ctesiphon

I was fortunate to get a summer job with one of the biggest planning consultancies in Dublin for my summer between first and second year, based possibly on the fact that I was a mature student with previous built environment experience.
Then I was fortunate to get a job with (can’t insert name here for reasons of conflict of interest and anonymity:) ) after second year, based partly on my first year summer work, partly on my areas of interest and partly being in the right place at the right time, though I did have to wait a bit before it came along. I still call it home.

My previous experience did play a part for the summer job, but equally all of my classmates – most of whom were recent bachelor graduates – got summer work too, eventually, and those that wanted to stay in planning afterwards managed to. I think timing is crucial- too early and your cv might get buried, too late and you’ll have missed the boat. So I’d advise blanket bombing the consultancies in the next couple of months and then following up with calls to see what the state of play is. Nothing says keenness like a few pestering phonecalls. And from what I remember, the LAs usually take on a student or two and sometimes notify colleges when this is happening as it’s a slightly more formal procedure than the private sector. But for LA work, be prepared to work outside Dublin (if that’s where you’re studying).

Have a look at the IPI website for company names, but maybe steer clear of the one man band type offices as they often can’t help for lack of resources.

Best of luck.

@Maskhadov wrote:

We can relocate those people who come from a lower social economic background to brand new units somewhere else in the city.

And if they don’t want to move…?

(I also agree with Phil that the buildings aren’t bad at all, having been outside them this weekend, though I think the social side of your argument requires more attention than the aesthetic.)

My folks received this christmas card this year (it was the King’s Inns card, don’tcha know:cool: ), and I thought it might be worth posting it here. Maybe some of you have seen it before, but I hadn’t.

It’s by Stephen Conlin, and comes from a book called Dublin One Thousand Years, published by the O’Brien Press, so Copyright all of the above.

@jdivision wrote:

I wonder if they’re planning to put drapery in there. I hope they don’t move the homewares to the back as it’s a good shop and the window displays add to the street.

The displays certainly seemed to have attracted a pigeon today at lunchtime, spotted browsing through the soft furnishings. I guess it’s not only cash-rich/time-poor Dubs who like a bargain…;)

Thanks for that.
‘Shocking’, though? I wouldn’t have thought so. Good planning? Yes.
Or maybe that’s why you think it’s so shocking.:)

I see you’ve taken to bringing a bodyguard with you on your wanderings now, Graham.:)

I agree, notjim- invisible from the street on which the buildings stand does not equal invisible from the wider area. That excrescence really is terrible.

Having said that, I think the job is pretty good all round- the quality of the workmanship certainly looks to be a couple of notches above the usual.

Whether the ‘facadism’ approach was correct or not, I still haven’t made up my mind. I don’t remember whether the buildings were fairly intact before the developer got his hands on them, or if the damage had already been done. Must go and have a closer look.

“Mammy! Mammy! The bold boys from Dublin are being mean to me! They keep trying to tell me that we’re ruining the country with our unsustainable lifestyles and our individualistic greed. They think they understand our way of life, but they don’t. They don’t! This is how our people, and our people’s people, and our people’s people’s people and our…”

“Okay Seánie, I know what you’re getting at.”

“…and our people’s people’s people’s people’s people’s people (is that 5,000 yet?) have lived since the dawn of civilisation. This is who we are! Can’t those jackeens see that? What should I do? It’s so unfair!”

“Why don’t you ask your cousin Liamy up in Mayo to write an ill-informed, put-upon, chip-on-the-shoulder article trotting out all the usual jaundiced, nonsensical stereotypes about ‘smart ass city slickers’, ‘west Brits’ and the ‘colonial’ mentality? He’s very good with that sort of thing, y’know. And when you’re finished, be sure to take that pig outside so daddy can get his SUV in beside the fire.”

“I will, mammy. I will! This’ll show them la-di-da types from Dublin who’s boss, so it will so it will. Begosh and begorrah.”

*tugs forelock*

*********

You often lament the lack of mention for archiseek.com in the meeja, Paul, but I’m not sure that this is what you had in mind: http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=312&Itemid=38

Planning for slick rural dwellers Wednesday, 06 September 2006

Liamy MacNally on the matters of fact and the facts of the matter

Planning for slick rural dwellers

There is nothing worse than smart ass city slickers who pride themselves in taking a swipe at people from outside the Pale. Apart from the obvious and most welcome lesson that was meted out to some of our city brethren on the hallowed grounds of Croke Park recently, city slickers often adopt a superior attitude towards those of us from outside the metropolitan 50 kilometres per hour speed limit. It is even more nauseating when the slickers meet on-line and hide behind the skirts of discussion fora to launch verbal scuds on people outside the capital. These egg-in-the-mouth scripts smack of the West Brit nonsense so familiar to a certain breed of misnamed professional.
Check out the discussion board of archiseek.com Irish website relating to the Irish Rural Dwellers’ Association. The pages are graced with the repulsive scripts that belong to a colonial past, long dead but obviously, still hankered after by a few withered brains masquerading as architectural intellects. The reason for the architectural verbal outrage stemmed from a query for a contact number for the Irish Rural Dwellers’ Association.

