Architect and cyclist activist Ciarán Ferrie says a living city is one that's designed for both children and the elderly, for families and young people, not just for transient populations or tourists to visit.

For this episode of This is Where We Live Helen went back to chat with Mark O'Brien, Director and CEO of Axis Arts Centre, in the heart of Ballymun about how the arts and creativity can help shape place, community and belonging.

Dr Ellen Rowley is a cultural and architectural historian, a Dubliner with an eye and an ear for the stories of the people who lived in the buildings around us. 'If walls could talk' she says they'd tell us a multi-layered story of the lives of the people who passed through and made it a home. 

Kieran Rose is a man who has had two passions driving his life, urban design and planning and human rights, particularly rights for the LGBTQ community in Ireland. He hails from Cork himself but works as a city planner with Dublin City Council while campaigning and fighting for rights and was a founder of GLEN the Gay Lesbian Equality Network in 1988.

Eoin Carroll is a housing researcher with 13 years experience working with the Jesuit Centre for Faith & Justice in Dublin's city centre. Eoin has just moved to a new role as Policy and Public Affairs Officer with EXTERN, an NGO working with marginalised people including the homeless. Helen Shaw met Eoin for the podcast in Mountjoy Square, in the heart of northside city Dublin, just before his move to the new job to talk about Eoin's work and his take on the need for a formal right to housing and shelter and how he sees Government policy shaping the housing environment we have in Ireland.

Dr Dáithí Downey is a Dubliner with a mission - He is head of housing policy, research and development with Dublin City Council and he's leading the new Housing Observatory for Dublin - a research and planning initiative under Dublin City Council that aims to make Dublin an affordable and sustainable place to live in. 

Jeanette Lowe is an artist and photographer who, in her work, has become an archivist for what she calls 'invisible' communities living in Dublin city. She grew up in Drimnagh and her mother was reared in Pearse House, off Pearse Street, one of the iconic 1930s and 40s corporation complexes which were designed by Herbert Simms - the city planner behind so many of the public housing developments in that period. Today Pearse House and its neighbouring complex Markievicz House are threatened with demolition.

Dr Philip Lawton is Assistant Professor of Geography at Trinity College Dublin and someone with a keen interest in shaping sustainable cities and towns. His work has explored the impact of gentrification, the tension between commerce and citizens and the developing model of new urban towns like Adamstown, home to 25,000 people in west Dublin.

Dr Ruth McManus, urban geographer DCU, takes Helen Shaw on a walk through Drumcondra and its social housing, between Griffith Park and Home Farm Road, built between 1920s -60s, creating a social village from the library at the park to Corpus Christi Church and primary school on Home Farm Road.

Dr Eoin O'Mahony is a Fellow in the School of Geography in UCD, an urban geographer with a strong sense of the need for social change. Helen Shaw met up with Eoin in Smithfield, once Dublin's horse market and now a shiny plaza of private apartment blocks, an art cinema, cafes and restaurants.