Buildings on stilts in the Liffey

Maybe this is abit off the wall, but do you guys feel strongly enough about this discussion to form an action group/ commitee?

Im suggesting a public pressure group to discuss and address the concerns as voiced in this mail thread, perhaps engage with various other local community groups/parties and representatives?

Just a thought….

@reddy wrote:

doesn’t the city council have one of these as well. I think its called the urban design advisory panel or something similar. They review the strategic projects in the planning system every couple of months.

I can’t remember exactly who’s on the panel but it includes Ken Shuttleworth and a couple of others with a fair amount of experience.

Presumably it cant really be a bad thing??

I didn’t mean to suggest that an Urban Design / Architectural panel would be a bad thing, just that for something like the campshire proposal to get past such a panel, the DDDA would have to be pretty careful who got nominated to be on the panel.

The way I read it, this panel hasn’t been appointed yet. In the circumstances, it would be hard to believe that the DDDA, having invested so much effort in laying the foundations for this scheme, would then take the risk of having some ‘Advisory Panel’ shoot it out of the water at their first meeting.

If the Sindo article, posted by Rusty Cogs, is anything to go by, there are Machiavellian layers to this thing that would put a bit of panel packing in the halfpenny place.

I hadn’t realized that DCC had a similar panel, they must keep them sedated on drips in a windowless room!

I have just been reading the DDDA objection letter to that PP application on Mayor and New Wapping streets (the building in the path of the “Canal”).
How two faced can the DDDA be?… I let you all decide for yourselves …. your comments please.

http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00231655.pdf and arrow forward to top of Page two … I hope this URL works.

The objection letter excerpt is under “Assessment . height”

@lightswitch wrote:

Maybe this is a bit off the wall, but do you guys feel strongly enough about this discussion to form an action group/ commitee?

Im suggesting a public pressure group to discuss and address the concerns as voiced in this mail thread, perhaps engage with various other local community groups/parties and representatives?

Just a thought….

I understand where you’re coming from, lightswitch, but the words ‘Action Group’ and ‘Commitee’ send a shiver down my spine.

By rights, this whole proposal is setting itself up to be a test case of whether we have a planning system that works, or not. We’ll also find out, who in DCC still has any functioning critical faculties and who’s been staring too long at all the shiny new planning application. DCC, albeit as the ‘Corpo.’ has been around since 1200, or so, and presumably will be around for a while yet, DDDA are essentially a development agency and they’ll be history in a few years. It’s DCC that I would be inclined to hold responsible if someone, in a position of influence, doesn’t fire out a warning shot over this pretty soon.

The laying out and construction of the Quays was a hugely visionary undertaking that appears to have taken about one hundred and seventy years to complete (from about 1680 to 1850) and ‘complete’ is the operative word.

From Heuston to the Point, the Liffey quays are a complete set-piece entity that every architectural visitor to Dublin agrees ‘Define the city’. What DDDA appear to be attempting to do here is akin to what the ESB did to Fitzwilliam Street in the ’60s, take one of Dublin’s defining set-pieces (that they had nothing to do with creating) fracture it’s integrity and treat it as a new architectural play thing.

So long as we don’t allow others to under-value what we have and over-value what they’re trying to give us and so long as we don’t underestimate the capacity of people to make the wrong decisions for the right reasons, all that ought to be required here is to keep writing in, use the process, and there should be no need to break out the burning torches just yet.

@Rusty Cogs wrote:

So you’ve read the Q&A session with the DDDA and the local residents ? Then you’ll know that your fears about the canal being used for grey water were unfounded ?

I wish that were the case Rusty but no. OK a DDDA answer stated that the canal was not for Grey Water but the wrong question was asked. The questioner should have asked if “treated” grey water would be allowed to run into the canal. Of course untreated grey water cannot be allowed into the canal as its later entry into the Liffey would cause a fishkill for miles.
You must realise I have been showing how two-faced the DDDA are in regards to this whole Liffey Island, and since the answer was very short I suspect the DDDA answered the question as asked, without any elaboration. Besides, a canal of just surface water from the immediate area will be even worse cesspool wise (tho’ less dangerous) than treated grey water.
Why do you think their is no mention of a water feed from the adjacent Royal Canal and the DDDA statement that it will “not be tidal”?

