Re: Re: “Redesigning Dublin” – Chief City Planner Dick Gleeson’s vision for Dublin

I’m with the sceptics too. I could spend half an hour picking through the views in the story but it’d be a bit pointless given that there is very little real coherence or principle behind the selection of ideas being presented; to me he sounds like a kid with a big Lego set as he seems to lack the ability to prioritise the problems affecting the city. What irritates is that there isn’t a single mention of the embarrassing state of the streets in most of the city: the poor state of road and footpath surfaces, the clutter, the poor placement of trees, the many cheap and nasty “street fittings” (bins, signage, bollards, etc.) and the poor treatment of historic features like paving. I guess there’s not enough glamour or novelty in trying to fix these problems; in my opinion, even provincial UK towns and cities are far ahead of Dublin in this regard at this stage.

As an example of the lack of focus or ability to prioritise, It’s weird that he sees Ballsbridge as one of the priority areas of the city which needs improving. It reminds of of the Labour TD being interviewed about Sean Dunnes development on the Jury’s site where he was demanding that sufficient affordable housing be made available for locals. Simply farcical.

He also deserves criticism for, in the past, doing his best to do an “O’Rourke” on public transport in the city by ignoring the serious research done by the DTO and championing of his own figure-of-eight Luas in the city.