How rapidly is Dublin Changing

People often remark how quickly Dublin is changing. A common complaint is that if you come back to Dublin after a gap of only 5-10 years you no longer know your way around due the number of new roads which have been built in the meantime.

South County Dublin County Council put together this interesting site to help people get a quick visual view of how the area has changed over the years. Users can start with a current map and zoom/pan to the area that interests them. With a single click of the mouse they can then switch to see one of many maps of the area produced since 1760.

As I clicked on various parts of the area and I was struck by the huge change in the map between the current day and the most recent historical map in 1942. For example Tallaght which now features a large built up urban area was only a small rural village surrounded by farms in 1942. It would be really interesting to see the changes in increments of every 5 years so that the detailed timeline of this change could be seen.

I was also struck by how little the map changed between 1760 and 1942. You can see that the style of map changed over the centuries as the practice of map making evolved, but the features on the ground seemed to change very little.