Removal of Street Furniture
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Does any on know why DCC is removing the street furniture on South Kings Street (beside the Gaiety)?
The seats in question are these great big blocks of stone with a brushed finish that looked quite different. Beside the pitiful fountain that runs down the hill.
They haven’t been there for too long and seemed to be attracting the attention of some graffiti artists but seemed popular among tired shoppers.
The contractors have also recently finished cobbling this street and have removed the bollards that prevented vehicles using this street and already some vehicles are using it as a shot cut. I wonder if the DCC wanted to open it up again!
Does any know why on earth this street
was redone? Since half the street is
taken up by the rare bare side of a
shopping centre, it didn’t appear to
be a natural candidate for renovation.
Did someone from the Gaiety theatre
twist some arms somewhere?As it is, the fountain is absolutely
pathetic, resembling some kind of
urinal. I presume the bowl is meant to
faint dribble of water emanating
from it, but most of the water actually
runs down the street, making the fountain
look even more like a broken drain.Amazingly enough, this calamity
took at a year or more to create.
Who was responsible for it?
And why?P.
AND, considering the critisisms levied at Grafton St over its dated red cobble/brickwork, why on earth have they just laid it the whole way down Sth Kings St?
(Don’t say to match Grafton please!)I had not noticed that the coffin looking boxes were being removed, but if they are it is probably due to their popularity with skaters. When they were instaled they were just left bare, but metal pipes were soon added to them in an effort to stop skaters from using them. That street was perfect for them, with the granite seats outside the Gaeity, the banks below the windows of the Eircom building and the black boxes. But as usual anything which occurs in urban areas which differs from the original design intention is curbed. It is a pity as it gave the street a vibrancy at night when there were no shoppers to sit on them.
Incidently, I think there was a rumour that the shopping centre was going to have some shops open up on to that street as part of its redevelopment. There was a Frank McDonald article about it in the Irish Times about 2 years ago or so.I decided to go and have a look for the big blocks of stone. I cannot believe that they are all gone. They were the only new pieces of street furniture which looked of any interest on that street, and they were functional too.
Its baffling they must have been attracting what the DCC see as the wrong sort of people i.e. scatters and homeless.
I wonder where there are now, somewhere were they aren’t needed no doubt. Pity they didn’t remove/replace the fountain.
Good point about the fountain, it is ridiculous. There was one all by its self across the road at the top of South William Street, is it still there or has it been taken too. I must say if they are doing nothing with them I would be more than happy to have one.
The one at the top of South William St. is also gone, this area is now used by the nearby cafes as a collection point for their waste and therefore manky.
You’d do well bringing one of them home with you I think it would be a huge logistic job as they weigh a ton. I saw the contactors wrestle with them with a JCB so not sure what kind of condition they are in now.
Don’t worry, I was really only joking about having one, but if they were to deliver it I would accept. More imporantly, I wonder how much it has cost to have them designed, built, istalled, then to have anti-skate devices added and of course finally, to have them removed?
I got in touch with the Street furniture and infrastructure unit of the Dublin City Council. This is the reason which was given for the removal of the black benches:
“due to the anti-social behavior that emanated from the people that congregated there, plus the attraction to this area at the black benches of skateboard users, the
shops on the street requested that the benches were removed and after
inspection and consultation it was decided to remove them by the engineer in charge.”A very well thought out scheme and so properly project managed….Im sure you’ll agree.
The next question to ask is what all that space they have created will be for? Sitting down and watching the world go by is obviously out of the picture. Enjoying the fountain….
How dare people actually interact with their environment and socialise outside the walls of a pub and as for those those dangerous children… I bet those peski kids on their rollerboards were even sober. China have very similar laws on social gatherings.
Quite. Why are skateboarders viewed in such a bad light. It a bit noisy and they have a tendancy to be oblivious to pedestrians but they aren’t generally an antisocial bunch. We had this debate before regarding the Wolfe Tone Park on Jervis Street. The same complaints were put forward about the uses people were making for the area there.
I think it was a case of creating a public space as long as the people using it were a certain type of “public” and only used the area for what was shown in the artists impression prior to the areas construction.
Skaters are often seen as being destructive, but what they are doing is actually more creative than anything else. I agree with you Bluefoam, they were more than likely sober!!!! I am sure that is because they have not seen ads for alcohol in a while as opposed to doing something else with their free time other than drink!!!!!!!!?????????
The DCC added anti skater devices to these benches so I think it was more to do with the homeless using the seats than anything else.
Is there even an alternative, like a skate park for the skaters? I did a quick search and it didn’t turn up much. If there is one I bet its not free. It must drive them to drink.
Shame about the benches, the area looks barren without them. I wonder do they even plan to plant the trees that were planned for this area or did the removal of the benches use up the rest of the budget?
They are building skateparks at the moment, definitely one in Lucan and possibly one other.
There is no way skaters should be allowed to use street furniture. It’s noisy, chips away stone and scores metal and dangerous for pedestrians.Originally posted by kefu
There is no way skaters should be allowed to use street furniture. It’s noisy, chips away stone and scores metal and dangerous for pedestrians.It is fair to say that they chip away at the stone, this is however normally quite minimal and normally all that is left are black marks from the wax which they rub on the surface to allow them slide along. Last year whilst studying this phenomenon I found one area where the skaters had actually attached protective metal to stop the wooden benches wearing down. Although they make noise I still think that they are a healthy addition to city life. The noises they make sound better than that of a truck or a car and I have not heard of any pedestrian being seriously injured by a skateboarder.
One of the main criticisms voiced by residents of Celebration, in a BBC documentary recently, was lack of public space for skating.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/livingwithwalt.shtml
It’s a very interesting listen anyway – paper autumn leaves anyone?
On the other side of the issue, a pretty new set of wooden planter/bench units have been set up in Cow’s Lane (or Cows’ Lane, as the case may be) over the past few weeks. So there’s still somebody working for the city who understands that people out for a day on the town like to have places where they can sit down.
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