New cities around Dublin

They all should be. They all have populations greater than some other cities in Ireland. They’re all regional hubs which is are important to the National Spacial stratagies. Although Swords needs to develope further. It lacks a third level institution, a rail connection and a hospital. And the Pavillions could do with a good extension. Dublin being a multi city area would be beneficial to it’s population. Not only Dublin Suburbs but in my opinion, Other towns should qualify such as Athlone and Dundalk

It would conversely be a mistake to fragment local administration; if Dublin, as in Greater Dublin, had a stronger, more powerful administration, with an elected mayor and council with genuine powers, then, presumably, some powers which are at the moment the prerogative of DCC and the other three councils could be devolved to Town Councils and mayors, with, you know, Swords and so on having an almost independent structure and smaller urban centers, Phibsboro, Rathmines, Ballymun and so on, having more modest, but still meaningful local administration.

I totally agree with Notjim it is more cohension and not fragmentation that is required; having sad that having a city without dense sub-centres renders any city inefficient. Bringing these centres into the city as opposed to leaving them develop without proper transport connections and social and commercial infrastructure would be a mistake. Swords and Tallaght seem to have done this a lot more than Blanchardstown which appears to be a charming village, shopping centre and sprawling business parks without any real cultural facilities.

Both Tallaght and Swords have a long way to go but one feels that the planners are achediving a lot of progress mostly with private sector investment but also with some good public projects.

God help us! Has nothing been learnt from the health service? We need no more duplication of management services. These areas can develop an identity of their own within the existing framework.

Tallaght, Swords and Blanchardstown have pretty much got their act together why muck it up.

Where is the option “None of the above” on the poll? If you leave it empty you cannot vote.

Passport to Pimlico?

@GP wrote:

Where is the option “None of the above” on the poll? If you leave it empty you cannot vote.

Ditto.

For the reasons outlined by notjim. Subsidiarity- Yes. New cities- No.

emm….none of the above

@ctesiphon wrote:

Ditto.

For the reasons outlined by notjim. Subsidiarity- Yes. New cities- No.

+1

Also a thumbs down from me. There has already been a race to the bottom in recent years by the 4 separate local authorities in the Dublin area, as each has been in competition with each other to collect the development levies and rates.

Paul, is it possible to provide an option of “A new strong regional Greater Dublin Area authority prior to any new city designation”? That’s the one I’m voting for anyway… It’s either that or I’m spoiling my vote :p

I’m sure it would horify most but i’d love to see tallaght develop up into the mountains, some nice apartment blocks and parks a la barcelona, rio de janeiro, hong kong.

none of these should be cities! we shouldn’t be encouraging further splurge in leinster. Make Tralee a city… ok bad example… but you get the point.

And anyway it’s not as if local councillors carry themselves off well at the moment. Additonal granularity in representation in Dublin is the last thing Dublin needs. Let’s recognise these areas for what they are… SUBurbs.

Bago _ you’ve solved the housing problem and lots of extra business for Smufits Cardboard Box division to boot!

Rio De Tallaght!!!!!!!!!

One Greater Dublin Authority – Hutton is right.

@hutton wrote:

Also a thumbs down from me. There has already been a race to the bottom in recent years by the 4 separate local authorities in the Dublin area, as each has been in competition with each other to collect the development levies and rates.

Paul, is it possible to provide an option of “A new strong regional Greater Dublin Area authority prior to any new city designation”? That’s the one I’m voting for anyway… It’s either that or I’m spoiling my vote

+1 🙂

The current set up has massively accelerated development outside the M50, its impossible to create a high density core under this set up.

none of the above – too close to Dublin and too new to be considered cities in their own right. Even the likes of Drogheda and Dundalk (also mooted) are too close. Somewhere like athlone maybe, but Swords? Jesus we’d be flying into Swords city airport rather than Dublin?:D

@Rory W wrote:

none of the above – too close to Dublin and too new to be considered cities in their own right. Even the likes of Drogheda and Dundalk (also mooted) are too close. Somewhere like athlone maybe, but Swords? Jesus we’d be flying into Swords city airport rather than Dublin?:D

Although you say it’s too close to the city, it’s not within the 24 postal codes and for anyone taking the bus there is a definite ‘watford gap’ feel when you leave Dublin proper and arrive in Swords…
Blanch and Tallaght seem closer to the city and lack the feel of a city in their own right. Although they have hospitals and IT’s. I
The airport is called Dublin International airport and if you’ve ever been to Swords you’ll see it is clearly between Swords and Dublin. They don’t call Heathrow ‘Slough’ airport do they? Coz it’s more in Slough than London.

