Re: Re: Adamstown Timetable

Adamstown might have been sold to people as a, ‘major new town’, but it is not and nor was it ever conceived to be. it is a dormitory town.

Dormitory towns, by definition, have minimal facilities because it is inherently understood that the majority of the residents of a dormitory town will only ever be in the place in the evenings and at the weekends.

There is no excuse for Adamstown, its existence at all is an indictment of the failure to plan the expansion of Dublin through the reinforcement and densification of the core areas. That the great and the good of the architectural profession were only too willing to get on-board the Adamstown express is a sure indication of just how wafer thin is our attachment to urban principles, when it comes right down to it.

That parts of Adamstown may be well designed and may even be pleasant to live in is not the point. If there’s one major European city that doesn’t have the density to support its own threadbare infrastructure, it is Dublin. And that’s without haemorrhaging yet more households to a peripheral townland whose only recommendation is that it adjoins a railway line and is owned by a consortium of property speculators.

Arguing about the density of Adamstown is about as useful as checking the air pressure of the spare tyre on a car that’s already been written off.