Sir, – With reference to Rosita Boland's article "The shop that could Save Ireland" (Weekend Review, December 23rd), one must caution readers and users with any reliance on the notorious "magic bullet" in community development.
Having spent four decades in rural development, I can assure the author, protagonists and hopeful rural residents that no rural community will be regenerated or revitalised as a result of a single initiative, such as the bookstore in Louisburgh, however courageous, inspired and innovative the initiative.
High-profile anchor projects (such as festivals, heritage centres, small-enterprise incubators) can have a positive and generative impact. But they will not provide a sustaining motor for community revitalisation unless they are integrated into a set of other, related initiatives.
There are some elements of this in the encouraging Louisburgh story, such as investment in leadership, front-end supportive or seed-funding, and attachment to other community functions (such as education). But rural sustainable community development requires a strategic approach, if it is to survive the hope and dreams of the one-off wonder.
Louisburgh and similar smaller communities can augment their hopes of sustainable regeneration if they identify, build upon and leverage their unique social, cultural, built-form, economic and other assets. Sustainable endogenous, or bottom-up development will only be viable if it is really locally based, and is firmly built upon the community’s leadership, pride, sense of cohesion, occupational and other skills, local environment, quality of life, and other distinct resources. The economist’s comparative advantage now takes second place to competitive advantage, which we have slowly learned is incrementally built by integrated approaches to place-based development. And it is the integration or functional connecting of distinctive local assets, not a single “magic bullet”, that can be brought to bear on strategic place-based development.
And this development itself gives the rural community capacity – and this is what provides the pragmatic underpinnings for sustainable competitive advantage, and hence viability.
Capacity outlives singular projects, and glossy plans, and is around the day after, and the day after that. – Yours, etc,
DAVID JA DOUGLAS,
(Professor Emeritus,
University of Guelph,
Canada),
Dunmore East,
Co Waterford.
Sir, – You seem to suggest rural Ireland socialises only through pubs and sport. Hopes for revival in Louisburgh, Co Mayo, apparently hinge on a “community bookshop” financed by philanthropist Declan Ryan of airline fame. The town, says the bookshop manager, was a barren planet “far out there” before the shop landed like a “spaceship”. Bleak indeed.
Yet in this stark western wilderness, people rear sheep and cattle. The cycles of seasons and life are observed and shared. A vibrant local book club meets monthly in Duffy’s, a public house predating Ryanair by many decades, and the Louisburgh junior GAA football team last year won the Connacht title.
Perhaps revival in rural Ireland is really about affordable housing; public transport; sustaining farming; keeping open post offices, health services, libraries and Garda stations; encouraging publicly advertised employment; and ensuring large companies pay their due taxes. – Yours, etc,
GARETH SMYTH,
Louisburgh,
Co Mayo.