Devin

Funny you should mention him Alek; there’s a pavement-widening job going on at the moment on Capel Street and, difficult though it is to believe, it is being executed to a high standard. Listed kerbing and, where surviving, paving is being incorporated in situ and neatly pointed in a sand-lime mix, and new paving built out from that.

The council’s only work where old paving is concerned has been destructive, so it couldn’t be by them, could it? No, it’s by Wallace.

Aw stop, it would drive you to drink! …. It’s the Dublin City Council Water Metering Project. Have just lodged a big complaint about it.

Firstly, I’m sorry if people are sick of looking at close-up pictures of pavements, but this has really got to be documented up here:

Herbert Street

Merrion Square East

The project has been ongoing for the past couple of months in the south Georgian area of the city. It involves insertion of a meter with a plastic cover in the pavement in front of every premises in the area. Kerbing is unaffected, but, where complete listed pavements exist, it requires removal of one or more flagstones in the pavement to insert the meter. The remaining area around the meter was initially filled in with a dollop of tarmac (as seen above), pending the careful cutting and reinstating of removed flagstones … no problems so far ….

Reinstatement work has begun in the past couple weeks and ……. you’ll never guess ……. they are making a rotten mess of it and muggins has to go chasing it up. The old flags are not being put back; white granite and concrete is being used instead, then the cement is slapped on …….

There’s all this blather in the Development Plan about the Georgian cores of the city being of ‘international importance’ and establishing a ‘national urban idiom’ but, once again, the CC is exposed as having no system for standards of work to these valuable pavements.

Fitzwillian Square North. Yum!

Upper Pembroke Street. Mix ‘n match.

Upper Mount Street. We’ll put in a few concrete flags here – no one will notice .. quicker than cutting old granite …

Upper Mount Street. The utter sloppiness of it!

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Staying with City Hall for a minute:

Late ’90s picture, showing the intact west pavement of City Hall on the right.

15 bollards and 2 heritage bins have since been added.

Again, same issues as with the plaza paving bollards next door:

Granted it can be said that the painted cast iron design here is more visually appropriate to the paving and the surrounds than the stainless steel used at the plaza.

The square cut needed for the bollard. Note shocking raised cement pointing also. I see that City Hall has just won another award for its conservation (reported in paper last week) :

http://www.riai.ie/index.html?id=7237

Hmmmmm ….

I’m sure they have suffered alright, but seem to be still making efforts to protect the local shops. Viva la baguette! Piece here:

DEFENDING AGAINST ‘LA LONDONISATION’

Other European countries are protecting their shops from the predatory claws of the multi national brands, writes Deirdre McQuillan , Fashion Editor.

Around where I stay in Paris during fashion week, I am surrounded by cafes, restaurants and small shops selling everything from kitchenware and lingerie to jewellery, cakes, clothes and antiques. Small independent retail and artisanal outlets are part of the attraction and pleasure of the French capital, along with great butchers, vegetable, fruit and cheese shops, not to speak of florists and bakeries at nearly every turn. It’s a standard of life that French city centres are accustomed to and its vibrancy and survival are down to French planning laws.

In l973 the Royer Act was passed to protect small shops, improve the quality of urban life and prevent “inordinate growth of new forms of distribution that squeeze out small entrepreneurs”. Its Commission for Commercial Urbanisation evaluates each planning application on merit and is entrusted to ensure a good balance of all forms of commerce. There are regulations on direct selling, discount selling and advertising and on the encouragement of artisan trading. Its chambers of commerce are far more powerful and have greater responsibilities for trading than their Irish equivalents.

In other parts of Europe it’s the same. In Rome, another shopping haven, landmark shops are protected from the predatory claws of multinational brands and franchises by an alliance called the Association of Rome’s Historic Shops, which makes shopping and strolling for the visitor such a treat. The association promotes “and defends the values” of shops that have existed for over a hundred years and are considered to be institutions by Romans. Many are still in the ownership of the same families and are cherished emblems of the traditions and culture of the city.

Though Italy under Berlusconi welcomed globalisation, Rome has still managed to resist Starbucks (which has nearly 500 outlets in the UK) and when an intended McDonalds site was announced near the Spanish Steps, it prompted a massive demonstration that propelled the fledgling slow food movement into the fast lane. The McDonalds did eventually open, but the golden arches were noticeable only for being uncharacteristically discreet.

According to a 2001 report, most OECD countries have special regulations that apply to retail premises, over and above regular urban planning regulations. Only five countries, of which Ireland is one, do not have special measures. Dublin City Council, however, is in the process of putting special planning controls in place to micromanage the balance of retail uses in designated city-centre areas.

Copenhagen was transformed from a declining urban centre into the thriving and reinvigorated city it is today thanks to the work of the visionary architect Jan Gehl. “If you asked people 20 years ago why they went to central Copenhagen they would have said it was to shop,” he says. “But if you ask them today, they would say because they want to go to town.” Note the difference. To walk down Stroget, the Danish equivalent of Grafton Street, is to encounter appealing diversity and local character, small shops alongside specialist Danish department stores with plenty of places to sit and linger. Gehl formulated 12 steps, including places to sit, as central to city management strategies. In Barcelona, Las Ramblas is another successful public place at the heart of that city’s revival.

However, the picture in the UK, as in Ireland, is quite different. So-called retail-led development like urban malls or big chain store shopping has resulted in places which, according to Anna Minton in a recent article in the Guardian, are privatised enclaves “that look the same, are cut off from local people and the local environment and are characterised instead by a fake, theme park atmosphere”. She reports that there is a growing body of evidence that the replacement of independently owned shops isolates people and increases depression. “Having a thriving public life in cities does not depend on the types of shops, but on the approach to the place as a whole,” she argues.

The French call the trend for a metropolis overrun by mobile-phone shops and fast food restaurants “la Londonisation” and have introduced regulations banning half of the 70,000 shops in Paris from ever becoming owned by such operations. The use of certain shops is safeguarded, so that a boulangerie remains a foodshop and a bookshop or greengrocer can’t be another multiple chain outlet. As other European capitals arrest a trend now proliferating around this country, the message is clear: don’t hollow out the heart of your city and keep it vibrant, otherwise watch its demise.

© 2006 The Irish Times – August 12, 2006

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/newsfeatures/2006/0812/1155291279765.html

This is it; where elsewhere an artisan deli opens, in Dublin a Spar opens. They say people get the cities they want, so maybe we have to look at ourselves. What do all these nasty convenience stores say about us?

Convenience stores/newsagents don’t seem to exist as such on the continent. They’re a UK & Irish thing. Or if there is a newsagent it will be only that – newspapers and magazines. In Spain they have little tobacco & news shops.