The latest episode of Ireland’s longest running environmental TV series Eco Eye, focuses on the challenges facing Ireland’s towns and villages as they respond to falling populations and the closures of essential services such as banks, post offices and Garda stations and examines the initiatives being adopted to rejuvenate these communities.
The title of the programme is “Revitalising Towns and Villages” and will be broadcast tomorrow, Tuesday, 2 February at 7pm on RTE One.
Presenter Duncan Stewart travels across the country to discover the challenges facing our towns and villages. He learns what good quality design, strong leadership and community buy-in can do to improve the quality of life for all living and working in these settings.
He asks why some towns and villages have managed to thrive while others have undergone years of decline since the last economic downturn.
This episode shows how spatial planning profoundly impacts the viability of communities, and how a redesign of our rural towns and villages can breathe new life and hope back into rural Ireland.
It includes features on Tipperary and Clonakilty and contains interviews with local business owners as well as with staff and elected members of local authorities who give their perspective on what can be done to rejuvenate our towns and make them better places to live.
The Office of the Planning Regulator has collaborated with the producers of Eco Eye on this episode and on two others in this series. An episode entitled “A Place for Home” was broadcast on 5 January while “Cities Reimagined” is due to be broadcast on 23 February.
