Dublin Parks

Those pictures make Dublin north look like a provincial town, Brooklyn looks incredibly dense

You could well be correct about some of the parks in dublin but i doubt anybody is going to propose closing one- – -except Mr O G. My only problem with Dublins parks is the interaction of phoenix park to the city, some thing along the lines of central park would do wonders for the city – I believe DCC are looking at trying to join it up a bit better.

Great Parks as they are – – Marley, Blackrock, Cabinteely, St Stephens Green

Like to see some improvement to Merrion square for children

PS go Berlin if you want to see a city with vast amounts of parkland.

It isn’t obvious to me which parks are underused: people always claimed St Annes was an example, but it is always full of people; Fairview Park is too. Anyway, the problem is not enough people not too many parks.

Yes good examples of decent parks above, St Annes being a fantastic one, but there are acres of fields contained within many housing estates north and west of the city.
Seems like a serious overkill, maybe it was the zoning, builder must provide X sqM of ‘green’ (wasteground) per X no of houses.
Its a pity because i think we could have achieved a reasonable density even with the semi d’s if we had built steadily outwards with minimal parks.

Sorry: the suburbs of course need to become denser and some parks could be lost, or partly build on in a way that improves passive survellience and compliments their setting.

Well, if there’s going to be a thread about the Phoenix Veldt… 😀

My issue with so many of our parks is that they are merely acres of grass. There is no landscaping. I was up walking out near the top end of Chesterfield Avenue and there was just a savannah of long grass on every side, with absolutely nobody around. The Veldt is essentially a enclosed piece of managed countryside or an immense version of those terrible estate greens that dot the city.

Maybe there’s something institutionally Irish to this. Maybe we can’t “do” park landscaping.

But then again without the acres of wasteground where would our rambunctious(!) youth hold their Parisian-style St Patricks Day demonstrations

Prison?

I was thinking Siberia

Ah… the Veldt in winter..

ah yes its almost romantic…….but without the burning cars it just not the same

we all know Dublin is awash with useless underutiised and shameful wastes of potentially great open space-I will kick off with my own D5 neighbourhood which contains Edenmore Park, Springdale linear river park along the santry river and the general Harmonstown area- a disgraceful waste of space barely fit to walk my dog in in an area 5-10mins from the dartline that barely contains the most basic of public lighting, two changing rooms of for the innumerable football clubs of the area and pretty much nothing else, e.g no astroturf failities in public management. if 20% of it was sold of for decent residential development with the money going into proper usuable quality facilities we would all be better off in so many ways- but how could you make that wash with the yokels and their political reps?-would require resources and imagination beyond anyone with the power and the nous to pull it off it would seem..and we have now seemed to have pased the peak where the market could dictate the inevitable folly of what we now have. as for the westside, D22/24 etc the picture would be even bigger

Don’t know if this is the best place for this but anyway here goes. Can anyone advise as to what these structures are in the Phoenix Park? A lot shows in maps live and in google earth , much for sure from the Pope’s visit but much else besides. I’ve looking at these two shapes for months and would appreciate knowing. They lie between Chesterfield Avenue and Acres Road.

Not an answer but a possible guess to the Phoenix Park question.

The pattern suggests a military origin, possible former trench works. The Park was most likely used for military training during WWI, when practice trenches might have been constructed and I believe was also used by the very limited anti-aircraft gun defence for Dublin in the Emergency, aka WW II. Of course the Park was also used for storing turf at that time, but the photo I have seen suggests the turf was clustered along the main road, so that is not a likely connection.

As for too many Parks we have too many ill maintained Parks with few facilities, and with facilities expensively built not kept up. If you want to see how small parks are properly used then Singapore is the place to go. We do have too many pointless green spaces left around housing development in an arbitrary way, most often public housing. These are neither country, nor park being only used by grazing horses and cider parties, but which still fall to be mown at public expense.

PS Kids never seem to play outdoors anymore on public space, unless in an organised game. Casual play is gone.

The Park was used for military manoevres and games in the 17th (I think), 18th and 19th centuries and the so-called fifteen acres was a prime area for this activity so there most likely military related.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=pocket+parks