Why Balanced Regional Development should be replaced by Urban Agglomeration Initiatives in Ireland's Reconfigured National Spatial and Economic Strategy

Abstract

In 2003, Eoin O Leary of NUIC published the first in what has since become an extensive literature criticising the 2002-2020 National Spatial Strategy's core 'distributive' strategy, that of Balanced Regional Development (BRD). It is therefore disturbing, despite the strategy's obvious failures and the government's 2013 withdrawn of this discredited NSS, that some Opposition politicians continue to persist in articulating BRD in a politically opportunistically way, such as was emphasised a number of times by Eamon O'Cuiv T.D. on the Claire Byrne TV Show on RTE 1, Monday 9th March. That programme with its Live Audience, was broadcast immediately after the similar-themed Richard Curran Documentary: 'The Battle for Rural Ireland'.