Architect and cyclist activist Ciarán Ferrie says a living city is one that's designed for both children and the elderly, for families and young people, not just for transient populations or tourists to visit.

For this episode of This is Where We Live Helen went back to chat with Mark O'Brien, Director and CEO of Axis Arts Centre, in the heart of Ballymun about how the arts and creativity can help shape place, community and belonging.

Dr Ellen Rowley is a cultural and architectural historian, a Dubliner with an eye and an ear for the stories of the people who lived in the buildings around us. 'If walls could talk' she says they'd tell us a multi-layered story of the lives of the people who passed through and made it a home. 

Kieran Rose is a man who has had two passions driving his life, urban design and planning and human rights, particularly rights for the LGBTQ community in Ireland. He hails from Cork himself but works as a city planner with Dublin City Council while campaigning and fighting for rights and was a founder of GLEN the Gay Lesbian Equality Network in 1988.

Eoin Carroll is a housing researcher with 13 years experience working with the Jesuit Centre for Faith & Justice in Dublin's city centre. Eoin has just moved to a new role as Policy and Public Affairs Officer with EXTERN, an NGO working with marginalised people including the homeless. Helen Shaw met Eoin for the podcast in Mountjoy Square, in the heart of northside city Dublin, just before his move to the new job to talk about Eoin's work and his take on the need for a formal right to housing and shelter and how he sees Government policy shaping the housing environment we have in Ireland.

Dr Dáithí Downey is a Dubliner with a mission - He is head of housing policy, research and development with Dublin City Council and he's leading the new Housing Observatory for Dublin - a research and planning initiative under Dublin City Council that aims to make Dublin an affordable and sustainable place to live in. 

Jeanette Lowe is an artist and photographer who, in her work, has become an archivist for what she calls 'invisible' communities living in Dublin city. She grew up in Drimnagh and her mother was reared in Pearse House, off Pearse Street, one of the iconic 1930s and 40s corporation complexes which were designed by Herbert Simms - the city planner behind so many of the public housing developments in that period. Today Pearse House and its neighbouring complex Markievicz House are threatened with demolition.

Dr Philip Lawton is Assistant Professor of Geography at Trinity College Dublin and someone with a keen interest in shaping sustainable cities and towns. His work has explored the impact of gentrification, the tension between commerce and citizens and the developing model of new urban towns like Adamstown, home to 25,000 people in west Dublin.

Dr Ruth McManus, urban geographer DCU, takes Helen Shaw on a walk through Drumcondra and its social housing, between Griffith Park and Home Farm Road, built between 1920s -60s, creating a social village from the library at the park to Corpus Christi Church and primary school on Home Farm Road.

Dr Eoin O'Mahony is a Fellow in the School of Geography in UCD, an urban geographer with a strong sense of the need for social change. Helen Shaw met up with Eoin in Smithfield, once Dublin's horse market and now a shiny plaza of private apartment blocks, an art cinema, cafes and restaurants.

Grainne Hassett is a practising architect & Head of the School of Architecture, University of Limerick (SAUL). Her practice, Hassett Ducatez Architects is committed to a close connection between architecture and its own research. www.hassettducatezarchitects.com/

Dr. Tony Fahey is a social scientist, a former researcher and author with the ESRI, the Economic Social Research Institute and a emeritus professor at UCD in social policy. Helen Shaw sat down with him to explore why housing policy has failed in Ireland to meet the needs and demands of the country and what are the factors at play behind the housing crisis. For Tony Fahey finance is at the heart of the problem and he traces it to the fiscal crisis in the 1980s. www.esri.ie/people/tony-fahey

Dr Joe Brady is an urban geographer at UCD with a passion for cities, particularly hometown Dublin City, and he is an expert in the history of housing in Dublin. Producer Helen Shaw took Joe back to Marino, not far from where he grew up, and where her grandparents moved, from the Dublin tenements in 1932. How could Dublin City Council build a mini garden city of social housing in the 20s and 30s and why is Dublin struggling to meet its housing challenge today?

In the busy café facing Vienna's City Hall This is Where We Live producer Helen Shaw gets to catch up with Michaela Kauer who runs the Vienna House in Brussels representing the City of Vienna and its interests in Brussels and the EU. Michaela is a public advocate for the housing policy of Vienna and Vienna leads globally in public housing strategy. Helen met Michaela during the Housing for All conference in Vienna, connecting housing stories across Europe.

UN Special Rapporteur for Housing Leilani Farha talks about her impression of Dublin's housing crisis and her movement 'The Shift', which offers a new global perspective on housing: those who are homeless and inadequately housed must be treated as human rights claimants and key actors must implement the right to adequate housing in a new urban rights agenda. Helen Shaw interviewed Leilani Farha at the Vienna Housing for All conference hosted by the City of Vienna December 4-5 2018.

www.unhousingrapp.org/the-shift

Dr Orna Rosenfeld is an international housing expert and chatted with Helen Shaw about trends in housing policy for This is Where We Live during the recent Housing For All conference in Vienna, December 2018.
Dr. Orna Rosenfeld is a housing adviser to the European Commission, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and international development banks financing housing. She is adjunct professor at Sciences Po – Paris Institute of Political Sciences in Paris and and alumna of the University of Westminster in London.

Karin Ramser, Director of the City of Vienna’s Community Housing (Wiener Wohnen) talks about Vienna's history of social and public housing (Gemeindebau) and how it's seen as a social good, and an integral part of the city's approach to creating a just, equitable and peaceful community.

Hugh Brennan runs O Cualann Cohousing Alliance and builds affordable houses in an innovative way, producing high quality homes for people who buy at affordable levels to their income using a cooperative model. Producer Helen Shaw met Hugh at his latest project in Baile na Laochra, Poppintree, Ballymun and got an insight into how it works. Visit the project here www.ocualann.ie/poppintree.html. The development is side by side with both 100% private and social housing in an area close to IKEA off the M50.

Dr Ruth McManus, urban geographer DCU, takes Helen Shaw on a walk through Drumcondra and its social housing, between Griffith Park and Home Farm Road, built between 1920s -60s, creating a social village from the library at the park to Corpus Christi Church and primary school on Home Farm Road.

Dr Joe Brady is an urban geographer at UCD with a passion for cities, particularly hometown Dublin City, and he is an expert in the history of housing in Dublin. Producer Helen Shaw took Joe back to Marino, not far from where he grew up, and where her grandparents moved, from the Dublin tenements in 1932. How could Dublin City Council build a mini garden city of social housing in the 20s and 30s and why is Dublin struggling to meet its housing challenge today?