Make sure that the Town Commissioners have no power or influence and reinforce this by turning the Town Hall into an empty shell.
Arrange with the main political parties that nobody from the town is ever elected to the Dáil or Seanad.
Discourage tourists and customers from coming to the town by building on all the car parks and employing a traffic warden to stop people parking on the streets.
Undermine the profitability of small shops in the town centre by encouraging large petrol stations with forecourt shops on the outskirts.
Close down any factory that employs unskilled or semi-skilled workers and raze it to the ground. Promise to replace it but don’t.
Discourage overnight visitors to the town by making sure there are no hotel beds in the town.
Get rid of all forms of public transport but leave the station in a semi-derelict state to remind the locals that they are going nowhere.
Close down any major medical facility and turn it into a refugee hostel.
Put up tourist signposts and then neglect or, better still, remove the relevant tourist amenities.
Neglect heritage sites and remove any cultural icons to closed or out of the way places, thereby fostering cultural amnesia.
Downgrade sporting facilities, especially historic or popular ones, by starving them of money and transferring their games elsewhere.
Build large housing estates and make sure most of the houses go to people who won’t work, shop or socialise in the town.
Turn a large percent of the locals into travelers by forcing them to look for work, education or recreation elsewhere.
Bypass the town after convincing the locals that the bypass is entirely for their benefit.
Let it be known that those who don’t agree with you are paranoid.
