Re: Re: college green/ o’connell street plaza and pedestrians
@Peter Fitz wrote:
I absolutely disagree with the notion that any future piazza style space could be successfully coupled with some sort of public transport hub,
Luas, great and all as it is, can impact negatively on our finer civic spaces, becoming the focus of a street,
If ever CG is to be adequately transformed, full pedestrianisation is essential.
what a shame that a landscape masterplan doesn’t even seem to be on the distant horizon.
Sorry for butchering your post, but I think these quotes could stand alone.
In a simplistic way, I had always thought of Luas as a force for good, but you’re right, if you take it to the next level, having silent trams whizzing through the space make it effectively unusable as a pedestrian piazza, althogh it would still improve it as a civic space.
Even back in the days of it’s cobblestoned splendour, College Green was still more transportation hub, than pedestrian piazza.
All the more reason perhaps to explore the Lord’s portico end of College Street as a civic square with greater pedestrian floor area, as a complementary space to the main civic space at College Green. A series of inter-linked squares is quite a common civic pattern at the core of other European cities (Bremen comes to mind) and can be more engaging that just the great militaristic central square, to use Graham’s illuminating imagery.
It would be nice to believe that somebody’s working on this, that there’s a little team in the City Council beavering away on the various challenges, knocking the heads together on the city’s behalf, imagining the future, all of that stuff.
No!
What does the ‘Economic Development Unit’ do? surely restoring a civic centre to the city comes under the heading of ‘economic development’? Rose is always going on about how Dublin needs to ‘compete’ with other cities, needs to be creative, imaginative, open minderd, be of a positive mind-set! Why don’t they start cranking out the ideas on College Green and College Street and they could do Parnell Square and Christchurch Place while they’re at it. ( I know there’s a whole thread on Parnell Square, but it’s been dormant for a while)
