Re: Re: A Nation at War with its Capital City?
A worthy and timely issue for discussion Cute Panda – but it very much relates to urbanism in general as browser has summed up very well, and something that McWilliams didn’t clearly point out. In that respect it’s no wonder people feel an anti-Dublin bias. It’s the widespread anti-urban mindset that is key, not anti-Dublin.
The pathetic transport infrastructure in regional cities and towns speaks for itself, with Cork in particular having the most astonishingly lacking bus services. Whatever about light rail and other flights of fancy, for the second city not even to have a decent bus service for its sprawling suburbs is akin to Crumlin being entirely car dependent. It beggars belief how that city has and is being treated by CIE and its unions.
It’s a problem countrywide – urban cores across the country are seen as places to shop on a Saturday, for lawyers and solititors and small business personnel to ponce about in in their lunch hour, and to drive to in your car as a novelty experience. Not places to live, not places to go about your daily business and certainly not places to bring up a family heaven forbid. Across the country, our urban centres are being packed to the gills with three storey crappy tax-break apartments to cater for first-rungers and students attending the local IT/university. Otherwise it’s sprawl sprawl sprawl.
Frankly the anti-Dublin bias pales into insignificance when one considers what’s being done to small town urban Ireland. Planners and councillors don’t have a notion how to consolidate and logically expand existing centres. Developers are dictating the terms everywhere with mindless estates, with the local authorities playing catchup, laying down the minimum of terms and conditions. At least Dublin’s planners have an idea what they’re about now – outside the capital it’s either semi-d sprawl or inner-urban bedsits.
Urban loses again. Though saying that, so does rural – villages are neglected whilst retail parks and ranks of houes gobble up the rural outskirts of towns.