The IRDA
The Irish Rural Dwellers’ Association was set up in 2002 with national membership and is based in Co Clare. Its main aim is: “To unite all rural dwellers and people of goodwill towards rural Ireland and in the context of peaceful, multi-cultural co-existence in the common cause of ensuring, by legal and constitutional means, the growth and maintenance of a vibrant, populated countryside in the traditional Irish forms of baile fearann or dispersed village, sráid bhaile or street village and the clachán or nucleated clustered village.”
The IRDA is a voluntary, unfunded organisation that depends on the €20 annual subscription of its members to carry out its work. It was set up to tackle the unseemly and daft approaches to rural planning adopted by planning authorities. Regardless of 800 years of domination by outside forces it is still impossible for many Irish people to live in their own area because of the colonial interpretations adopted by many planners.

A planning ‘need’
Seeking planning permission is blocked first of all by the ‘need’ question. One must establish a need to build in an area. It is no longer enough to have a family history in an area, you must also establish a need to satisfy some off-the-wall loopy interpretation of planning laws that were drawn up to assist people not shackle them. In the Jewish times of Jesus, laws replaced the Law. Today, the laws are being used to deter, prevent and refuse access to rural areas to those people whose hearts are throbbing with the beat of the countryside. They want us to live in cities and towns. The cry of ‘To hell or to Connacht’ has been replaced by those awful terms, ‘further information requested’ or ‘planning permission refused.’ What is becoming of our country when diktats are promulgated by people using half-baked ideas? Minister Dick Roche states that his Rural Planning Guidelines are there to benefit people from rural areas.
“There is now a presumption in favour of one-off houses…,” he stated at the launch. It is a pity that planners throughout the country are not aware of the Minister’s intentions. The IRDA is standing up against the latest form of bullying – denying people access to live where they want in rural areas.
The IRDA is not advocating a free for all in planning matters. It is simply advocating a sensible approach. There have been calls for ‘proofing’ to take place in government policies to ensure that rural areas are not discriminated against; the proofing that is required is in the planning process. The country once played host to over eight million people. They did not live between blades of grass or in cracks in stone walls. They lived in homes.

Rural cleansing
What is happening across the Irish countryside is akin to an ethnic cleansing of rural life. People who operate under the guise of ‘planners’ in this country do not even have to have an Irish qualification. The acceptable norm of being a ‘qualified planner’ in Ireland – those who make recommendations to grant or refuse our planning applications – refers to an international accreditation by the Royal Town Planning Institute (London) or similar, according to the IRDA. “These qualifications involve no recognition whatsoever of the special position of the island nation of Ireland in respect of our history, culture, traditions, 5,000-year-old rural settlement patterns or the many subtleties and nuances that make our country and our Irish race unique. Under Departmental regulations, non-national planners are not obliged to take courses whatsoever in relation to the ‘Irish’ dimension before taking up employment in this country.”
The planners irony does not stop there. When the Minister introduced the regulations one would have expected the planners of the country to rejoice that the person local authority planners are deemed to serve under had made an important determination in matters so dear to people of the country. Instead, the Irish Planning Institute opposed Government policy on rural housing! On the one hand, the Government attempted to deal with an explosive issue in a sensitive manner, yet those deemed with a duty of care to carry out the policy ‘mutinied’. Ah sure it is a great country! It could only happen here. The tail wags the dog and gets away with it!
The IRDA claims that the current President of the Irish Planning Institute, Mr Hank van der Kamp, “recently suggested we need a complete ban on rural housing similar to the one imposed on Northern Ireland by a British Minister in 2006. In these circumstances, where the professional organisation representing planners in the country is expressing views that are in direct opposition to Government policy on rural housing, it is nonsensical to suppose that individual IPI members do not reflect this anti-rural housing bias when assessing individual applications. The citizens’ rights to fair and objective treatment from these public servants is a sick joke.”
The IRDA goes on to claim that “the overwhelming ethos, background and qualifications of planners are towards urbanisation. They have no problem pursuing this ideology under Irish planning law.”

