Re: Re: The Skehan/Sirr plan

@keating wrote:

Back up the bus lads,. . . You need to address the politics first, before you start re-arranging land uses. It will be difficult to consolidate an existing urban area under our current development model. Taking the Skehan/Sirr study as the most likely scenario, the first necessary step is reform of Local Government.

That depends on how you define ‘First step’.

I’m thinking of a first step that imagines where we would like to be, as a urbanised, developed, island, in 2030, as opposed to predicting where we’re likely to be in 2030 (based on an extrapolation of existing trends) and tailoring our planning strategies to suit that, as with the skehan/Sirr strategy.

Knowing where we’d like to get to ought to be the first step an any journey, then we’ll gas up the bus, get out the map and hit the road.

That’s interesting about U.S. shopping trends, although I have to say I find it hard to believe that Americans are going to start living without their malls, maybe this is the end of the world after all!

Phil: Obviously the very thought of Dundrum Shopping Centre ought to send a shiver down the spine of any right thinking person, but I imagine that keating is talking about the urban qualities of the place, rather that the horror of it’s actual shops. In terms of the miserableness that was Dundrum before the the DSC, it could be argued that the centre has given Dundrum something of an urban focus, some paving and a water feature.