Ghost Estates: ‘ It happened in the US, it Could Happen Here’?’

Some interesting comparisons between the blighted neighbourhoods of US cities and the future of the so called ‘Ghost Estate’ have taken root in public debate over the last year, most recently in the Sunday Business Post where David McWilliams raised the issue again in his article ‘Ghettoisation of the nation’ (23/11/20090 Here he bleakly promoted a common idea now in circulation that the Ghost Estates are ghettos- in -waiting, magnets for anti-social behaviour, and ripe for abandonment from homeowners who may no longer pay their mortgage due to rising unemployment.There’s no doubt that empty and partly occupied residential estates have become a potent symbol of the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. No doubt either that vacant homes touch some part of the psyche and can act as a loci for anxiety or ‘trauma’. But are the pronouncements about their demise to quickly made? And is their imagined future as a Ghetto overstated? In his recent piece, McWilliams’s subtly evades what urbanists understood about ghetto formation.