Taking control
Regardless of the Minister’s good intentions on rural planning laws, they cannot work when planners are unaccountable. Planners can argue that they only make recommendations rather than planning decisions, which are the remit of the relevant Town or County Manager, but the reality is that planners and/or Town and County Managers remain unaccountable to the people of the country. They are neither elected nor ever have to seek re-election. It is time that respective Town or County Managers took control in planning matters in their respective domains. Obviously, the history of the recommendations from certain planners is not a history to cherish in this country. Actions speak louder than words.
The IRDA is taking action, even to the point of meeting and preparing and submitting a joint proposal with the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI) to Minister Dick Roche for the introduction of a national Planning Monitoring Forum. The proposal was rejected by the Minister! Was the Minister afraid that these architects subscribed to archiseek.com!

“…a certain breed of misnamed professional”? Indeed, Mr ‘journalist’.

For the record, if anyone from the IRDA – or Liamy McNally, for that matter – would like to contribute to this discussion by attempting to defend their policies on rural housing, please join us. If we (those of us who think the IRDA is plainly misguided) are so wrong about the substantive issues, then debating with us should be like shooting fish in a barrel. Slick, repulsive, smart ass, West Brit fish, perhaps, but fish nevertheless. (Won’t somebody please think of the fish!?!?)

No takers…?

The meeting of the planes might suggest the Milennium wing of the NGI by Benson & Forsyth, but I can’t reconcile the ‘frilly’ bit with the sharpness of the B&F building in my mind.

Might try the bike ride at lunchtime, Seamus.

@GrahamH wrote:

The bollards are fancy, but are they needed? I thought it was DCC policy, or should that be best practice, to limit the alterations, i.e incisions, to original paving? In all fairness, if you’re walking along the kerbline with that vast extent of paving to walk on, you deserve to be clipped by a bus.

Slightly off-topic, perhaps, but I wanted to highlight this nevertheless.

I’ve been mulling over this comment for the last couple of days, Graham, and I still can’t figure out whether you were being facetious or serious when you said pedestrians deserved to be hit by the bus if they walked too close to the edge. Usually, you’d put a smiley beside it to signify the gag, but there’s none. Equally, this isn’t the kind of comment I’d expect from you. Hence the query.

Speaking as a daily pedestrian, as someone who has been hit by the wing mirror of a bus on Clare Street as I was walking along the kerb (in the same direction as the bus, so I was hit from behind on the back of the head), and as someone who has a professional interest in pedestrian planning in Dublin, I disagree strongly with your statement.
This is the footpath, which is the designated area for walking. The walking area extends to the edge of the kerb. Period. No debate. Etc.
There is no law against walking on any part of the footpath (unless it’s an off-road cycle lane- a separate matter entirely). And there are no bonus points in life for walking further away from the carriageway.
If a bus hits a pedestrian who is walking on the footpath, the bus is automatically, a priori at fault- the implication being that the bus was too close to the pedestrians, which constitutes dangerous driving.
And (quite tenuous, I know) buses on this stretch of Dame Street should be leaving room for bikes on the inside.
Lastly (even more tenuous, perhaps), if someone walks down the middle of the road, drivers don’t have the right simply to run them over on the grounds that they were walking where they shouldn’t. Oh I’ve been tempted alright, such as when joggers take up the full width of the bike lane, to give them a fright, but I know that it’s not allowed. Simple as that.

I too have an issue with the bollards, but it’s more to do with their safety re cycling (in addition to their conservation implications). Many bollards and footpath guardrails in town are too close to the edge of the footpath and as a result jeapordise cyclists- one clip of the handlebar and you can say goodnight. One might argue that, if buses should move out from the kerb (as I advocated) then cyclists should too, but that ignores the provisions re cycle tracks and the safety of cyclists who aren’t in lanes where provided- I have too many examples of drivers trying to ‘educate’ me on where I should be riding, using their vehicles as teaching aids.

If I’ve misunderstood, sorry for the rant.

To these eyes, the white and grey bits are either two similarly coloured walls, the grey one being more in shadow because the dark strip in the middle is a corner, or else two walls in the same plane with some class of expansion joint in between.

One question- is the photo the right way up, or has it been rotated? Unlikely, but I must ask to eliminate some confusion.

Also, Graham- to clarify, when I said dodger wat way closer to the first word than s/he might think, it wasn’t a ‘Liffey theory’ I was referring to, it was the fact that dodger used the word ‘opposite’ in his/her guess.