservation in a historic environment largely associated with colonial power and identity. These shifting discourses are then related to policy evolution, particularly the late adoption of a legislative framework for conservation (in 1999). Finally, conclusions are developed to identify wider lessons from the production of urban conservation priorities in the context of contested heritage.

In this paper, we examine how conservation-planning and local regeneration in historic urban cores have been re-shaped under austerity conditions and how local planners and local government more generally have negotiated or navigated this emerging austerity terrain. We seek to contribute to wider debates on ‘austerity urbanism’, by examining the impacts of austerity on local planning and how planning officials have attempted to moderate austerity largely imposed by central government (entrenched roll-back neoliberalism) but often through the further roll-out of neoliberalism in local growth strategies. Drawing on the experience of three Irish urban centres, we examine efforts to ‘sell’ the historic city. Both nationally and within the three case study areas, a common overarching theme was evident in the initial post-crisis response to urban development: an emphasis on utilising heritage as a potential economic regeneration pathway. However, while drawing on intangible heritage and heritage narratives for place-branding, the actual protection of tangible built heritage assets was undermined through a greater emphasis on ‘flexible’ planning responses to managing heritage, which seek to minimise barriers to development.

This paper focuses upon the practice of conservation applied through the planning systems of three European countries, Ireland, the Netherlands and England, here termed conservation-planning. The values and validated practice of conservation-planning are considered in terms of the concept of Authorised Heritage Discourses (AHDs) that are internationally-shaped but nationally articulated in each country, and by a distinct conservation-planning social entity that may be described as an 'assemblage'. The post-2008 period has seen over-arching economic similarities in economic and political forces affecting conservation-planning practice in each country. In each case public-sector austerity measures have been accompanied by ideological re-positionings over the role of the state and a greater emphasis upon 'selling the historic city' has been accompanied by a declining public-sector capacity to manage change within the frame of traditionally established AHDs. The partial withdrawal of the state has in each case resulted in adjustments in the construction of the assemblage and thus in the 'ownership' of the AHDs with a greater involvement of the private sector in these processes. Despite similarities in conservation discourse, shaped by an international AHD, differences exist between the countries considered, which we can better understand by reference to the conservation-planning assemblage in each country.

Arising out of a decade of economic recession and austerity, Ireland is currently in the grip of a severe housing crisis marked by weak housing supply, rapidly rising house prices and rents and a dramatic increase in homelessness that is placing severe pressure on the State's emergency accommodation system. This article utilises data from a national homelessness services database (PASS system), which captures live information on service user interactions for all state funded NGO and local authority homeless services, to examine the patterns of emergency accommodation use by the homeless population in Dublin City. The paper applies a k-means cluster analysis to determine different subgroups of Dublin's homeless population (n = 12,734) and analyses their rate of movement through homeless services between the years 2012 and 2016. A temporary cluster (78%) experienced a small number of homeless episodes for relatively short periods of time, while an episodic cluster (10%) experienced multiple homeless episodes also for a short period of time. The chronic cluster (12%) experienced a small number of homeless episodes but with long stays in emergency shelter. Results for Ireland show patterns similar to those reported in the US, Canada and Denmark, where a small number of chronic users of homeless accommodation account for a disproportionately large share of resources (i.e. 50% of total bed nights). The findings have implications for the operation of emergency homeless accommodation in Ireland and, in particular, the targeting of interventions and the re-directing of resources away from emergency accommodation responses towards a more effective emergency accommodation system for all stakeholders.

In less than 20 years the housing system in China has been transformed from one based predominantly on the public provision of housing to a market-based system, to the extent that more than 80% of households in urban China are homeowners. The sheer scale of this change, compressed into such a short time, is impressive. However, the move to a commodified system has not been problem free. Indeed, the twin issues of displacement and, more generally, affordability are coming increasingly to the fore, resulting in significant policy shifts since 2010 toward the promotion of low-end housing for lower middle- and low-income groups. This article examines these issues through a detailed analysis of the implementation of the indemnificatory housing policy in Nanjing, and highlights the complex and often contradictory nature of this policy in practice.

