Placing Heritage in Entrepreneurial Urbanism: Planning, Conservation and Crisis in Ireland

Ireland is beginning to emerge from an extended period of austerity following the global economic collapse of 2008. In this time, private sector investment in historic urban cores all but halted, and state funding for heritage was dramatically cut. However, both the state and civil society have placed a new emphasis on the potential of built heritage to act as a driver of economic recovery, reflected in both local and national policies and strategies relating to the conservation and regeneration of historic urban cores. Through a discourse analysis of local documentary material, and of semi-structured interviews with a range of key factors involved in the management of two historic urban cores in Ireland (Limerick and Waterford), the paper explores how conservation policy has been fashioned to suit its deployment as an instrument of local and national economic recovery within the context of entrenched entrepreneurial urbanism, and how local stakeholders have responded. The paper concludes on the implications for both conservation policy—specifically tensions between traditional conservation approaches and more flexible instruments utilised in heritage-led regeneration.