Re: Re: O’ Connell Street, Dublin

@GrahamH wrote:

Notwithstanding a lack of design guidance for outdoor cordons, very simply there should be a baseline policy of rejecting all such contraptions unless expressly needed due to location requirements. Why on earth are they needed at all? Most European cities employ well designed tables and chairs spilling out in an orderly manner onto the pavement. The only reason they’re used here to increase commercial presence on the streetscape, host corporate branding, and hold in an extravagant use of heat from outdoor space heaters. A short and practical, snappy design guidance manual wouldn’t go amiss on the subject.

Forget about planning context for a second and look at this from a visitor experience point of view; here on the main street in the City sits a tacky screen, a number of incoherent signs some of which are for lines that are very low margin and a scruffy, filthy bin. In decades gone by Bord Failte spent a long time and scarce resources getting the hospitality industry right, that image is truely horrific as an advert for an area city council invested millions of euro’s to upgrade the public realm to enhance the visitor experience.

I really do worry about the ability of Dublin to get tourists with no ancestral relationship to Ireland to return on the basis of a high quality product, do the City Council want to see the west coast get all the return visits? Places like Westport wipe the floor with the Dublin tourist offer on so many metrics not least of which is supervision of the planning process.