Who is popular today?

Sir, – With the greatest of respect to Finn Hogarty (Letters, November 3rd), who is correct to say there have been seismic changes in Dublin since the 1960s and 1970s, and yes cities change over time, but in Dublin’s case, I would desist from using the verb “evolve”. I think Una Mullally (Opinion, November 1st ) makes some fair observations.
What we were witnessing is a reversal of Dublin’s evolution as a community and the erasing of its culture and history.
Present-day Dublin, like San Francisco and other places with high notions about the need to be part of a squeaky clean, homogeneous, global village of the bored and the boring, is being cleansed of people and places that afford a sense of the past, the place of the present, and a continued journey to living and working together in the future. Dublin is now a theme park for the transient.
Ms Mullally is wrong about one thing though. There is no danger of anything “kicking off” in Dublin. Dublin is neither Berlin nor Paris, unfortunately.
– Yours, etc,
ULTAN Ó BROIN,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Sir, – If Finn Hogarty (Letters, November 3rd) believes that opposition to the hollowing out of Dublin’s cultural capital by vulture funds marks one out as “an anti-modernist reactionary” then I for one will be happy to wear that moniker when “something kicks off”.
– Le meas,
SEÁN MAC DIARMADA,
Crumlin,
Dublin 12.