Have you not watched the recent RTE news explain that the Ringsend Sewage Plant is now treating way over capacity (over 18% over I think), and reductions in inputs (other than sewage water) are urgently required? DCC cannot (and will not) allow any more surface water to enter the sewer (as is the case for a huge part of Dublin with its singlebore pipe system), and that is why the DDDA require a “Canal” as a storm surge storage. They call it a

sustainable urban rainwater drainage facility

Again that is wrong. It would be surface water, a big difference.

I suspect that the Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant (not to be confused with sewage) is now also overcapacity considering it also has bad ongoing odour problems.

Rusty! are you hinting that the “Canal” is a good thing? The DDDA haven’t even made a Zone 9 for it. They dont even dare think of it as an amenity, and neither should we.

Back to that “Island”:
Look at it again this way …. No Canal = no Island ….. noIsland = no excuse to extend out over the Campshires and into the Liffey…. or indeed vice versa.

At least Rusty I think we agree on the absurdity of that “Liffey Island” and the failure of no EIS on the Liffey Vistas.

I said ‘no burning torches just yet’.

I’m well equiped to join an ugly mob, if that’s what it comes to, but for now, I’d like to see how far a bit of reason goes.

The Fitzwilliam Street event was a bit before my time, but it shouldn’t be a forgotten lesson. As far as I know, it was only the old codgers, Old Dublin Society stalwarts, some long-haired students and the odd aged litterary icon, like John Betjeman etc. who actively campaigned against the proposal, all the forward looking, open mind-set, types were for it.

The ESB’s Fitzwilliam Street project produced a quality building, but it was still a mistake and an irrevsible mistake at that!

To me this case looks even more clear cut that Fitzwilliam Street may ever have appeared. The campshires aren’t some crumbling edifaces that are unsuitable to their present use, they are pristine prominades that have demonstrated, in the short period of time that they have been cleared of transit sheds, that they have the capacity to host public festivals as well as casual day to day recreation. Dublin is not well endowed with hard surface urban spaces! If you want to hold a public event in Dublin you have hold it on grass or close off a street somewhere.

As quay front development progresses and bridge access inproves, there is no way that the existing public engagement with the campshire spaces will not increase and intensify. The riverscape at North wall/Sir John Rogerson’s Quay has grand city scale to it like no where else in Dublin. What’s required here is good planning and decent architecture with a couple of new gems thrown in, if possible, not radical intervention of a potentially very crude type.

We should keep the burning torches well tarred up, just in case.

What’s the prize, a canal trip for two?

@reddy wrote:

…….I’ve heard some real reservations before about the impact on the city of bringing traffic underground, but sure its worth throwing out there.

Pedestrianise the North Quays along the proposed Liffey Island stretch…..No need to go underground … so no great costs …. the traffic can be diverted along that stretch where they have proposed that canal … 60ft wide should be enough. The “surface water facility” can be under the road. I am aware that the wool store stretch might be too narrow and needs to be further east and maybe even as far as New Wapping St.

I have no objections to the DDDA renting or leasing the current roadway to waterfront pubs and cafes and getting their “Pound Of Flesh” but not the Campshires. … Rear car park entrances to the waterfront buildings can be via the Cul De Sac of Castleforbes St.
How about awnings, canopies, colourful umbrellas, windbreaks, tables and even that Marina (or not). …. Have the southside envy the northside for a change … lol.
All the above meets with the DCC zoning, preservation and conservation, as should be the case.

Apologies to lightswitch et al. I assumed you all know of the DCC development plan 2005 to 2011. Sorry!

I got the map starting from the Dublin City Council site.
http://www.dublincity.ie/Planning/DublinCityDevelopmentPlan/Pages/CityDevelopmentPlan.aspx
and then using the pdf view controls after expanding the map view to 100%

I patched in the “Specific Objectives” of the plan.
These are not just Zoning Oblectives but more serious.

http://www.dublincity.ie/development_plan/Maps/mapeset.pdf

”a reasonable apprehension of bias”

You can’t read the planning files of any local authority without coming away with a reasonable apprehension of bias!

Leaving DDDA out of it for the moment, every decision to grant permission by DCC, which on the face of it contravenes the Development Plan, gives rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias, does it not? In the context where the planning authority gets to share in the gain through future rates, development levies etc. etc.

What’s that nice legal phrase from a different jurisdiction about ‘appalling vistas’?