From Chimera to Catastrophe: Speculative Urbanization and Contemporary Irish Culture

A house can be haunted by those who were never thereIf there was where they were missed. …A life can be haunted by what it never wasIf that life were merely glimpsed.

louis macneice, "selva oscura," solstices (1961)

The failed residential and commercial spaces emerging from Ireland's speculative bubble in the later years of the Celtic Tiger—particularly suburban ghost estates—have become a potent nexus for a range of artistic, political, and media discourses that anatomize the causes and effects of Ireland's financial crisis in 2008. These moribund and often uncanny architectural ruins evidencing the nation's economic plight have functioned as both emblems of crisis and as spaces of emancipatory artistic potential within the national culture and consciousness.

This article explores responses by Irish literary and visual artists to the phenomenon of speculative urbanization during the Celtic Tiger—and the role of such speculation as a primary cause of Ireland's economic collapse in the post-2008 era. Although my analysis draws on a systemic critique of the country's evolving political economy, it also explores how contemporary artists have not only focused on that economy, but explored, in the words of one recent critic, "the world views, ideologies, desires, and feelings that serve to make it real" (Kelly 207). In particular, I examine the artistic focus on outer-urban and suburban locales that suffered some of the most egregious consequences of speculative urbanization and convey the catastrophic inadequacy of such development as a mechanism for economic growth. In interrogating these themes, my discussion turns to a range of literary and visual works, a choice reflecting the depth and variety of Ireland's artistic responses to its changing forms of contemporary urbanization. This approach also illuminates contours of the country's culture made possible only when considering such literary and visual art through an interdisciplinary lens.

Ireland and Speculative Urbanization

In the opening years of the twenty-first century Ireland's economic growth became increasingly reliant on property and financial speculation. This was a significant change from the early phase of Celtic Tiger growth (1993–2002), which was characterized by increased productivity and rising exports. This economic shift was precipitated by the convergence of a range of national and international politicoeconomic processes and forces. These included Ireland's adoption of the Euro in 2002, improvements to transport infrastructure aided by European funding, the implementation of a range of government tax incentives and interventions designed to stimulate residential and commercial property development, as well as the increasing availability of cheaper and more accessible credit within the European banking system. Other contributing factors included a laxity in the regulation of the Irish banking sector; a laissez-faire system of planning; and, according to some analysts, "a political system in which localism, clientelism, and cronyism existed to varying degrees across the modes and scales of governance" (Kitchin et al. 1070). These changes produced a residential and commercial property bubble that was further inflated by the land monopoly maintained by a small group of wealthy land speculators.

As a consequence of the developments outlined above, the economic status and meaning of property—particularly residential housing—began to shift within Irish society. Increasingly, property became defined not as a place to live or work, but as a financial instrument in an ongoing process of wealth accumulation. This conception of real estate as an investment vehicle was rooted in a perceived certainty that economic stability and growth would continue ad infinitum. But according to Hyman Minsky's theorization of financial instability, when such a consensus develops in capitalist economies, the income-debt relations for economic units begin to become increasingly asymmetrical and risky. Minksy identifies three forms of debt component in his model: "hedge" finance, in which the borrower's income can cover both the interest and principal payments; "speculative" finance, in which the borrower's cash flow covers only interest payments; and "Ponzi" finance, in which the cash flows cover neither the principal nor the interest—and in which borrowing is based on a conviction that...