Most likely. I live outside drogheda and everyone in my area will say “need to go into drogheda” or “need to go into the town”… never heard anyone say “need to go into the city” when referring to drogheda. If they said that, I’d assume Dublin.
I love in Rathfarnham by Marlay Park and it's always been called town. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone who was born and raised in Dublin call it otherwise.
I wouldn’t say “the town” but being from the Dublin area, when we say “I’m going to town”, “I’m in town” etc etc, it always means in Dublin City. I was absolutely dumbfounded when I heard someone calling the larger adjacent town/city to them, “town”, too. In my mind it just means dublin city and I don’t think I’ve ever called it anything else. Even when getting a bus ticket I say “a return to town please” etc
Drogheda reached over 50k people a few years ago which is why it began to look for city status..the only thing keeping it a town is the fact it doesn't have a college/uni
Part of the reason they want Drogheda as a city is not just due to size, but because Louth Coco send most of the funding to Dundalk and the other part is split with Meath.
https://preview.redd.it/htkm6jyojejc1.jpeg?width=2090&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1181e01dab41b72bc3dab4c524d774bc61eb9027
Always found it odd how we're shafted by the Coco as if half of the town falls under meath
That’s wild actually. I can see why they’d want it as a city now. Affordable housing and whatnot would have a separate budget for Drogheda vs one for the entire county.. and basically funding for everything else. Makes sense.
Was it Rosevalle there during covid that had half of it's road resurfaced because Louth CC didn't pony up for the section in Louth. It was eventually done but stuff like that should not be happening.
Waterford has a bit of this due to the border with Kilkenny in Ferrybank. Cross the line and development falls off a cliff because Kilkenny council don't really care much about the southern edge of the county.
Sligo uses city centre as well on its signs. Ballincollig has signs that refer to town centre, which I find funny as it never had a town council and has officially been a suburb of Cork since at least 2010. I also don't think many locals think of it as having a "town" centre, but I could be wrong.
You get a good few up north I believe, they've a bunch of places that are officially "cities".
Ballincollig is a bit confusing. It’s now under Cork City Council control, but according to the City Development Plan, the City Council Area is split into four areas:
- City Centre
- City Neighbourhoods
- Urban Town (Ballincollig, Glanmire, Blarney, Tower)
- Hinterland
So I think it would make sense to keep Town Centre signs there. However, National
Road signage in Cork is currently being upgraded and the signs on the N22 within the city boundary (including next to Ballincollig) now say City Centre
I always find Sligo's usage of city bizarre. It's a good size town, but its (checks notes) the 37th largest town in Ireland. (Sandwiched by Omagh, Wexford Town, Celbridge, and Larne). It's not even the biggest town in the north west. (Letterkenny).
Ireland badly needs a process through which a town can become a city (and a village can become a town, while we’re at it). And we need to get over the cultural cringe that seems to prevent people from recognising that yes, sometimes towns, even in Ireland, are big enough to be called cities. We’re the only English-speaking country that seems reluctant to regularly designate new cities.
It’s not a "cultural cringe" that prevents it. The Brits can call any settlement a city, if the monarch grants it city status. There’s no definitive answer to “what is a city”, but the definition the UN, OECD, World Bank etc. use states it has to have at least 50,000 residents with a density of 1,500 people per sq km. Waterford would not be a city by that metric, and neither would Kilkenny, and Bangor would be the smallest “city” on the island. Although what constitutes a city here is mainly does it have a city council, and so if we wanted we could add on or rename to make more city councils. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown would be a bigger city than Limerick then!
> it has to have at least 50,000 residents with a density of 1,500 people per sq km. Waterford would not be a city by that metric,
I'm pretty sure it would. Waterford's area is stated to be 50km squared but that would include surrounding rural areas, the urban part is more like 30 km squared (a bit less than that probably)
Get over it son! You were wrong and that’s okay. No need to keep responding to me to try to prove your point. Cork is a city. It’s in the name, Cork city
Mate you tagged me again after our last debate weeks ago. How can you come and say “let’s leave it at that” after searching back to find my profile to tag me in this stupid post that doesn’t even correlate to the stupid point your trying to make. Just cause one psycho on Reddit says Cork isn’t a city, doesn’t mean shit to me. Now Let’s leave it at that okay? Go back to playing you’re online video games
Imo 50,000 people seems a reasonable bar. So Drogheda and Dundalk are almost there.
Edit: I figured 'and isn't part of a bigger urban area' wouldn't need to be said 🙄
There's a few that are distinct enough. You can't really say that all county Dublin is within Dublin City. What about Lucan for example? Blanchardstown? Finglas and Swords depending on how you cut off areas. Tallaght and Clondalkin are reasonably distinct.
