-Donnacha-

@kite wrote:

:confused: Don’t know but he is badly missed. The way this thread is going one would get more up to date info in a history book.

Lads and ladies… what is happening with this thread… It’s falling away to nothing.. 🙁

Has any1 checked out the new site Lexington is calling his own… :confused:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=50688669#post50688669

And the last time he posted a message was two days ago, so he is obviously ok and alive, but not supporting this thread anymore. 😮

Lets all move to boards.ie 😀

Must say though it’s a lot harder to navigate around the site compared to archiseek… 😮

You’ll best be able to see the broken glass if you’re on foot – the doors that are set at an angle to the street and are behind a metal security screen have been broken.

re; rothbury sunbeam application. saw that also – have to agree with ewankennedy – the location of the tower element seems completely random, and looks lost in respect of everything else on the site – the whole thing looks a bit of a mess to be honest. no real logic either in the choice of an oval shaped building for the corner of the site or the positioning of that oval shaped building in a north-south axis?

Holton, there certainly aren’t plenty of “green belts” left within a few miles from Dublin.
The Phoenix Park racecourse site, to give just one example, is quickly disappearing beneath one of the worst modern developments of recent times.
Unless you propose building over the public parks, which are not the same as green belts, I really don’t see where this space you are talking about is.

Kefu

There is a huge amount of land particulary on the northern fringes of Dublin, which haven’t been built on. And these are all within a few miles of the city centre. Just look at the amount of “green belt” you see when you fly in and out of Dublin airport!

While that article does indeed raise a few points, it is the intellectual, ecological media equivilant of a sun frontpage. It’s not only completely unbalanced, but it’s also totally unfair and inaccurate in its portrail of Ireland and is effectively a well put together rant.

Dublin is a relatively small urban area and does not remotely represent the rest of the Irish landscape. Yes, it does have major transport and urban sprwal problems, but they are not at all representative of the other 90%+ of the Irish landscape.

There are still plenty of beautifully painted multicoloured little towns dotted around the countryside that arn’t suffering from urban sprwal and 30 lane motorways.

I don’t know what the author suggest we do about Ireland’s extremely poor road infrastructure. We are at least 30 years behind the UK and the rest of Western Europe in that regard. We’re not building roads in any great quantities than any other western country ever has and we’re certainly not building anything like superhighways across the countryside.

If anything, our current road infrastructure is causing more CO2 output because it’s conjested but, more pressingly the existing infrastructure is causing thousands of unnecessary deaths. Irish main arterial routes are still largely single carriageway, dangerous and twisty and are killing/maming innocent people every year. Yes, the Gardai and others rant on about speed and drink driving but the reality is that most road deaths in Ireland are head on collisions on single carriageways and have relatively little to do with unusually bad driver behaviour. In fact, I’d argue that Irish drivers in general behave very well on our roads.

So, is the author suggesting that we simply stop moving around the country completely and take up cottage industries?

These roads have to be built, they’re minimal infrastructural requirements.

I would agree however, that some more money does need to go into public transport and I would completely agree that Dublin planning has been allowed to go out of control.

I completely agree with the point about Bord na Mona and peat exploitation. I have never been able to comprehend why this industry has been allowed to continue in operation. Peat production may have been necessary in the days of energy crisies in the 1940s when we had no access to alternatives, but it’s is insane to suggest that peat provides any sort of serious contribution to the Irish energy production. Why ESB went ahead with new peat plants is beyond comprehension.
Bord na Mona should simply be wound up.

The author needs to get some sense of perspective however. I get the impression he was brought on a tour of construction sites by environmental campaigners and then did a quick tour of a bleak Bord na Mona destroyed bog and based the entire article on it.

There is clearly a suggestion that Ireland should simply stop doing anything and be an ecological theme park / bird sanctuary.

And we are *NOT* one of the world’s worst polluters. Once you factor out growth rates (in CO2 emissions) our output of CO2, energy consumption rates etc are in the lower half of the European average. I do think we need to do more, but you can interpret statistics to prove any point.

I also think that article is horrendously unfair to the Irish tourism industry and the claim that photos were “stock photos” taken years ago is practically slanderous.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but has anyone mentioned “The Atlas of Cork”?

Its been largely written by the staff of the Geography Dept in UCC, and covers the development of Cork city from the Geology upwards. Its in the same format as The Atlas of Rural Ireland, and is comprehensive as hell. It even has a big colour picture of the Water Street development …

that unity house development on alfred st/lwr glanmire road is awful –

considering its location in relation to patrick’s church, the prominent position on what will become the primary link to the north docks/horgans quay, its visual importance and the opportunity of the site its a real disappointment – cheap materials, no apparent design philosophy, no response to the opportunity that the site presents.

has anyone seen it in the flesh -its fairly substandard – does anyone know – was there an architect involved?

Yup, in phase 2 from what I ‘ve been told.

Is there intended to be a commuter rail stop in Blackpool? I know it’ll be in the railway order wherever that will be published, but has any locationed been mentioned to date?

Also, theres a piece in todays Irish Times about the pharma plant being rumoured for Carrigtwohill – Amgen is the named party, and the figure of 1.3bn is mentioned as an investment. Apparently a preliminary decision has been made to go with the Cork location, and a final decision is expected ‘early next month’.