Buildings on stilts in the Liffey
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Ah this is as good a time as any.
I would like to think that any good planning regime would have the flexibility to react to a ‘bright idea’ that hadn’t been anticipated when the relevant ‘Development Plan’ had been laid down. As for horse trading, of one kind or another, this has to be accommodated in the system to overcome stumbling blocks, or push through an imaginative idea.
Luke Gardiner did land himself a nice apartment in the Custom House after all and Baron Hausman undoubtedly applied the steam roller approach to existing property interests in delivering the Champs Elysees etc., but surely the fundamental test is whether the ‘stroke’ being pulled is in the public interest, or not.
Then we’re just into a debate about how to you adjudicate on what may, or may not, be in the public interest. Given that there are probably as many interpretation of the public interest as there are planning consultants. one obvious solution might be just to ask the public!
Game on! 😉
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, in both your previous posts. The door should never be shut, or at least never be locked, where a development plan is concerned. However, re the Docklands planning schemes, if the island is considered a worthy amendment (not in my eyes, but that’s neither here nor there is this debate), it should go through the appropriate channels of consultation. From the evidence reported recently, there’s a suspicion of fait accompli before the yoke was even unveiled. Are they asking, or are they telling?
Where I have an issue with the horse trading is, as you say, when it becomes a way of, say, generating income for a local authority, acquiring housing that should really be provided via more traditional channels, or funding public transport. Then, the bait is too tempting and the compromises can be too extreme. Recent years have encouraged this approach, as has the prevailing economic philosophy in the country during the boom years.
Time and again, these questions seem to come back to the very basic fact that successive governments during the boom have not tackled the issue of the provision of ‘public goods’, and have failed to realise that certain things simply must be provided by a central authority if there is any aspiration towards social equity. Such a failure tells me that the aspiration doesn’t exist, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
PS I’m not equating ‘public goods’ with ‘public interest’. The former is meant in its narrow welfare economics sense (i.e. can’t be provided profitably by the private sector, so must be provided by the public [= state]); to the latter I would give a very wide berth. Past experience (no details, sorry) hasn’t filled me with confidence that the public knows best what it needs or wants. As I mentioned recently elsewhere, the common good is not just the sum of all individual goods.
@gunter wrote:
Luke Gardiner did land himself a nice apartment in the Custom House after all
Pedantry alert – not Luke Gardner but John Beresford (of whom Beresford Place is named) who got himself the apartment in the Custom House
@Rory W wrote:
Pedantry alert – not Luke Gardner but John Beresford
This is not about the facts, and anyway Luke Gardner and John Beresford were the same person, everybody knows that! 🙂
Sorry I didn’t see this reply earlier
@ctesiphon wrote:
I’m not equating ‘public goods’ with ‘public interest’ . . . to the latter I would give a very wide berth. Past experience (no details, sorry) hasn’t filled me with confidence that the public knows best what it needs or wants.
I’m not sure about that ctesiphon.
I have a feeling that the public may be pretty tuned in to all of this now. All these design programmes on TV and short city breaks are eating into our head start. Now, when you’re trying to come across all knowledgable and authoritive in a client meeting about a house extension, there’s a good chance that ‘Joe six pints’ has a couple of shots on his mobile phone of the apartment he rented in barcelona.
If we take the ‘Liffey Island’ idea, since were on that thread, I think DDDA should have been challenged to stick this proposal up in a public exhibition and see if it stood up to a full blown public reaction, not just a couple of well marshaled ‘residents’ meetings. A scheme like this for the quays affects the whole city, it’s not just a local issue.
If Dunne’s proposal for Ballsbridge is anything to go by, they could have re-floated the post office with the number of letters of support that would have flooded in.
North Quay Investments Ltd and Anglo Irish and a good few more gone but the DDDA survive … I cannot help thinking they all should have read this thread.
And now the DDDA input into the Dart Underground Railway Order is spelling disaster (more about that in another FORUM) as the Docklands Underground Station (DUS) has caused a rail alignment where Pierce Underground is not under Pierce Mainline … 15 minutes walk at least.
What worries me even more is that the DU entry under the Liffey is way too shallow.
The south entrance to the DUS the DURO plan to put through the POOR OULD LMS building.I hope all you “good guys” are weathering this recession (or is that DEpression? ).
I was told yesterday by a “know-all” that the hole in the ground (canal) is for an underground car park. You know what they say about “casting pearls”? I kept stfumb.
Sorry!! that should be Pearse Station
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