-Donnacha-
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This is parish pump politics on a shocking scale.
Looking at the map of our little country covered with a dozen-odd growth centres outside the cities, you can almost hear the murmurs of deals being done and hands being spit on and shook in the corridors of Leinster House and around Ireland.
It’s unworkable. Consolidating and building on the strength of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford as real alternatives to Dublin should be challenge enough. Do they honestly believe that these ‘hubs’ can counterbalance the growth of a major conurbation like Dublin.
Castlebar? Tuam? Are they mad? Can you imagine a US multinational choosing Mallow over the M50?
The Midlands Triangle? Are they taking the piss? Are they thinking ‘If we draw it, they will come?’…
They won’t come. They will, as they’ve always done, go to Dublin and God knows what the place will be like in 20 years…Not in any of the pictures I’ve seen. It does seem a bit vulnerable, but then so does the London Eye where it’s held in place at ground level.
I’m not sure what I’m looking at here – there seems to be two cranes and they don’t look sturdy enough to go 120 metres-plus…
I wasn’t ranting for the sake of it, I genuinely haven’t been to a major city with worse public transport.
I really would like to know.
Where is it?I don’t know how many of you actually rely on public transport, but talk of mag-lev trains and automatic buses for Dublin is like saying we should be shipping caviar and quail’s eggs to the starving in Ethiopia.
We have the worst public transport in the developed world.
I would be delighted if anyone could say I’m wrong on this as it may make my dismal, rainswept daily wait for my late, packed, smoke-filled bus a bit more fun if I can imagine some Pole or Dutchman is having it a bit worse.
I don’t want a magic flying train to get me to work, I just want my feckin bus to come on feckin time, preferably at regular, short intervals, with seats, and no-one sneaking a fag down the back with the windows all shut, no ridiculous detours, a driver with a grasp of basic manners, and maybe the ability to operate the side door switch.
The only way public transport in this country can work is by shutting down CIE and starting from scratch. We don’t need sci-fi solutions, we need a new crowd of people to figure out how to make what we have work, and then let’s see what to do next.On the one hand, he thinks he’s being victimised for being American, on the other he’s complaining because he’s subject to the same planning regulations as everyone else and seems to want special treatment in return for his US dollars.
Whining, arrogant git.According to the Indo, the first section is going up ‘in the next few days’. In the Sunday Times pic it certainly looks as shiny as they promised – hope it doesn’t end up being obliterated by graffiti!
Does anyone know if the scaffolding has come off it yet? I’m too lazy to go and see if it’s still just a building site.
They’re pretty good, but might they clutter up the street and obscure views of the spike? Like those new restaurants down the docks – they’re also cool, but they block views of the city when you’re coming up from the Point…
With all the cutbacks, I can’t see there being much money in the Iarnrod Eireann kitty. But why can’t they use the overhead space for apartments instead of offices? Surely this would make the whole thing more than viable, given the demand for housing compared to office space at the moment.
Does anyone know how far away the spire will be visible from? I don’t remember seeing any from-a-distance pics.
Will the Smithfield one be real ice? I haven’t been down to the IFSC one, but apparently it’s some sort of artificial, plastic surface. The guy running it was on the radio this morning defending the event against angry customers who said that hardly any of the stuff advertised actually existed. So you may want to save your tenners for Smithfield.
As far as I can see, the only real difference between the new plan and the old is that two thirds of the height has been lopped off. Isn’t it still ‘campus-style’?
But because it’s low-rise, the powers that be and the public have obviously decided that they don’t have to worry about it any more, hence the extremely vague details released by the developers and the lack of debate.
At least with Kevin Roche, you knew what you were getting. Surely a compromise could have been reached. But no, as Greg F recalls, our great leader spoke and that was the end of that. Democracy, eh?.
The most galling thing about the developers’ approach is that at the same time as keeping the details of this under wraps (if indeed it is more than a few CG images from a low earth orbit), they’re trumpeting it from the rooftops as the biggest development in the history of the state, blah blah.
Well, it is taking up the same space as Roche’s plan, and I for one haven’t a clue what it’s really going to be like.
Let’s face it, the attitude to new building in this country is – as long as we can’t see it sticking up over the rooftops, it’s grand.Thanks, LOB.
Hmm… it’s more like an estate agent’s brochure than a website on ‘Ireland’s most ambitious urban development’.
What’s ambitious about it, besides its size?
The previous plan had to show computer-generated mock ups of its visual impact from close up, distance, bird’s eye, street-level, and, probably, the perspective of a dog tied to a garden gate in the East Wall.
I haven’t seen anything much of this one, and E150 million worth of units have been shifted already…Not everything is in Dublin….
Clarion Hotel Limerick
http://reservations.lodging.com/servlet/PropertyInformation/CC_IE058/lc2
Work in the media, have nothing to do with architecture. Live a few minutes’ walk from O’Connell Street. Grew up in Dublin. Is it OK for me to have an opinion?
Thanks for the address, Paul, I probably should have been able to guess it (duh…)
Maybe someone with a better computer than me could send her the pics of the treeless north end of O’Connell Street in the 40s to put paid to the ‘1916 witnesses’ crap.
I may be wrong, but my memories of photos from the 60s are of a treeless O’Connell Street at least up to the pillar…
By the way, I have to say being told to ‘lighten up’ by someone who chains himself to a tree of an afternoon is a bit rich.
To think I once voted Green…Consistency.
Start with the trees and design around them?
Can I point out that the street came before the trees, and anyone with eyes in their head can see how much it’s already opened up thanks to the felling – the original vision for the street.
Anyway, there are only a handful left now at the top and bottom of the street and it would look ridiculous if they were retained.
Perhaps the people writing on this site are consistent in their opinions because they are the only ones dealing with fact and common sense instead of the hysteria and misinformation peddled by the bandwagoneers and busybodies.
As others have said, nobody even noticed that most of the trees were already gone, and the inference has to be made that nobody cared.
Images of the proposed redevelopment – minus all old trees- have been in circulation for YEARS without so much as a murmur from the Greens or anyone else.
“Consistency” implies that everybody contributing to this debate here is an architect. Well, I’m not.
By the way, does anyone have Marian Finucane’s e-mail address?The sad thing is that most of the cities the low rise lobby use as examples as to why Dublin should have zero buildings above five stories all have far more genuinely tall buildings than Dublin even now.
Don’t forget, Bertie Ahern thinks that the six-storey Citibank building on the quays is already a “skyscraper”and is too high! What an utter muppet – this is what we have to deal with in this backward country. Sometimes I think this country is all one big practical joke being played on me.
