Irish Futures || What Becomes of Rural Ireland?

What Becomes of Rural Ireland?Author(s): Dominic StevensSource: The Irish Review (1986-), No. 31, Irish Futures (Spring - Summer, 2004), pp. 74-78Published by: Cork University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29736136 .

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What/?eeWes of

Rural Ireland?

DOMINIC STEVENS

Now

Rural

development is at a point of heated debate in Ireland. Played out

between the planning profession, environmental groups and the peo?

ple most affected by policy decisions ? those who actually live and work in

rural Ireland ? it has been polarized in the media to a point that the argu? ment is now reduced to:

1. Any development is good (people living in rural Ireland). 2. All development is bad (environmental groups).

For me, a rather silent observer, the most interesting thing about the debate

is that it is giving a voice to the up until now 'silent majority' of rural

dwellers. Could it be that what we are witnessing is the dawn of a new

movement?

As an architect, one of my starting points for each project I take on is a

careful examination of what the function of the building to be designed is.

If the Irish landscape of the future is to be designed, we must thus decide

what function we wish to assign to it. What is rural Ireland for? For looking

at, an example of natural beauty to be preserved as much as is possible in its

present state? For farming and the production of food? For the production of energy? A place to live, where community can happen outside centres of

population? What are our priorities? How do we assess what the best use for this

resource that we live on is? Can the above things be mutually accommodat?

ed in one landscape? Or do we have to make choices?

When we look at rural Ireland, what do we see? We do not see virgin

74 STEVENS, 'What Becomes of Rural Ireland?', Irish Review 31 (2004)



landscape, the wild wood, uhrwald.What we see looks the way that it does

because of layers of historical use, because of occupation by man, and

because of constant ongoing work, all in response to economic needs, to

legislation, taxation incentives, farming patterns. We see a visual manifes?

tation of the society we live in and its rules. Our landscape is as manmade as

the skyline of New York, and requires constant work to maintain it, to stop 'nature taking over'.

Preserving the landscape, stopping rural occupation and letting the land?

scape revert to its natural state (a luxury of questionable value) or rather

tolerating occupation in as much as it only amounts to preserving a given state, allowing rural-dwellers as

keepers of a nature preserve or a theme park

where every new abode's design is stringently dictated, is for me an

anathema; it is anti-progress and culturally regressive.

Recreation

For both city-dwellers and rural people the countryside can be a place for

recreation, a magical place full of the wonders of nature, the pleasure of

peace and the enlivening effects of fresh air. This is particularly important to

urban people as it stands as a contrast to many of the negative aspects of city life. In Ireland, where many people living in cities are of rural origins, this

recreational contact with the countryside is essential to people's wellbeing. The visitor to the countryside is visiting a memory, an idea. The coun?

tryside becomes a place for the indulgence of nostalgia. As much as the

countryman wonders, is amazed by, or even is scared of the changes to his

capital city in between visits, the urban citizen visiting the countryside wishes it to be just as he remembers it; changes are by and large unwel?

come. And what if country-dwellers decided that they should dictate the

planning of their capital city? In a centralized country the laws are made in

town.

Technology

Settlement patterns in Ireland have always responded to the technology and

social structures of the day. In the past rural inhabitants have endeavoured to

be as comfortable as possible, while not occupying land otherwise useful for

farming. Traditional vernacular settlements responded to water supply, wind

protection, well-drained sites, locally available building materials, the need

to establish an interdependent community. Therefore houses were sited

carefully and looked a certain way, normally very similar to each other. This

STEVENS, 'What Becomes of Rural Ireland?', Irish Review 31 (2004) 75



is equally the case with the more recent bungalow-bliss settlement style, our

modern rural vernacular.

New technologies allow buildings in hitherto impossible sites, indulging an attitude to view ? command and control ? which arises from classical

attitudes derived from the 'big houses' of the ejected rural aristocracy, and

privileges the possibility of privacy over the necessity of interdependence. Thus the modern house builder uses the technology of the day, informed by

legislation, and arrives at a built form, just as any other vernacular form is

derived, though the nostalgically inclined would say not as pretty as the mud

walled cabin ? built, one must remember, by impoverished tenant farmers.

The future

Before we can start to dwell on what the future will look like in rural Ire?

land, we must first explore what the conditions will be that will form it.

