What are the Factors that Support Sustainable Communities? A Case Study of an Inner-City Flats Complex.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine an inner-city complex with a view to finding out what are the factors that support sustainable communities. To find out to what extent do people in a social housing complex have a sense of agency and identify positively with the complex. These flats have just been rejuvenated and appear to be very stable and settled. However as this is the object of investigation and not a prior given this criterion can only be applied in advance in a rough fashion. Some issues in particular emerge from the literature as being crucial in establishing a basis for investigation, a sense of place or place attachment, the social composition, the physical configuration, the nature and type of interactions that take place there, the networks of support/social and economic, collective mobilisation and the effects of urban renewal on the flats. My endeavour is to further understanding of the way individuals living in social housing construct a personal identity tied to place and to contest alternative meanings, degradations, and the stigma of social housing. Whether by conscious political design or institutional discrimination, social housing represents according to Massey and Kanaiaupuni (1993,pl20), a “key institutional mechanism for concentrating large numbers of people within a small geographical space”, intensifying the problems of social isolation and disadvantage. The perception of social housing in Ireland is seen as inferior and generally negative, often stigmatising residents with pejorative labels. In the public eye, inner-city social housing is for people going nowhere characterized by social political and economic marginality. Yet public and scholarly accounts that focus almost exclusively on the social pathologies within social housing often overshadow and direct attention away from residents efforts to create a meaningful place and community. My aim is to examine if there is a positive side to social housing that challenges the perception of local Authority tenants as no hopers and to see if residents in this flat complex have a sense of themselves as agents and as members of a community bound up with a sense of identity and place