We watched a House Hunters International today, and the guy was born and raised in South Dublin. He seemed to have this viceral reaction to even the idea of living on the North side. But they never explained what it was. I guess to Dubliners it’s as obvious as the sky, but we have no idea. The Norht side looked nice (and they ended up buying the house on the north side anyway).
Can anyone explain it in simple terms, to an American?
" Today, with the River Liffey acting as the dividing line, the two regions colloquially known as Northside Dublin and Southside Dublin are primarily differentiated according to economics – the north is generally considered underprivileged, the south overprivileged."
Chicago, yeah, even Milwaukee and the soudsiders der hey that I get.
But what the distinctions are in Dublin, and which was which, or which were the “good” onees, that I didn’t. The article (and the included video!) really helped. Thanks to the video, now I know I don’t like either side.
I should probably mention that the “southside” and “northside” stereotypes presented in the video, while they have some basis in reality, don’t actually map very well to the actual geographical north and south side. Any southsider who says he wouldn’t live on the north side is either joking or stupid.
The stereotype, as already noted, is that the Northside is relatively deprived, the Southside relatively affluent. The reality, as might be expected, is that both Northside and Southside have more and less affluent areas.
Nevertheless the social divide is real, but for geographical rather than economic reasons. Dublin is a highly centralised city, with commerce, culture, etc concentrated in a relatively small city centre and a hub-and-spoke public transport system linking the residential suburbs with the city centre. The result is that if you grow up in Dublin, attending a convenient school, etc, you become familiar with your own neighbourhood, the surrounding neighbourhoods and the city centre, but not at all with more distant neighbourhoods. In particular you have few social connections in, and little or no reason to spend time in, the other side of the city. So you can reach adulthood and whatever lies beyond the city centre will still be largely unknown to you - unknown both in the sense that you have no idea what lies there and couldn’t find your way around, and in the sense that you have no friends or social connections who live there.