LAST UPDATE | 8 hrs ago

IT IS NOW widely accepted that dereliction is vandalism, a crime against society. Five years of the #DerelictIreland movement have seen to that. With a heavy focus on urban dereliction, our social media feeds are dominated by old, decaying buildings on historic streets, but what can get missed at times is what could be termed “modern dereliction”.

Unfortunately, decay and rot of modern streetscapes in newly constructed apartment blocks is all too common. When ground floor commercial units are left empty for years it causes many problems for the new communities that emerge around these seemingly abandoned units. But these problems also present an amazing opportunity.

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Just 2 minutes’ walk from our home here in Cork City, there are numerous examples of empty units below apartment blocks. The vast majority have been empty since we moved here in 2018, and they look like they have never been occupied.

Surely it can’t make financial sense to leave premises empty for so long. Yet clearly, for many owners, it does — otherwise developers and landlords would have gone out of business long ago. The inescapable conclusion is that, at some point, renting these units is deemed to be either financially unviable or simply not worth the hassle.

”But they have to build them to get planning” is the generic cry of defence we often hear, and it may be true, meaning the mixed-use developer has fulfilled their legal requirements. 

But what about the needs of the existing and emerging local communities that have to live with the blight of this modern dereliction? What about their need to feel safe walking home along these dead streets that facilitate unwelcoming criminal activities? These communities need to be surrounded by beauty, an essential public service according to renowned social practice artist Theaster Gates. 

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These are the easy-to-identify unmet needs. But what about the invisible opportunity costs that communities pay due to this modern dereliction? The missed chances that cannot be realised because, instead of renting out these low-demand spaces at a low rent to community-improving tenants, the owners let them rot.

The units are becoming a blight on the neighbourhood instead of positively contributing. This model results in a lack of third spaces for communities to grow, or for creatives to have freedom to........

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