Should the ‘Suas’ be allowed to avail of the fast-track legislation?

This seems like a hare-brained notion which has to potential to permanently blight Dublin’s Quays. Efforts should be concentrated on progressing the existing integrated public transport strategy including the Metro and forget about this daft idea.

As I said elsewhere, the submission of this proposal to ABP via the P&D(SI) Act is an insult to the citizens of Dublin and makes a mockery of the Act.

I’d be very curious to hear the reasons why the Yes voters voted Yes. 7/25 votes so far have been pro, which I find surprisingly high.

Could those that have voted yes please come out of the closet & explain how they think the landing of several massive supporting structures along the entire length of the city quays can be justified for the sake of a gimmick.

These structures will:

Severly detract from several of the cities finest buildings, denigrating their true landmark status.
Destroy the integrity of the city quays; the relationship between quayside, river & its bridges.

It’s now 14 / 34 votes, or 40%.

Seriously- what are your reasons, advocates?

Also, to clarify- this poll is asking specifically about the appropriateness of using of the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act 2006 for a private, commercial, non-strategic, non-infrastructural development.

Like Peter, I’d be interested to hear the reasons why its fans think this will be a good idea for the city, but that’s a separate point to the point of this poll.

So- is anyone willing to say why they think that the PD(SI)A 2006 is the appropriate route?

*** *** ***

Paul- it might be worth keeping an eye on the IP addresses. This poll got mentioned in the Irish Independent today (unless there’s a poll on another “architect’s website”), so I wouldn’t be surprised if vested interests were playing dirty.

those yes voters are a bloody disgrace and must be vested interests. They’re like PD voters, they rarely admit their preference in public and are willing to sacrifice our land for private enterprise.

Come out and defend the mutilation of our city’s primary natural resource of fuck off!

I want to see this fast tracked as I cannot wait to go on it. Looks like a lot of fun and would be a fantastic way to see the city. It’ll be a major success and put Dublin tourism on the world map as there is nothing like this in any other capital city in the world. It’ll be like the London Eye, only better in that it travels along the city and not fixed in one place.

Were some people are getting the idea this is a public transport project is beyond me.

But isn’t that the point Cute Panda, it isn’t a public transport project, it isn’t a critical infrastructure project and so it shouldn’t be fast tracked by the terms and intent of the act.

Separately, of course, it is also a terrible idea: it will look stupid and gimmicky, mad cap, tourism motivated projects don’t put cities on the map, the London Eye, a much more attractive project, much more in scale with its surrounds, didn’t put London on the map, it added to an already long list of attraction without detracting from what is already there. This will add a small bit to Dublin’s list of attractions while hugely diminishing the look of the quays, an important asset.

Rent review pending for the London Eye in a couple of years.

BA are rumoured to be considering their options

@ctesiphon wrote:

It’s now 14 / 34 votes, or 40%.

Seriously- what are your reasons, advocates?

Also, to clarify- this poll is asking specifically about the appropriateness of using of the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act 2006 for a private, commercial, non-strategic, non-infrastructural development.

Like Peter, I’d be interested to hear the reasons why its fans think this will be a good idea for the city, but that’s a separate point to the point of this poll.

So- is anyone willing to say why they think that the PD(SI)A 2006 is the appropriate route?

*** *** ***

Paul- it might be worth keeping an eye on the IP addresses. This poll got mentioned in the Irish Independent today (unless there’s a poll on another “architect’s website”), so I wouldn’t be surprised if vested interests were playing dirty.

Well you did ask..

Here it is straight. I’m sick of all the Nibyism. It’s all very well, opposing buildings /developments based on valid arguments. But this seldom seems to be the case. If anything gets proposed in Ireland, which smacks of modernity or offers an alternative to the usual safe boring genre of play it safe brand of architecture it seems to get opposed as a matter of form. “It’s not what we’re used to, so don’t build it” As a result of the pointless and unnecessary empowerment of the opposition process, good ideas and good schemes too often get a symboliclly pointless height reduction and/or a reduction in mass makeover or worse still, fall by the wayside.