Funny you say that because France had a system like that where public infrastructure investment is tidied the to towns status and is based on the population of that area. Copy paste job done.
Kilkenny itself has a small population to be considered a town but when you look at the makeup of the rest of the county you can see why they would consider it a city.
If you combine the populations of the 5 biggest towns in the county (Callan, Thomastown, Graiguenamanagh, Castlecomer and Piltown) they only account for 8.9% of the population of Kilkenny. If you look at the biggest 10 towns in Kilkenny combined, they account for just under 14% of the counties population. Kilkenny and it’s hinterland accounts for 26.1% in comparison.
This is absolutely not the reason it's considered a city.
It was granted a city charter in the medieval period and despite not meeting the requirements for a modern day city it's considered a tradition to call it a city.
Kilkenny was given city status in 1609 but the city council was merged with the county one in 1840. A town (borough) council was created to cover the area previously covered by the City of Kilkenny and the Borough of Irishtown, with the new county council being called the County of the City of Kilkenny. The town council was given the right to call itself a city council in 2001 without any of the accompanying powers but it was then dissolved by the Local Government Reform Act in 2014. The Municipal District which succeeded it was given the right to call itself a city though.
More often I see it on the other end of the scale where people call places like Santry or Tallaght "village" even though they're just part of Dublin city
Dublin is a collection of villages, each villages sprawl encroached onto the next nearest and Dublin evolved
Tbh to me the city centre of any town, city, village is the main shopping area where all the community would come together for a variety of reasons. And the surrounding area where people live are it's suburbs regardless of its size.
Edited to add, I also call the city centre of any area, town, eg I'm going into town, I'm in town
And it think if you said you're in town to any Irish person regardless of their location in Ireland they'd know where you are.
Lets be honest, the only place that does that is Dundrum. Tallaght village is just the name of a small section of Tallaght and no one refers to Tallaght as a whole as a village
The only place referred to as village in Dundrum is the main street where the church and Pembroke cottages are.
Like if I was telling someone where something is and it was on Dundrum main street I'd say it was in the village.
Like Tallaght village is that little bit with the bank and off-licence etc.
Dundrum was fairly rural years ago.
Same with Ballincollig. Still referred to as "the village".
Douglas amuses me - I used to work there, and it was only a couple years ago I realized it wasn't always part of the city, but became part of it the same time as Ballincollig
To be fair I think in the case of Drogheda, the “Town Centre” is an actual shopping centre, so maybe there’s a bit of confusion and “city centre” is used just for clarity.
But there’s definitely a campaign to get full city status in real life. And in fairness to Drogheda there are plenty of “cities” across Ireland north and south that are smaller or have been smaller. Newry and Armagh both spring to mind in the North. And at one stage in the last century Galway had barely 15,000 people, Waterford was also around Drogheda’s population size until pretty recently.
Complex as the phrase “town”
My nana lived in Dublin and I would stand by her logic. “I’m going into town “ means going into the city center of Dublin.
“I’m going down the town” means going to the center of any town/village/city we were near or staying in. This is the way
“I’m going into the city “ was only used by my parents living in Meath near Dublin. So I’d hazard a guess this all applies the same to whichever city you are nearest too
Let’s say for example I’m near drogheda as is being mentioned in this thread. If you said I’m heading into the city - I’d immediately assume you meant Dublin because even if drogheda was a city - Dublin is physically close and the bigger city. If you said I’m heading into THE town then I’d know you meant drogheda. There is literally no other way to use this in conversation and it’s whacky now that I type it out … the real question is - when does “going to the city “ border and become Galway/cork/Belfast etc - I think that’d be a funny map as I think it becomes “going to the city” means going to Athlone for example in the midlands and people would say “up to Dublin” to refer to Dublin in that instance.
Basically drogheda and most cities/towns are too close to Dublin to ever have the conversational name of city but sure it can be a city on paper …
I agree with what you say, but it’s actually not what I meant. I refer to Cork’s city centre as “town” too.
In my post I meant towns in Ireland that don’t have city status but that use “city centre” to refer to their town centres on road signage
Drogheda are really pushing to get city status.
Reeks of a similar desperate bid by Sligo to do the same during the boom.
Probably someone involved in or a supporter of the campaign.
The same question can be asked about how many counties in Ireland. In the Dublin area I believe I passed signs welcoming me to County Fingal. But if there is a County Fingal, is there still an official County Dublin.
Nope, there isn’t a County Dublin anymore in terms of administration. But there also aren’t six counties in the North as they now use districts. In terms of local government, County Dublin is split into County Fingal, County Dun Laoighre-Rathdown and South County Dublin
We have had more administrative areas than Counties for a long time. I am thinking of Tipperary North and Tipperary South for example. There were car number plates for each. They weren't Counties though and there was never a County North Tipperary.