Background PASS is a national shared services database that captures live information on service user interactions with all state funded NGO and local authority homeless services. In the Dublin region, which accommodates in excess of 70% of the national homeless population, this data was mined and cleansed in order to carry out a k-mean cluster analysis. Objective The objective was to determine the rate of movement through homeless services and the consumption of resources of different clusters cohorts and to compare these findings with other regions internationally. Methods Following extensive data preparation, the Kuhn and Culhane (1998) k-mean cluster analysis was applied in 2017 to five years of PASS data (2012-2016) and results categorised to align to their typology of homelessness. Findings Results for Dublin showed patterns similar to those reported in the US, Canada and Denmark, with approximately 80% of services users transitioning quickly through services. These transitional service users accounted for just over one third of total bed-nights while the remaining 20% of episodic and long-term service users accounted for almost two thirds of the bed-nights over the five years. Uniquely, the analysis also considered the patterns of engagement of people sleeping rough and results revealed similar but more extreme patterns with 86% of those rough sleeping accounting for only 28% of outreach contacts with a small number adults accounting for over 70% of all street contacts. Conclusion The results from the analysis of administrative data were used to inform operations so appropriate ‘Housing First’ responses were developed for those episodically or chronically experiencing homelessness and engaged in sleeping rough.

The urban landscape normally changes only very slowly. The enormous investment of labour power and construction materials that each building embodies is generally amortised slowly, buildings paying back that investment over a very long period of time. Thus, the physical environment appears to be relatively fi xed. Nevertheless, it does undergo change: imperceptibly at times, more rapidly at others; more quickly in some districts than in others. The profusion of cranes punctuating Ireland’s skyline over the past 15 years has been testimony to the rapidity with which the city has been changing in recent times. Indeed, many areas of the inner city have undergone a scale of transformation unseen since they were first developed during the city’s eighteenth-century ‘Golden Age’.

This chapter examines the nature of the affordability problem that the housing boom has created and investigates some of the key policy responses to this crisis of affordability, focusing in particular at the provision of subsidised affordable housing. In particular, however, consumer can see the extraordinarily rapid increases in both new and second hand house prices in Dublin. On the economic side, low interest rates for entry to the EMU, high increases in employment, and wage and incomes increases from a growing economy put increasing pressure on the demand for housing. D. Downey argues that for households with above average earnings, affordability can mean a price barrier to entering home ownership that may lead to households putting the purchase of a house on hold and relying on the private rented sector. However, one of the key responses by government has been to introduce a number of schemes that provide subsidised affordable housing for purchase, mainly to first-time buyers.

This chapter explores the nature of residents' associations and role in communities in the city of Dublin. It reviews some of the literature relating to social capital as a means of exploring the potential of residents' associations to act as network builders in communities, bonding the community and providing a sense of shared endeavour, while also linking the community to other actors and institutions. The few arenas that enables an opportunity for this layer of informal residents' groups and citizens to become involved in urban and environmental management is the statutory physical planning system. At neighbourhood or community level there is a sense that the interaction and trust that exemplifies social capital and which knits or glues communities together will facilitate good neighbourliness and will inspire collective action to achieve shared goals. In Inchicore the residents' association utilised their social capital to obtain their desired outcome, in the absence of significant amounts of cultural or financial capital.

Compared to the extensive assistance afforded to Ireland's banks since 2008, interventions to assist troubled mortgagors have been limited, with Government and the banks strongly resisting debt write-downs in favour of a policy of mortgage forbearance. Forbearance involves restructuring a debt's contractual terms to ease a debtor's repayment schedule. In practice, forbearance has been a strategy of 'extend and pretend' where lenders have been slow to offer restructurings or have relied on temporary interventions that impose minimal costs upon them. Forbearance benefited lenders by negating the pressure to enforce possession of devalued property, while ensuring borrowers remain solely responsible for outstanding debts. Despite the emphasis on forbearance, few studies have examined borrowers' experiences of forbearance, particularly their experience of communicating their difficulties with their lenders. This paper first utilises national data to examine forbearance as a strategic response by the Irish authorities to the mortgage arrears crisis. Second, mortgage-stressed borrowers' experiences of forbearance are examined using data drawn from a survey (n = 433) of mortgagors which dealt specifically with mortgage payment issues following the crash. The article documents a shift in lenders' arrears management strategies from 2013, with an increased emphasis on longer term restructurings but also an increasing appetite for repossession.