Just Add Water: (re)producing Cork docklands

Cork city in the south of Ireland has been experiencing rapid urban and economic transformations in recent years. City Council launched a major programme in 2002 to transform Cork’s large industrialised docklands into a post-industrial waterfront, through “the development of a new modern mixed use district bringing both employment and residents back into the City Centre, consolidating Cork as ‘a European location for enterprise’...” (Cork City Council, 2002 p. 8). Framing arguments in terms of the Production of Space (Lefebvre, 1991), this paper traces the evolution of plans to regenerate Cork docklands. It is argued that Cork Docklands Development Strategy (2002) and the networks of public private partnership that have emerged through development plans for docklands sites, have created a dramatically different version of ‘conceived’ urban space that will inform the future of the city. The paper argues that strategies around the docks have been instrumental in re-shaping the growth dynamics of the city. However these new images have also come into conflict with local perceptions and symbols of space. In this way docklands sites offer key insights into the politics of the city’s urban transition.