Re: Re: The Opera Centre

@rumpelstiltskin wrote:

Maybe there don’t have to be city centres.

Well, of course there don’t. A city is one form of social, political, economic, technological etc organisation, appropriate to one set of social, political, economic, technological etc factors. Change any of those factors and you change the form of organisation that is needed. I see no need to try to preserve cities, towns, monasteries, office blocks, canals or whatever after their economic etc justification has ceased, although I’m quite happy to examine the remains — or the ruins.

Look at Askeaton: lots of interesting ruins.

@rumpelstiltskin wrote:

Maybe we can all drive from one retail park to another, and from one suburban pub to another. We could just shut down the city centre, and dissolve Limerick as a city and as a community. I think most people would disagree with you.

We don’t need to drive from one place to another: Messrs Amazon’s drivers will deliver the stuff to us after we’ve bought it on tinterweb. We don’t need intermediate merchants carrying expensive stocks of (for instance) CDs, washing machines or books: we can read the reviews online and get the stuff delivered.

On the other hand, we don’t need to “shut down the city centre” and I don’t argue that “we” should do so. I simply say that (a) if, as I believe, the economic justification for the continuing existence of some cities is weakening, many folk will just stop going there and some cities, some towns, some advance factories etc can decay gracefully without anyone’s having to do anything expensive to shut them down and (b) unless you can think of an economic justification for investment in the infrastructure of a former century, you are going to waste a lot of money trying to prop it up.

@rumpelstiltskin wrote:

You seem to think that “leisure activities” encompasses in its entirety students sitting in cafes and vomiting on doorsteps. […]

Actually, I was hoping to provoke you into coming up with a set of economic activities that would justify investment in a city and that could not be done more cheaply or more effectively elsewhere. I have, alas, failed in this: you don’t seem to have any idea of what sort of activities could be laid on that would provide a return on the investment. And you have extraordinarily confused ideas about attracting tourists.

bjg