Social Innovation and the Ludic City

Narratives have always shaped Dublin, from the everyday lives of its inhabitants to the reputation the city has acquired across the world. However, there is a growing realization that innovative urban narratives are missing in many public spaces in cities. The proliferation of non-places and the intensive privatization of public life, constantly whittle away at Dublin’s story of itself as a cultural capital. The landscape and spaces of Chris Binchy’s recent novels on Dublin, relating the disassociations of exurbia or the bleak anonymity of inner city hotels provide good examples of this problem. Designers provide an important script for the city. Potentially they possess the anecdote to these unsatisfactory qualities of urban living. Designers, in other words, can tell different stories about how cities could be. Their vision, their solutions and their experiments provide the hope and the drama needed to animate the urban, turn concrete into laughter and translate problems into occasions for creativity and new ways of living