It is particularly important to realize that according to the ruling political

parties tomorrow is always brighter. In all societies that mark time the pre? sent is judged against the past; thus being able to say that we are better off

today than, say, thirty years ago, is to say that our society is progressing, our

country is being well governed by our chosen governments. The status quo can reign. The doubters are never welcomed by the powers that be. Tradi?

tionally basing their doubts on belief, magic and religion, but nowadays more often than not on independent research and re-examinations of the

recent past, they warn of the necessity of great change if we want to avoid a

looming catastrophe.

What catastrophe? First pollution and global warming, and second, run?

ning out of the world's supply of fossil fuels. The understanding that we in

the developed world are misusing the world's resources has gained enough credence in recent years that powerful organizations, including govern?

ments, the United Nations and multinational companies, discuss ways of, for

example, reducing CO2 emissions. There are, however, other issues, particu?

larly with regard to our use of and dependency on dwindling non-renewable energy reserves, most

importantly oil, that promise to funda?

mentally alter how we live.1 The conversion from non-renewable energy resources to renewable ones would appear to be inevitable therefore, for a

number of complementary reasons.

There are many models for a conversion to renewable energy supplies. Some are based on existing technologies, others on research into possible future technological discoveries. I will discuss what one of these models

might mean to life in rural Ireland, but the important point I wish to make

is that a creative answer to today's problems is not far-fetched.




Our current reaction to worries about sustainability are akin to an obese

person swapping from Coke to Diet Coke in an effort to lose weight. I feel

fundamentally that the future will be, and look, radically different than the

present, that the future is an exciting creative opportunity.

The hydrogen economy

Hydrogen produced from biomass or wind-generated electricity can be

used as an alternative to oil products with respect to transport and heating, without producing damaging greenhouse gases.2 The technology is in

place. All that remains is the considerable investment needed for change, reckoned to be about ?20 billion for Ireland. (?1 billion per year over

twenty years doesn't sound so bad.) If the energy for Ireland's transport was

produced by biomass via gasification, about 0.7 million hectares of cultivat?

ed area would be needed (compared at present to an arable area of 1

million hectares, pasture of 3.3 million hectares and forestry of 0.6 million

hectares). This would obviously alter dramatically what the countryside would look like. Domestic fuel production would redirect huge amounts of

money currently being spent abroad to rural Ireland. The labour needed to

cultivate and process the biomass would bring a large workforce back to

the countryside.

In the Irish context, willow-coppicing is very suited to economic bio?

mass production. This means Ireland would again become a country of

forests, not green fields. Biomass production is not only good for counter?

ing CO2 production and the treatment of waste waters; light forestry would

also be a habitat for a wide range of presently endangered animals. Willows

also absorb surges of rainfall, protecting the landscape from floods and our

future homesteads from high winds. Nestling amongst the trees will be

local 'fuel cells', the processing plants that make the hydrogen. These are

non-polluting and suited to small local production and control. Thus the

new rural communities can have direct control over their fuel for heating and transport.

The scattered rural housing pattern that exists at present, which is really the skeleton of a more intensive and now defunct pre-Famine settlement

pattern, could grow again. Since fuel production and use would be no

longer polluting, and part of a local economy, travelling around the existing extensive road network in our new hydrogen-fuelled cars would not be a

problem. Mixed farming can happen between the willow forests. As farming

becomes less specialized, and food distribution becomes more local, farming

STEVENS, 'What Becomes of Rural Ireland?', Irish Review 31 (2004) 77



would become once again a profitable and fulfilling occupation. At present farmers receive less than one quarter of the final selling price of their pro?

duce, the rest going on transport and distribution costs and the profits of

others. As money would be no longer exiting the community to buy fuel,

the community would not need to sell its agricultural produce for hard cur?

rency Thus farmers could sell locally, and spend their earnings on locally

produced fuel. And so a local economy would begin to thrive.

The extra people dwelling in the newly ruralized Ireland would bring with their return a renewed sense of community, an endangered concept in

the countryside of Ireland at present. The critical mass of people needed for

fun, for mutual support, for sharing will once more exist. Happily ever after.

Notes

1 Colin Campbell, 'When Will the World's Oil and Gas Production Peak?', transcript of

an address to the Irish Energy Convention (www.feasta.org). 2 Werner Zittel, 'The Prospects for a Hydrogen Economy Based on Renewable Energy',

transcript of an address to the Irish Energy Convention (www.feasta.org).




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Irish Futures || What Becomes of Rural Ireland?