Re: Re: The Dubline – Dublin’s Discovery Trail

Probably the most significant passage in the whole report is this quote from a Dublin Civic Trust document:

Christ Church Cathedral and its Synod Hall have become little more than a picturesque traffic island, surrounded on nearly all sides by heavy through-traffic – the railed garden acting as a buffer from passing vehicles. The major street junctions at this location confuse and disorientate the pedestrian, while the setting of these internationally significant buildings is substantially degraded.

The centre piece of any European city with a medieval heritage is its cathedral and we’ve let the setting of our Cathedral become hopelessly degraded by giving a higher priority to the accommodation of traffic movements. It could take decades to revive the stalled public transportation initiatives that could have begun to address the traffic movements problem, but that shouldn’t stop the city from re-balancing the space in favour of the pedestrian by repaving the entire setting of the Christ Church as a proper city square . . . . . through which traffic is currently permitted to pass.

I think infilling the Jury’s Inn recess is a red herring, but the grass and the Christ Church railings have to go, and firming up the edges of Christ Church Place, as originally proposed in the McCullough report, just has to be got on with whether it takes CPOs or legislation or whatever it takes.

I agree that an important step has been taken with the commitment to invest in this primary tourism spine, but this commitment needs to be followed up now by some serious table thumping to get actual movement on the ground. I don’t want to hear that, in a couple of years time, the 4 million was frittered away on some pretty signs and bits of sculpture, this has to be a transformative moment, the moment when we cop what being a European city means. If I want to hear anything at this point, it’s the sound of heads being knocked together.

Kefu, the reason that the ‘Dubline’ [who came up with this piece of bargain basement branding?] doesn’t cross the river is that this is an – East-West – tourism route. There’s every chance that in the future we’ll get a complementary – North-South – tourism route penetrating the charms of the north side, but, in the interest of trying to stay alive long enough to see any of this happen, can we just do this one spine at a time.