What does the future hold for Dublin? This year’s Big Debate “How to write the City’ will bring people together to talk about the erosion of the city and it’s character, the housing crisis, vacancy and dereliction and our role and agency in building a better city for all of us.

Come and give your opinions, share your stories, ideas and passions as we get together to talk, challenge and be inspired to create a better future for Dublin.

Architect Róisín Murphy will host this year’s event and we will be joined by Francis Doherty of Peter McVerry Trust, poet Hazel Hogan, architect Valerie Mulvin, documentary producer Geoff Power and journalist Laoise Neylon.

‘A MOO COW CAME  DOWN THE ROAD – These words etched a line in my head from  the strange juxtaposition of beast and city, Dublin to be particular. It’s a small beginning to the Portrait of a Young Artist by James Joyce. I realised there must have been a link to the dairy on Constitutional hill that I was passing every day in my final year in architecture in Bolton Street. It was a small maroon shop front with a large empty field behind it. I could in my own mind’s eye see the herd chaperoned across north circular road and down the hill. When that stable yard in the liberties was closed two years ago amongst much public outcry, I wondered at the erosion of the character of our city, its ephemeral qualities linking pursuits, pleasures and places and the intertwining of city, citizen and activity.

How do we protect this city as its character is stripped of more than its architecture? When you find Joyces fans wandering looking for the built story hope to they feel on the abandoned streets and forlorn empty sites where nothing not even placards stand of his famous written odyssey?’ Róisín Murphy