People-Powered Planning: Planning from the bottom-up in a top-down system

This paper is concerned with spatial policy in Ireland. It adopts an historical lens to help explain why Ireland currently finds itself at the bottom of the European league table with regard to local governance. After categorising the Irish political and planning system as highly centralised, bureaucratic and linear, the paper uses acase study of the Moycullen village plan to show an alter-nate path towards place development in Ireland. This case study sets out to contrast the desire of apeople to collaborate in the authorship of their place with the top down nature of spatial planning in Ireland. By making clear the methods and results of the project, this paper highlights the latent demand that exists in acommunity that is subject to national planning system that reduces their ability to affect change. Through the use of some innovative approaches, this project has sought to fire the geographic imaginary of apeople with respect to their place.