From Edge City to City Edge

Abstract

This paper challenges inherited twentieth-century assumptions of suburbia by teasing out existing interrelationships between the city centre and its peripheries. This is done through a content analysis of promotional material and spatial plans guiding the development of 'City Edge', a proposed 700-hectare regeneration scheme over an industrial development in the periphery of Dublin, Ireland. The analysis of new land-use ambitions for City Edge elucidates tensions around the 'highest and best use' of land, the role of non-local speculative approaches, and how the demand for housing in global cities, combined with an ideal of 'mixed-use' is reshaping suburban landscapes. In so doing, we draw upon the concepts of 'blandscape' and 'blendscape' to examine some contradictory forces at work in shaping contemporary suburban space.