Dublin Metropolis – Artist’s Impression

Very interesting pic!!!!!

Em…certainly some of the buildings there would have looked far better being taller. Some of them would have looked far better by not being built!

It’s extremely difficult to get a sense for the real size of cities when different definitions of boundaries and geographical limits are taken into consideration. However the comparison of Glasgow and Dublin is quite telling:

Dublin City, an area of 115square km has a population of 495,000 according to the 2002 census

Glasgow City, an area of 175square km has a population of 629,000 according to the 2001 census.

More interesting however is that the “Greater Glasgow Settlement Area” (as defined in the 2001 census) with an area of 368square km (or an approx radius of 11km from the centre of Glasgow) has a total population of 1,168,270 (2001 Census)

Greater Dublin, an area widely considered to include all of counties Dublin, Meath, Kildare and Wicklow has a total area of 6971square km and a total population of 1,535,446 (2002 Census) It’s a ridiculously huge expanse to be considering as being part of Dublin’s metropolitain area.
More realistically, County Dublin, including Dublin City, Fingal, South Co. Dublin And DunLaogaire Rathdown has a total area of 912square km and a population of 1,122,040 (2002 Census)

Therefore Greater Glasgow would appear have a similar population to Co. Dublin accommodated in approximately 40% of the geographical area. In my book this makes Glasgow a “bigger” city in that it is more densely populated.

Also within a geographical area roughly similar to that of the 6971square km of Greater Dublin a group of districts immediately surrounding Glasgow (East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, City Of Glasgow, Inverclyde, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire) with a total area of 6715square km has a total population of 2,096,685. Therefore “Greater Dublin” would appear to have approx. 73% of the population of Greater Glasgow and immediate environs.

I got all this information through wikipedia and I have to say I’m quite surprised at the result of the calculations. I always thought that Dublin was a considerably bigger place than Glasgow but the facts tell a different story. Of course bigger doesn’t mean better by any means! Dublin at the moment seems to have a lot more going for it than Glasgow from an economic point of view plus the population is set to rise dramatically in the next 20 years or so whereas Glasgow’s growth is relatively static.

Anytime I’ve been to Glasgow I always felt it to be a bigger city than Dublin, with a higher density of population in the areas surrounding the central business district (which feels a lot bigger than Dublin’s). Particularly notable I think is the number of tenements that are fully occupied. A lot of ‘over the shop’ accomodation that would be occupied in Glasgow is still vacant in Dublin. I think the city council has some action plan to address that but I culd be mistaken.

Are these tenement buildings you speak of ctesiphon what they call ‘mansion blocks’ over there? (in London at least).
What class of people would have lived in these in the 19th and early 20th centuries when they were built?
I suspect even then a house with front and back garden was still more desirable, even if these blocks were built to a very high standard.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Are these tenement buildings you speak of ctesiphon what they call ‘mansion blocks’ over there? (in London at least).
What class of people would have lived in these in the 19th and early 20th centuries when they were built?
I suspect even then a house with front and back garden was still more desirable, even if these blocks were built to a very high standard.

They’re pretty much the same thing, afaik, though I get the impression that the flats in the mansions might be smaller- maybe just the ones I know. Our flat (such a term doesn’t really do it justice) had four bedrooms, two reception rooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen, and a great view of Calton Hill. It was in a four storey over basement block in which the ground floor and basement were actually more like terraced houses with back gardens. Very few of the tenements are as spectacular as the one in Morlan’s pic (which is Old Town rather than New Town).
If you really haven’t been to Edinburgh, may I suggest you drop what you’re doing right now and get on the next flight out of town? I’ll give you a week before I start oiling my gun.:) If you can’t make it, rent ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ (or Trainspotting, for that matter, but TPOMJB is a far better film) to see what we mean.

The city imposed strict controls on its feuars . Although internally the houses were built to individual tastes and requirements, externally they had to conform in a uniform manner to the general plan as to both height and site. While uniformity was the prime requisite,* variations were allowed in decoration and in the design of doors and windows.

Tempted?:)

EDIT: Broken URL removed. See message below for replacement.

In which case we could probably move the sun too if we wanted 🙂

That’s a great building in your picture Morlan, a nine storey Georgian building – imagine dropping that into conversation at an IGS dinner – the scandal! It really makes you laugh aloud when you think of the five storey IFSC Phase II in this context.

Just in Ireland for good or bad, ‘tenement’ has negative connotations, even they are of high quality – mass-built housing built to rid parts of the city of slums: Iveagh Buildings etc. By contrast ‘mansion blocks’ in London at least seem to have been built by developers for the middle classes c1900 as alternatives to the conventional house, somewhat similar to how families lived in continental cities:

ctesiphon nil do link ag obair…though yes I’ve seen Trainspotting (who hasn’t?), not the other though.
Never been to Edinburgh (oh the shame), but I’ve visited her classier collegue twice, which hopefully makes up for it 🙂

Bath would be my guess.

😮

Though in my defence (ahem), I didn’t realise there was any connection between the ‘classier colleague’ and the picture below the words- I just thought it was another London picture, though not one I recognised.
(In hindsight, I should have just checked the image properties- Bath is in the title of your file!)

There’s another great view of Edinburgh that would be the next picture to the right of the one you linked, showing the back of the Bank of Scotland and other Baronial-tinged ‘skyscrapers’ directly behind the two galleries that sit above Princes Street Gardens, but I fear we’ve gone too far off topic.

I’m off to lick my wounds…:)