Changing office location patterns and their importance in the perpheral expansion of the Dublin region 1960 - 2008

Recent development patterns have seen the urban region of Dublin evolve from a compact urban form towards a dispersed development pattern assisted by a shift in service-sector employment. In particular, this paper examines the movement of the office sector towards a number of suburban locations over the period from 1960 to 2008. It outlines the manner in which the geographic location of office development in Dublin has been transformed over recent years from one which focused primarily on a single dominant core from the 1960s until the 1980s, towards one in which numerous and widely-spread suburban sites tended to account for a growing proportion of new developments during the 1990s and early 2000s. The implications of this emerging pattern are of significant importance to the long term development of the region.