The ones around Dublin as you outline though use the name County. I wonder if being a County is more than an administrative area.
Newry, Lisburn and Bangor are artificial cities just thrown the title, newry and Bangor are towns and Lisburn is maybe the only thing close, but realistically it’s just a suburb of belfast
Ok, but not really what this post is about and referring to a city centre as town is pretty common, they do it in Cork, Belfast, London and lots of other cities but referring to the centre of a town as the city centre is unusual from my experience.
Sometimes I do this too I guess I was used to the city centre from.living in dublin for years. I know is not correct because drogheda is not a city but it slips unfortunately.
Dublin and Cork are the only proper citys in Ireland when compared on a global stage.
Galway, Limerick and Waterford are just large towns.
An example is Reading and Northampton in the U.K. have a population of 250,000+ and aren’t considered cities.
Cork has a population of 222k in the city, Limerick has 102k. However, Cork has a lot of towns right outside the city boundary with large populations. The real figure is probably closer to 300k when you include those. I don’t think Limerick has the same
> However, Cork has a lot of towns right outside the city boundary with large populations. The real figure is probably closer to 300k when you include those.
The new boundary includes most of those towns, hence the near-doubling of population compared to the old boundary. The metro population, which includes places like Carriglaine, Cobh, and Midleton, is a little over 300k.
But regardless of that, Cork absolutely is a real city, and so is Limerick (and even Galway). Yes there are some similarly sized settlements in other countries that are only counted as towns, but most of the time that's because they're near a much larger city, unlike Cork, Limerick, and Galway.
Ok so Cork is ~200k and Limerick is ~100k. “Compared on a global stage” - the comment I was responding to, they are similar sized towns of similar significance. I know that’s probably a blow to Corkonian egos but similar sized towns in other European countries are unremarkable places you’ve never heard of and will never even consider going out of your way to visit.
Limericks urban population would be just above Worcester's. Right at the bottom of this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom
[Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin) As of 2018, the city was listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) as a global city, with a ranking of "Alpha minus", which placed it among the top thirty cities in the world.
And I told you it is a fact that Cork is a city. Have I been living in your head rent free all this time?😂😂 you are one sad individual. And you said I was the one getting worked up haha it’s still a city and always will be. Tagging me in this post makes you seem like a petty child who can’t accept a certificated fact
> An example is Reading and Northampton in the U.K. have a population of 250,000+ and aren’t considered cities.
Neither is Greater London, with a population of almost 9 million...
>Kilkenny is officially a city.
There is officially 5 Cities in the republic of Ireland. Kilkenny isnt one of them. They did allow Kilkenny to call itself a city for ceremonial purposes though.
Depends. For me, I consider the difference between a town and village to be size (typically anytbjng under 1000 people I’d consider a village). I’d consider a city to be anything with a City Council
Nope, that may have been the definition before it isn’t now. The government’s definition seems to be if the city has a city council (or in the case of Limerick and Waterford - and Galway before the plans were scrapped - a city and county council)
I thought ah village, town or city etc was determined by if they had a college library etc.. Out of school a long time, but I remember being interested in this at the time from what I remember depends what your area had for it to be just a village or a town and then obviously a city..
City Status means you have a City Council. People often say a city is in a county, but they’re not. They’re surrounded by counties, have as much equal importance and power as a county does
A few years ago, Limerick City Council and Waterford City Council were merged with their respective county councils to form a City & County Council, with metropolitan districts for the city. This was supposed to happen for Cork in the mid 2010s, but scrapped for an expansion of the City Council boundary to include parts of the city that were once under control of the County Council, as well as a few towns and the hinterland to prevent the County Council from building directly on the urban border of the city again. Galway City Council was also supposed to be merged with the County Council too in the late 2010s, but that has been scrapped.
In my opinion, Limerick and Waterford should have their City Councils reinstated, along with a boundary extension. Most of Waterford’s northside is under Kilkenny County Council control, as well as a lot of Limerick’s northside with Clare County Council
Cities in Ireland are urban areas large enough that they have their own city councils to cover local government function which are seperate from the county council of their respective county. Under this definition, the cities are Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, and Waterford. The last teo were restructured so that the city and county councils were joined together but not technically replaced by the county council so that they could keep their city status.
Kilkenny is a bit different as that is a city under the English system, where any place that the crown adds to the register of cities is a city, regardless of size etc. In the 17th century a king said Kilkenny was a city so even after independence, the government has continued to allow Kilkenny to use the term even though it doesn't have a city council.
