Re: Re: The Dubline – Dublin’s Discovery Trail

What strikes me most are the cop outs of the strategy:

Vision of how to develop and open up Dublin Castle
What to do with College Green
How to bring greater pedestrian/traffic balance
Christ Church Place – High Street dual carriageway
Physical regeneration of Thomas Street

Its clear from the strategy that the team came up against some immovable barriers…and in Dublin that can only mean traffic engineers.

Also I’m concerned that more wayfinding (albeit high quality stuff ) gets added while our usual beefs of redundant signs and obsolete poles takes a backseat. Less really is more in Dublin’s case.

The big ticket projects appear to be summarised as follows:

New tourism hub at Barnardos Square – essentially retrofitting Jim Barrett’s monstrosity and redesigning the plaza again – only 6 years after completion. In my view if progressed this will absorb most of the €4m funding…this is Ireland after all.
Ship Street and Kilmainham public realm projects – both two stalled initiatives of the DCC Heritage Office. The Ship Street Werburgh Plan of 2005 is most noteworthy in the complete lack of progress any of its objectives ever made.
Windmills at Cornmarket – hmmm, the less said on that

On the upside, there does seem to be a genuine sense of engagement from Digital Hub Development Auth. and Diageo regarding their landholdings on Thomas Street and James Street. Lets not waste that opportunity.

Meanwhile, what do we do about the kebab strip that is Dame Street?