Having lived in the outskirts of Swords, i think it has a shot. Swords has it’s own suburbs for gawd’s sake for anyone who’s ever been to Applewood Village or River Valley. Another area called Boroimhe recently opened it’s own shopping centre. The ‘village’ is now very built up thanks to the gignatic pavillions and nearby apartments that now shadow the castle on the way onto the main street. Swords is due to expand even further to a 50,00 plus town (which as far as i remember is a city recognised by the EU?) and people i know who live there are very happy to live there with little need to go to ‘Dublin’ (yup they actually distinguish between going into ‘town’ i.e Swords and ‘town’ i.e. Dublin. Maybe there are not enough reasons to justify it and would cause further divisions. All they need now is a hospital, a college and a football team lol

Anyway, on another note…i thought Dun Laoighre was a town in its own right…is this still the case?

@Keen wrote:

They don’t call Heathrow ‘Slough’ airport do they? Coz it’s more in Slough than London.

A side issue but funnily enough they call it Heathrow airport which is the name of the village that was there before the airport was built. It is actually in Greater London, the region, comprised of the city of London and the 32 boroughs, governed, if that is the word, by the Mayor of London.

Technically Dublin airport is actually Collinstown Airfield too.

So maybe we’ll call it Swords, Collinstown (SCN), similar to London Heathrow(LHR).:p

Behan pretty much defined a city thus:”the place where you are least likely to get a bite from a wild sheep” – rules out Swords completely! Sorry Swords 🙁

@Keen wrote:

Swords is due to expand even further to a 50,00 plus town (which as far as i remember is a city recognised by the EU?)

The Swords Strategic Vision, recently up for public consultation, aims for a population of 100,000 to capitalise on the Metro. It has some good ideas buried in there, but relies far too heavily on significant road network improvements to facilitate the expansion, and too much of the rezoned land – Oldtown-Mooretown, for example – is too far from the Metro to be justified on that basis.

If they get it right, Swords might turn into a real, sustainable, relatively dense suburban town (not city), but if they get it wrong, it’s going to be worse than the excessive sprawl that’s there already, creeping ever outwards…

Do they call Slough a city? Should we call Swords a city then?

@Rory W wrote:

Do they call Slough a city? Should we call Swords a city then?

Rory, my point is that Swords becoming a city has no impact on the name of our chief airport.
A lot of large towns around London could not be called a city, probably due to their proximity to London and the fact that they have no seperate nucleus – they are still in the catchment area for London. As far as i know the nearest city is Cambridge, even Reading has a town status with a population of 200,000. But there is more to it than polulation, don’t Sligo and Kilkenny have city status? I know of a city in Germany with a polulation of 9000 odd.

@Keen wrote:

Rory, my point is that Swords becoming a city has no impact on the name of our chief airport.

And my point of putting a big grinning smiley next to a post is to show that I am not being 100% serious.

Anyhow, Swords (like tallaght, Blanch etc) is too close to Dublin for city status – It’s the equivalent of Trafford wanting to be a separate city from Manchester.

Cambridge is a city, I am amazed! I lived there for seven years and it never occurred to me it was a city, we used to London for almost everything not related to the academy. That said, Cambridge is far less in need of coordinating its spatial and transport planning with London than Swords and so on are with the rest of Dublin.

I think there is a significant gap between Dublin and Swords. However that is not the issue. The City of London and The City of Westminister share a border. There are other Cities in Greater London too

The structure of local authority in London has seen very many changes over the past 20 years and depending on what borough you live in your views would differ between the fierce defence of specific local authority independence if you are in a well funded borough such Camden or RB Ken & Chelsea to the discredited efforts of the General London Council to lessen the powers of the individual member boroughs and make wide ranging decisions at Metropolitan level.

The key difference between Dublin and London is the funding structure and the ability of well funded authorities such as Westminster to generate huge revenues from Council Tax, on street parking and business rates. Compare this to Fingal where there is limited parking a declining industrial base and no council tax but is largely funded by stealth taxes on waste which is notoriously expensive to collect and motor taxes which should when public transport improves fall as people use their cars not as essential transport but for discretionary weekend use to out of town retail parks or long weekends in the provinces. Such a shift to continental / London car use patterns would in most households see a decline from 2 plus to 1 car and as the system is based on engine size and not usage these revenues will shrink further due to lower emissions levels.

Whilst much of the above is clearly way off topic it is strongly felt that Local Authorities should concentrate on how they will fund themselves over the coming decade and not what they are called or how their principle and viable settlements are clasified as.

The real success in London of the last 5 years and Frankfurt for the previous 20 years has been the role of the regional structure of govenrment in particular the stategic view on key issues such as transport and specific targeted policy interventions in tackling deprivation etc where local authorities must compete to secure funding for projects which is paid by the more affluent boroughs and filters down to the more challenged boroughs in South and East London.