And for the record, I don’t support everything modern or which goes against the conservative grain but if I oppose something, I generally give a good argument as to why I do. The “Dublin in the rare Ould Times” brigade seem to be opposed to anything which doesn’t conform to height uniformity or safe bland conservative mock georgian, victorian, suburbanite, bosh bosh, safe as houese IKEAite dross – OK I’m losing it here, but you get the picture. Don’t just oppose something for the sake of it, that’s all I’m saying.

Also I’d hazzard a guess and say that from the very beginning of Dublin’s emergence as a city of substance, Nibyism has existed. I can just imagine the wide street commisioners getting pelted with rotten apples as they set about their dream of modernising the city’s throughfares and dragging it’s appearence out of the dark ages or the opposition to the magnificent municipal buildings of the same period casting a shadow over the otherwise squat street scape. The Georgian fathers were the architectural modenists of their day. They had vision. As did the people who built medieval Dublin before them or the Victorians since. And the irony in all this? The anti change brigade seem to want Dublin’s architectural legacy to remain firmly rooted in the Grogian period. A period of modernity and enlitenment championed by ………… Irony of the highest order. A city, a successfull and dynamic city’s architecture should reflect it’s chronological development not cease after a certain age. The protagonists of clean, high density and if tastefully done high rises are the georgians of today. The plaza’s – the wide streets. Just because something is old doesn’t mean it has character whoch brings me after much digression back to the point! That part of the quays doesn’t need defending. It doesn’t deserve it. It’s boring crumbling architecture. So what if dates back to the georgian period. It doesn’t mean that it’s impressive architecture. Just beacuse it’s old doesn’t make it good. If this new development detracts from the quays and overshadow’s it then even better. Incidentally, I do like the idea and and from the renderings I also like the design.

You did ask!

I voted yes because my mammy told me to

@StephenC wrote:

I voted yes because my mammy told me to

And if your mammy told you to put your hand in the fire…? As long as it’s strategic and infrastructural you won’t get it burned- that’s the test. The archiseek version of witch-dunking? ]PD(SI)A 2006[/i] is the appropriate channel for this proposal because it would probably suffer at the hands of the democratic planning process, to which I would respond- Perhaps, but that’s what the democratic planning process is all about.

You call them NIMBYs, I call them concerned citizens. I wish we could have these debates without recourse to the emotive name-calling so characteristic of the abortion debate, with the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life lobbies lined up against each other. Calling concerned citizens NIMBYs is an attempt to discredit very legitimate concerns with a single gesture of across-the-board dismissal. Instead of this simplistic dismissal, it might be more constructive to engage with the points made by the opponents of the scheme on their own merits. And I don’t mean the points for or against the proposal, I mean the points for or against the use of the PD(SI)A 2006 for what I believe to be a wholly inappropriate purpose.

I think the level of debate initiated by news reports of this proposal is more than enough to indicate that this development belongs as fully as possible in the public realm.

Thanks again- your answer was a world away from Cute Panda’s Joe Duffy-inspired*, subjective, mé féinist rant.

*Question: is this the right way to use the PD(SI)A 2006?
Answer: I WANT IT!!! Waaaah! Mammy, I want it NOW!

You have to admire the logic.

Is this a real proposal or one of those ‘wouldn’t it be mad if…’ type schemes?

When I first read about it, I was reminded of a TV show where Transition Year kids got to work in the office of an engineer (?) and were given things to design like ‘cable car structures for the side of the Liffey’.

Lordy JC Decaux are in the ha’penny place compared to this.

This is the best post I have ever read on this forum and I agree completely. Well said.

@Desmund wrote:

Well you did ask..

Here it is straight. I’m sick of all the Nibyism. It’s all very well, opposing buildings /developments based on valid arguments. But this seldom seems to be the case. If anything gets proposed in Ireland, which smacks of modernity or offers an alternative to the usual safe boring genre of play it safe brand of architecture it seems to get opposed as a matter of form. “It’s not what we’re used to, so don’t build it” As a result of the pointless and unnecessary empowerment of the opposition process, good ideas and good schemes too often get a symboliclly pointless height reduction and/or a reduction in mass makeover or worse still, fall by the wayside.