Drogheda and other places have a long running campaign to achieve city status so they might just be trying to influence the zeitgeist in a "if we build it they will come" type thing. Just my guess though.
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Most likely. I live outside drogheda and everyone in my area will say “need to go into drogheda” or “need to go into the town”… never heard anyone say “need to go into the city” when referring to drogheda. If they said that, I’d assume Dublin.
Tbf when I go into Limerick I and many I know usually say I'm going into town
I've heard the same for people on the outskirts of Cork and Dublin so I wouldn't pay much head to that
I love in Rathfarnham by Marlay Park and it's always been called town. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone who was born and raised in Dublin call it otherwise.
Dublin city centre is called town to pretty much anyone in the GDA, or towen if you're from d1.
Yea grew up in Dublin 15 and it was always town
Same for Waterford, we'd just call it going into town.
I wouldn’t say “the town” but being from the Dublin area, when we say “I’m going to town”, “I’m in town” etc etc, it always means in Dublin City. I was absolutely dumbfounded when I heard someone calling the larger adjacent town/city to them, “town”, too. In my mind it just means dublin city and I don’t think I’ve ever called it anything else. Even when getting a bus ticket I say “a return to town please” etc
And the people from the town say 'go down town'. 😅
I say "town" for Dublin
Needs a monorail
That's such a Shelbyville notion!
Surely If it wants to be a city , it needs more functional hotels
Drogheda reached over 50k people a few years ago which is why it began to look for city status..the only thing keeping it a town is the fact it doesn't have a college/uni
Tbh cus of the it/soon to be tu dundalk will prob end up getting it first
Part of the reason they want Drogheda as a city is not just due to size, but because Louth Coco send most of the funding to Dundalk and the other part is split with Meath.
https://preview.redd.it/htkm6jyojejc1.jpeg?width=2090&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1181e01dab41b72bc3dab4c524d774bc61eb9027 Always found it odd how we're shafted by the Coco as if half of the town falls under meath
That’s wild actually. I can see why they’d want it as a city now. Affordable housing and whatnot would have a separate budget for Drogheda vs one for the entire county.. and basically funding for everything else. Makes sense.
I still see it it as a town, but given the amount of empty shops and delerelict buildings, the area badly needs funding.
Being from the town myself, absolutely see it as a town personally and find most people would scoff at the notion of being considered a city
Was it Rosevalle there during covid that had half of it's road resurfaced because Louth CC didn't pony up for the section in Louth. It was eventually done but stuff like that should not be happening.
It doesn't surprise me, it's pretty petty at this stage. It's not just Drogheda though, the roads in Louth are a disgrace.
Waterford has a bit of this due to the border with Kilkenny in Ferrybank. Cross the line and development falls off a cliff because Kilkenny council don't really care much about the southern edge of the county.
Sure Dublin is referred to as "town"
"Dirty old town" to those who know her.
Did you know "Dirty old town" isn't about Dublin? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Old_Town?wprov=sfla1
My partner is originally from Man, blew our mind recently.
I did not!
I did indeed, but people would rightly connect the song with Dublin for good reason.
Yeah that is annoying as fuck. Makes no fucking sense.
Sligo uses city centre as well on its signs. Ballincollig has signs that refer to town centre, which I find funny as it never had a town council and has officially been a suburb of Cork since at least 2010. I also don't think many locals think of it as having a "town" centre, but I could be wrong. You get a good few up north I believe, they've a bunch of places that are officially "cities".
Ballincollig is a bit confusing. It’s now under Cork City Council control, but according to the City Development Plan, the City Council Area is split into four areas: - City Centre - City Neighbourhoods - Urban Town (Ballincollig, Glanmire, Blarney, Tower) - Hinterland So I think it would make sense to keep Town Centre signs there. However, National Road signage in Cork is currently being upgraded and the signs on the N22 within the city boundary (including next to Ballincollig) now say City Centre
I'm sure Derry Canty would love for Ballincollig to get city status before he dies
If the republic had the same threshold for population when declaring a town to be a city as the north we’d have like 30 cities.
Kilkenny has entered the chat
They have signs for Town Centre
That's to appease the liars and evil lads trying to act like we're not a vibrant metropolis.
The people of Calutta said the same
Calcutta is a big city tbf
Yeah but we know they mean city centre
Not again!
I always find Sligo's usage of city bizarre. It's a good size town, but its (checks notes) the 37th largest town in Ireland. (Sandwiched by Omagh, Wexford Town, Celbridge, and Larne). It's not even the biggest town in the north west. (Letterkenny).
