Reply To: RTE programme on the future of Dublin

Actually, what is interesting about this series is not what it says but how it is clear that the real issues are fluffed.

For example the main element coming across clearly is that a coherent citywide masterplan is essential to the sucessful re-shaping of the city. This is completely absent.

For example – at a Bord Pleanala Oral Hearing in relation to one of the ducklands high rise schemes the City Architect admitted that Dublin Corporation did not have a masterplan for the city and that the corporations policy in this regard was to facilitate developers.

In the same hearing one of the chief planning officers conceded that the corporation responds to applications for planning permission rather than providing any kind of framework in whic they can be carried out.

This paucity of vision is what emphasizes the quality and desirability of the Georgian City as against the thoughtless unplanned mess which is currently taking hold of Dublin. On the one hand you have a visionary, controlled and well executed masterplan, on the other a ‘first come first served’ thoughtless process best characterised by the absence of ANY kind of plan – and generally leading to a proliferation of developer led, overpriced, ugly and poorly finished ‘dogboxes’ being the dominant form of architecturla expression in this city.