And for the record, I don’t support everything modern or which goes against the conservative grain but if I oppose something, I generally give a good argument as to why I do. The “Dublin in the rare Ould Times” brigade seem to be opposed to anything which doesn’t conform to height uniformity or safe bland conservative mock georgian, victorian, suburbanite, bosh bosh, safe as houese IKEAite dross – OK I’m losing it here, but you get the picture. Don’t just oppose something for the sake of it, that’s all I’m saying.

Also I’d hazzard a guess and say that from the very beginning of Dublin’s emergence as a city of substance, Nibyism has existed. I can just imagine the wide street commisioners getting pelted with rotten apples as they set about their dream of modernising the city’s throughfares and dragging it’s appearence out of the dark ages or the opposition to the magnificent municipal buildings of the same period casting a shadow over the otherwise squat street scape. The Georgian fathers were the architectural modenists of their day. They had vision. As did the people who built medieval Dublin before them or the Victorians since. And the irony in all this? The anti change brigade seem to want Dublin’s architectural legacy to remain firmly rooted in the Grogian period. A period of modernity and enlitenment championed by ………… Irony of the highest order. A city, a successfull and dynamic city’s architecture should reflect it’s chronological development not cease after a certain age. The protagonists of clean, high density and if tastefully done high rises are the georgians of today. The plaza’s – the wide streets. Just because something is old doesn’t mean it has character whoch brings me after much digression back to the point! That part of the quays doesn’t need defending. It doesn’t deserve it. It’s boring crumbling architecture. So what if dates back to the georgian period. It doesn’t mean that it’s impressive architecture. Just beacuse it’s old doesn’t make it good. If this new development detracts from the quays and overshadow’s it then even better. Incidentally, I do like the idea and and from the renderings I also like the design.

You did ask!

@Cute Panda wrote:

This is the best post I have ever read on this forum and I agree completely. Well said.

Cheers Cute Panda!

I just found this poll and thread and looking back over the posts it has turned into a very interesting debate. In my view there are a few key issues here that need to be addressed outside the debate of the relative merits/demerits of this idea in and of itself. As Ctesiphon keeps reminding us, the poll is about whether or not this should be allowed to go through the fast-track planning mechanism.

Therefore, what needs to questioned is where this idea came from and who is behind it, apart from the property development company willing to fund it. From what I remember of Frank McDonalds article in the Irish Times from earlier this year it seems that Dublin City Council are in favour of it. Therefore, it might be fair to suggest that they are somehow involved in attempting to bring it through the new planning mechanism?

The question is therefore why there is a percieved need to bring this through a mechanism that seems to have been put in place for the purposes of schemes that seem to be of much more strategic importance than this one? Is it that the ‘city as spectacle’ is now considered so important for the future economic viability of Dublin that such projects can be considered to be of strategic importance? Was it that the Frank McDonald article was used as a form of tester for this idea, in order to see how we, the general public, took to it? Hard to know, but whilst Frank, acting as the unoffial urban spokesperson for Dublin, gave his support it in his above mentioned article, the general public didn’t seem to take to it as the Council might have wished. Therefore, in order for it to go ahead, it seems that critical debate needed to be side-tracked as much as possible. This, maybe, is why we are where we are with this today.

In summary, I believe this plan, and the way it is being implemented, indicates how the privelaged view from above is now considered of far greater importance than the view from below.

As always, this is just me speculating though

Edit, on reading up on the manner in which applications can be made it appears that anyone can attempt to request planning in this manner, so it is possible that Dublin City Council were not involved. Given this information I was going to change my above comments, but decided to leave them as they were. This is mainly because I still think the manner in which this idea has emerged and is being pursued needs some serious questioning. It seems unlikely that the development company, Liffey Cable Cars Limited, would go about it the way they have without the support of DCC, as their support is crucial for the implementation of this project. At the very least, it would seem, it will be the City Council who would have to permit the use of their land for the construction of the four towers proposed to support the cables.