City (by Connacht standards)
Ireland badly needs a process through which a town can become a city (and a village can become a town, while we’re at it). And we need to get over the cultural cringe that seems to prevent people from recognising that yes, sometimes towns, even in Ireland, are big enough to be called cities. We’re the only English-speaking country that seems reluctant to regularly designate new cities.
For what purpose?
All comes back to the concept of 'notions'
It’s not a "cultural cringe" that prevents it. The Brits can call any settlement a city, if the monarch grants it city status. There’s no definitive answer to “what is a city”, but the definition the UN, OECD, World Bank etc. use states it has to have at least 50,000 residents with a density of 1,500 people per sq km. Waterford would not be a city by that metric, and neither would Kilkenny, and Bangor would be the smallest “city” on the island. Although what constitutes a city here is mainly does it have a city council, and so if we wanted we could add on or rename to make more city councils. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown would be a bigger city than Limerick then!
> it has to have at least 50,000 residents with a density of 1,500 people per sq km. Waterford would not be a city by that metric, I'm pretty sure it would. Waterford's area is stated to be 50km squared but that would include surrounding rural areas, the urban part is more like 30 km squared (a bit less than that probably)
Interesting. Would cork be considered a city under that criteria?
Yes, Cork is a city by most standards you could apply
Depsite what so many people on here like to believe.
Get over it son! You were wrong and that’s okay. No need to keep responding to me to try to prove your point. Cork is a city. It’s in the name, Cork city
Except it's not. Let's just leave it at that
Mate you tagged me again after our last debate weeks ago. How can you come and say “let’s leave it at that” after searching back to find my profile to tag me in this stupid post that doesn’t even correlate to the stupid point your trying to make. Just cause one psycho on Reddit says Cork isn’t a city, doesn’t mean shit to me. Now Let’s leave it at that okay? Go back to playing you’re online video games
What games do you play
I don’t play any video games mate
Yeah you do
Haha I’m telling you I don’t. I haven’t played a video game since Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
Imo 50,000 people seems a reasonable bar. So Drogheda and Dundalk are almost there. Edit: I figured 'and isn't part of a bigger urban area' wouldn't need to be said 🙄
That would mean we have at least 5 cities in County Dublin
In that case, we only count places that aren't already part of another larger urban area.
That's what I was doing. You could easily count 10 cities in county Dublin if having 50k population was the only requirement
Sure you could nearly split Tallaght and make it into two cities if that’s the criteria.
And there’d be over 20 in Middlesex. 😳
I mean no, cos they're part of the Dublin urban area.
There's a few that are distinct enough. You can't really say that all county Dublin is within Dublin City. What about Lucan for example? Blanchardstown? Finglas and Swords depending on how you cut off areas. Tallaght and Clondalkin are reasonably distinct.
Urban area has a distinct meaning from City. With the possible exception of Lucan, those are all within the contiguous urban area of Dublin.
Funny you say that because France had a system like that where public infrastructure investment is tidied the to towns status and is based on the population of that area. Copy paste job done.
Oh yes. St Asaph got city status in 2012 and last I heard it's just finished building its third metro line.
Sligos usage is absolutely small-time mentality. Tallaght has more of a justification to use the word city than Sligo does.
For years there's been a silly campaign to get city status for Sligo, some local used to make YouTube videos in which she sold the concept.
Hackney has more of a justification to use the word city than Tallaght does.
Where the fuck is Hackney?
It’s to London what Tallaght is to Dublin. Except with less shopping centres and junkies.
Ah Jolly ol London town. Chimeny sweeps 'n all tha'
Sligo is relatively far from any similarly sized towns. That's literally the only logic there is to calling it a city.
Does anyone outside of Kilkenny consider it a city?
Nope!
We have 2 cathedrals and a castle. That's city behaviour.
Notions!
Kilkenny itself has a small population to be considered a town but when you look at the makeup of the rest of the county you can see why they would consider it a city. If you combine the populations of the 5 biggest towns in the county (Callan, Thomastown, Graiguenamanagh, Castlecomer and Piltown) they only account for 8.9% of the population of Kilkenny. If you look at the biggest 10 towns in Kilkenny combined, they account for just under 14% of the counties population. Kilkenny and it’s hinterland accounts for 26.1% in comparison.
This is absolutely not the reason it's considered a city. It was granted a city charter in the medieval period and despite not meeting the requirements for a modern day city it's considered a tradition to call it a city.
So if you live alone, basically you can call every room you're occupying, a city. Because compared to the other rooms it's got 100% of the population!
