Re: Re: DDDA / Docklands Miscellany
@GP wrote:
I can’t understand the anti private sector anti Treasury nonsense but in any event they have Shanghai and other experience and a look at Yangshan Port will show the possibilities of building out,
I presume you’re aiming your ‘anti treasury nonsence’ comment at me.
I’m not anti Treasury Holdings or any other development company, Development is good, it’s crucial even and most of the time it’s delivered by development companies.
I’m suggesting that we question the appropriateness of a development company leading the feasibility study that may advise on the relocation a very significant piece of national infrastructure, not to mention an intrinsic Dublin institution.
Building a new port at Bremore may well be a good idea, but nothing I’ve heard to date about it would give me confidence that the right level of national, or even regional, planning is going into it. If there are people in positions of influence in this city plotting this thing surreptitiously and plotting how to make it inevitable by stealth, I think it would be wise to be concerned about it and maybe ask a few questions.
Will a new port facility at Bremore be ring fenced as strictly a ‘port’, or will it become a de-facto urban centre, with a port, another bead on the neklace of east coast con-urbation?
If Bremore inevitably becomes an urban centre, will it start off with a ‘planning cap’ that will, with each successive review of the Development Plan, get raised, then lifted and finally flung in the air, Liffey Valley style?
I share your view that the present expanse of Dublin Port, with it’s container yards and vast tracts of storage tanks, is a huge wasted opportunity. Like you, I would like to see DCC develop a vision for Dublin that re-imagines this whole area, not just the ‘Poolbeg peninsula’, and demonstrates that moving the port won’t be just another wasted opportunity.
The city’s ‘interface’ with the Bay is the single greatest opportunity we will ever have to turn Dublin from the the ‘grubby mid-sized European city’ of your description into the world class city it has the potential to be, but all the players will have to be at the top of their game for this to happen and clear thinking, imagination, backbone and, above all, judgement, are going to be required to make it happen, to wade through the inertia and to face down all the diverse interest groups, from property owners to bird watchers.
Master Plans can be dangerous things, but allowing critical steps to be taken without a master plan is even more dangerous. There wasn’t exactly a flood of responces to my little off-shore port notion, but I think it should be one of the ideas in the mix when the master-planners get down to work, assuming this step ever happens.
