Collective Agency and Urban Praxis: Towards the Rebirth of an Irish Town Part 2 Dissertation 2022 Aedán Mackel Ulster University | UK Urbanisation witnesses ‘creative destruction’ at all spatial scales, permeating the fabric of our regional and market towns, and incapacitating local councils from managing sustainable growth.This dissertation reflects on the unregulated application of neoliberal theory in the spatial organisation of Downpatrick (Co. Down), where the fragmentation between policy and action provides for the antagonistic social relations of capital accumulation. A thoroughly equipped grass-roots volunteer network has emerged, challenging ‘top-down’ development processes, and establishing a new socio-political equilibrium, that implies a devolution of responsibility. The research examines the workings of the Downpatrick Town Committee, a voluntary development group of ‘community experts’, invested in reversing the decline of their historic town centre, amidst a neoliberal policy environment unconcerned with the inherited geohistorical landscape and constructed character of place. The discussion profiles two case studies where interaction in the processes of urbanisation manifests a sense of ‘constitutional fatalism’, where the Committee experience superficial community participation in an unbalanced environment that favours commercial interests. To conclude, this dissertation reflects on the capacity for community-led urban interventionism, in the face of the destabilising ‘production of space’, where the mechanisms of neoliberal reform reinforces the antagonistic social relations that exist in the process of local regeneration. Aedán Mackel Tutor(s) David Coyles