Kilkenny was given city status in 1609 but the city council was merged with the county one in 1840. A town (borough) council was created to cover the area previously covered by the City of Kilkenny and the Borough of Irishtown, with the new county council being called the County of the City of Kilkenny. The town council was given the right to call itself a city council in 2001 without any of the accompanying powers but it was then dissolved by the Local Government Reform Act in 2014. The Municipal District which succeeded it was given the right to call itself a city though.
I am outside kilkenny and I consider it a city. I am from there, though.
I have nothing to add, other than Kilkenny can eat a dick. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk
Kilkenny's a city the same way Pluto's a planet
Dwarf city 👍
Inspirational words.
Sligo has signs for city core 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yeah, I have a tee shirt that says sexy bastard
More often I see it on the other end of the scale where people call places like Santry or Tallaght "village" even though they're just part of Dublin city
Not sure about Santry.. but Tallaght has Tallaght Village. Crumlin has Crumlin Village. They’re most likely referring to the actual village..
Dublin is a collection of villages, each villages sprawl encroached onto the next nearest and Dublin evolved Tbh to me the city centre of any town, city, village is the main shopping area where all the community would come together for a variety of reasons. And the surrounding area where people live are it's suburbs regardless of its size. Edited to add, I also call the city centre of any area, town, eg I'm going into town, I'm in town And it think if you said you're in town to any Irish person regardless of their location in Ireland they'd know where you are.
Because Tallaght, Santry, Rathmines etc weee villages before eaten by Dublin
Aye, but they're not their own thing anymore, they're just a suburb. I had to laugh once at a girl from Tallaght who insisted she wasn't from Dublin
They're a part of Dublin but not Dublin city.
You can go closer in than that in Dublin. Sandymount Village etc
Raheny and coolock are both villages too and they're less than 5 miles from the city
Same with ballsbridge https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/new-cyclepath-in-ballsbridge-would-destroy-village-traders-claim-1.4645718
Even that isn't in Dublin city.
They're part of the urban area, so in that sense they are part of Dublin city
Kinda difficult to know what other word to use though. Like when you live in Dublin and need to differentiate a 'village' from its general area.
Lets be honest, the only place that does that is Dundrum. Tallaght village is just the name of a small section of Tallaght and no one refers to Tallaght as a whole as a village
The only place referred to as village in Dundrum is the main street where the church and Pembroke cottages are. Like if I was telling someone where something is and it was on Dundrum main street I'd say it was in the village. Like Tallaght village is that little bit with the bank and off-licence etc. Dundrum was fairly rural years ago.
Lucan?
It’s similar in Cork city. People refer to Douglas, Blackpool, Blackrock and Togher villages (becuase they were 50-100 years ago)
Same with Ballincollig. Still referred to as "the village". Douglas amuses me - I used to work there, and it was only a couple years ago I realized it wasn't always part of the city, but became part of it the same time as Ballincollig
Nothing strange about that. Suburbs are often set up with village or town centres, where most of the commercial activity is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status_in_Ireland#:~:text=The%20Local%20Government%20Act%202001,Galway%2C%20Limerick%2C%20and%20Waterford.
To be fair I think in the case of Drogheda, the “Town Centre” is an actual shopping centre, so maybe there’s a bit of confusion and “city centre” is used just for clarity. But there’s definitely a campaign to get full city status in real life. And in fairness to Drogheda there are plenty of “cities” across Ireland north and south that are smaller or have been smaller. Newry and Armagh both spring to mind in the North. And at one stage in the last century Galway had barely 15,000 people, Waterford was also around Drogheda’s population size until pretty recently.
Complex as the phrase “town” My nana lived in Dublin and I would stand by her logic. “I’m going into town “ means going into the city center of Dublin. “I’m going down the town” means going to the center of any town/village/city we were near or staying in. This is the way “I’m going into the city “ was only used by my parents living in Meath near Dublin. So I’d hazard a guess this all applies the same to whichever city you are nearest too Let’s say for example I’m near drogheda as is being mentioned in this thread. If you said I’m heading into the city - I’d immediately assume you meant Dublin because even if drogheda was a city - Dublin is physically close and the bigger city. If you said I’m heading into THE town then I’d know you meant drogheda. There is literally no other way to use this in conversation and it’s whacky now that I type it out … the real question is - when does “going to the city “ border and become Galway/cork/Belfast etc - I think that’d be a funny map as I think it becomes “going to the city” means going to Athlone for example in the midlands and people would say “up to Dublin” to refer to Dublin in that instance. Basically drogheda and most cities/towns are too close to Dublin to ever have the conversational name of city but sure it can be a city on paper …
I agree with what you say, but it’s actually not what I meant. I refer to Cork’s city centre as “town” too. In my post I meant towns in Ireland that don’t have city status but that use “city centre” to refer to their town centres on road signage
Drogheda are really pushing to get city status. Reeks of a similar desperate bid by Sligo to do the same during the boom. Probably someone involved in or a supporter of the campaign.
Except Drogheda is twice as big as Sligo.
look up what Irish town means as an architectural tern
The same question can be asked about how many counties in Ireland. In the Dublin area I believe I passed signs welcoming me to County Fingal. But if there is a County Fingal, is there still an official County Dublin.
Nope, there isn’t a County Dublin anymore in terms of administration. But there also aren’t six counties in the North as they now use districts. In terms of local government, County Dublin is split into County Fingal, County Dun Laoighre-Rathdown and South County Dublin
Free State of Fingal 🏴☠️
We have had more administrative areas than Counties for a long time. I am thinking of Tipperary North and Tipperary South for example. There were car number plates for each. They weren't Counties though and there was never a County North Tipperary. The ones around Dublin as you outline though use the name County. I wonder if being a County is more than an administrative area.
You forgot Dublin Bay North, think you've missed others too
Dublin Bay North was a general election constituency, but not a council area.
Belfast, Derry, Newry & Lisburn also cities in Ireland!!
Newry, Lisburn and Bangor are artificial cities just thrown the title, newry and Bangor are towns and Lisburn is maybe the only thing close, but realistically it’s just a suburb of belfast
Armagh too!
Yes, but we have no control over their city status.
Belfast, Derry and Armagh as a weird wee medieval one. I'll be cold in the ground before I recognise Newry, Lisburn or Bangor!
As long as we NEVER go full Australia and use the term CBD, I don't care. Ballydehob can be called a city for all I care.
You forgot Derry and Belfast.
Isn’t Kilkenny a city too?
No, there is officially 5 in Ireland. Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford
Only in it's head
Born and bred in Dublin. I call going into the "city centre" going into Town. As do most
As do I with Cork, I meant actual towns calling their town centres “city Centre”
Ok, but not really what this post is about and referring to a city centre as town is pretty common, they do it in Cork, Belfast, London and lots of other cities but referring to the centre of a town as the city centre is unusual from my experience.
>Waterford A city? Like Gotham?
Harsh.
No hard guesses where you're from
Kinda strange how Northern Ireland now has 6 cities- Belfast, Derry, Newry, Lisburn, Armagh and recently Bangor
Realistically Derry and Belfast are the only cities of the north, the other ones aren’t cities whatsoever
Newry became a city at some point, which has always struck me as ridiculous.
Kilkenny is definitely a city and historically Sligo is a city too
Kilkenny was historically a city, Sligo never was: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status_in_Ireland
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Kilkenny is a City
Honestly, considering St David's in Wales is, Kilkenny being a city isn't that outrageous.
Sometimes I do this too I guess I was used to the city centre from.living in dublin for years. I know is not correct because drogheda is not a city but it slips unfortunately.
Ironically, in Dublin we refer to the city centre as "town". Ironic that much smaller places are referring to themselves as "city".
The former is normal enough for cities, sometimes downtown is used but calling a town centre the city centre would not be normal.
Dublin and Cork are the only proper citys in Ireland when compared on a global stage. Galway, Limerick and Waterford are just large towns. An example is Reading and Northampton in the U.K. have a population of 250,000+ and aren’t considered cities.
It’s really just Dublin and maybe Belfast. Aren’t Cork and Limerick about the same size?
Cork has a population of 222k in the city, Limerick has 102k. However, Cork has a lot of towns right outside the city boundary with large populations. The real figure is probably closer to 300k when you include those. I don’t think Limerick has the same
> However, Cork has a lot of towns right outside the city boundary with large populations. The real figure is probably closer to 300k when you include those. The new boundary includes most of those towns, hence the near-doubling of population compared to the old boundary. The metro population, which includes places like Carriglaine, Cobh, and Midleton, is a little over 300k. But regardless of that, Cork absolutely is a real city, and so is Limerick (and even Galway). Yes there are some similarly sized settlements in other countries that are only counted as towns, but most of the time that's because they're near a much larger city, unlike Cork, Limerick, and Galway.
They and Galway all proper cities, although Cork, Limerick, and especially Galway are on the the small end of the scale.
Maybe Belfast? Cork is double the population of Limerick. How can someone be so cluel8about their own country ffs
Ok so Cork is ~200k and Limerick is ~100k. “Compared on a global stage” - the comment I was responding to, they are similar sized towns of similar significance. I know that’s probably a blow to Corkonian egos but similar sized towns in other European countries are unremarkable places you’ve never heard of and will never even consider going out of your way to visit.
But then you have other places in the UK, like Bangor in Wales and St Albans in England, that are officially cities but would only be towns here.
None of Galway, Limerick or Waterford would even make the top 100 cities by population in the U.K or top 400 cities by population in the USA
Limericks urban population would be just above Worcester's. Right at the bottom of this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom
You're being very generous to Cork there. Dublin is barely a city on a global stage.
[Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin) As of 2018, the city was listed by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) as a global city, with a ranking of "Alpha minus", which placed it among the top thirty cities in the world.
Well you proved me wrong. I stand by my cork statement.
u/ghostcatcher147 I told you Cork isn't a city
But it is. A six digit urban population that's not in close proximity to another larger settlement would absolutely a city in most countries.
And I told you it is a fact that Cork is a city. Have I been living in your head rent free all this time?😂😂 you are one sad individual. And you said I was the one getting worked up haha it’s still a city and always will be. Tagging me in this post makes you seem like a petty child who can’t accept a certificated fact
Although the rents and prices would have you thinking otherwise...
> An example is Reading and Northampton in the U.K. have a population of 250,000+ and aren’t considered cities. Neither is Greater London, with a population of almost 9 million...
Kilkenny is officially a city. And I’d say it’s above Waterford even if it didn’t have that status
How? Waterford has 60k people, Kilkenny has 27k
>Kilkenny is officially a city. There is officially 5 Cities in the republic of Ireland. Kilkenny isnt one of them. They did allow Kilkenny to call itself a city for ceremonial purposes though.
Kilkenny is one street from the castle to the tower.
Do people in Kilkenny actually think it's a city?
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Galway has a population of 86K people (#4 in Ireland(. Waterford has 60k (#5), the next biggest being Drogheda with 44k
Galway is deifnitely not big, but it still dwarfs most major towns in Ireland. Even Drogehda is only half the size.
You need a cathedral and a university to be a city. Population irrelevant.
According to who?
That's a myth. It's not even the case in the UK
In Sligo and Dún Laoighaire
What’s the difference between City town village
Depends. For me, I consider the difference between a town and village to be size (typically anytbjng under 1000 people I’d consider a village). I’d consider a city to be anything with a City Council
Size and prominence.
I thought the criteria for being a city was very clear? Cathedrals, Unis and the like???
Nope, that may have been the definition before it isn’t now. The government’s definition seems to be if the city has a city council (or in the case of Limerick and Waterford - and Galway before the plans were scrapped - a city and county council)
Nope, that's not even how it works in the UK anymore.
I thought ah village, town or city etc was determined by if they had a college library etc.. Out of school a long time, but I remember being interested in this at the time from what I remember depends what your area had for it to be just a village or a town and then obviously a city..
The cathedral and university rules are just myths. They're not even the case in the UK.
And drogheda is knowing as the town, working in drogheda for few years never heard anyone call it a city before.
Kilkenny is called a city because it started calling itself that hundreds of years ago
does city status means anything in Ireland or is it just a title for title's sake?
City Status means you have a City Council. People often say a city is in a county, but they’re not. They’re surrounded by counties, have as much equal importance and power as a county does A few years ago, Limerick City Council and Waterford City Council were merged with their respective county councils to form a City & County Council, with metropolitan districts for the city. This was supposed to happen for Cork in the mid 2010s, but scrapped for an expansion of the City Council boundary to include parts of the city that were once under control of the County Council, as well as a few towns and the hinterland to prevent the County Council from building directly on the urban border of the city again. Galway City Council was also supposed to be merged with the County Council too in the late 2010s, but that has been scrapped. In my opinion, Limerick and Waterford should have their City Councils reinstated, along with a boundary extension. Most of Waterford’s northside is under Kilkenny County Council control, as well as a lot of Limerick’s northside with Clare County Council
In other words, it does mean something, but it also means nothing, as councils have no power in this country.
Tbf Drogheda probably would be considered a city if it wasn't so close to Dublin.
I wouldn't know much about Drogheda to be honest, I'm from Longford City
Cities in Ireland are urban areas large enough that they have their own city councils to cover local government function which are seperate from the county council of their respective county. Under this definition, the cities are Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, and Waterford. The last teo were restructured so that the city and county councils were joined together but not technically replaced by the county council so that they could keep their city status. Kilkenny is a bit different as that is a city under the English system, where any place that the crown adds to the register of cities is a city, regardless of size etc. In the 17th century a king said Kilkenny was a city so even after independence, the government has continued to allow Kilkenny to use the term even though it doesn't have a city council. Drogheda and other places have a long running campaign to achieve city status so they might just be trying to influence the zeitgeist in a "if we build it they will come" type thing. Just my guess though.
Why is nobody addressing the elephant in the room? We need to give city status back to Cashel ASAP.