-Donnacha-
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I have a small potted cactus next to my television that was in clear view of the events of September 11th, 2001 and as such has ‘witnessed history’.
Do I have to get a court injunction out to stop Trevor Sargent chaining himself to it?What’s a classy bookies? Anyway, whatever your views on bookies, the city council patently does not want this kind of place on O’Connell Street. So by its own criteria, this is a bad idea.
I can’t remember how the Ann Summers shop managed to stay open, but can’t the council do anything planning-wise about the uses of buildings on the street?
It seems pointless to spend all this money on redeveloping the place if people who don’t want to gamble, eat fast food, play the slots or buy sex aids won’t go there no matter how fancy the new trees are.This may not be the place to be making comments / queries like this but I’m gonna anyway!
fjp,
Had a look around your website – really amazing stuff – and I would imagine a great resouce to many (including German dog selling fraudsters). I enjoyed the pics of Dundrum – I am originally from that area but have long since been in exile.
My questions – how often do you update these pics? I presume the 020416 is the date reference?
It is nice to get a look at the constuction progress in that area – good to see Dundrum & Dublin marching into the new millenium with plenty of large scale construction projects such as those in yours pics.Regards,
Bloke
It’s sad to see such old trees coming down, but they were always wrong for O’Connell Street – they make it seem narrower, and they’re all gnarled and misshapen-looking. Anyway, the Green Party tried to pull this when Fingal Co Council’s brilliant new offices were being built in Swords, making out that the scrap of wasteland that was the venue for local cider parties was some sort of valuable ecosystem, or something.
Have a look at page three of the Irish Times. Public transport at breaking poiint in Dublin?
Really?
The infuriating thing about reading ‘news’ stories like this is that anyone who has to commute more than a couple of miles has been living with this for years and has been telling anyone who will listen that it’s going to get worse.
You might as well run a story headed ‘trouble brewing in the middle east’.
If planning in this country was just plain bad, that would be one thing. No, planning has come up with a way of crippling Dublin that’s so efficient, it almost seems deliberate.
-Focus all major housing development in LA-style suburban sprawl 20 and 30 miles form the capital
-Don’t put any jobs or facilities in the new centres so they have to go to the city every day
-Make sure traffic all feeds into national routes in and out
-Start massively disruptive infrastructure projects all at the same time, to proceed with excruciating sloth over many years
-Have worst public transport system in Europe, forcing more and more cars onto the roads etc etc.
I presume the people who can change this have to use the same roads as the rest of us. Maybe it’s easier to ignore the traffic when you’re snoozing in the back of your ministerial car…bluefoam,
I’d give the message board on this site a try – very useful resourse for all your CAD type needs (& more)
Great programme. As for Ballymun being turned into student accommodation, surely the cost would be astronomical given the scale of the development. And I can’t see that there would be a demand for 15,000-odd student flats beside DCU…
By the way, Fingal County Council recently turned down a planning application by the Ballymun regeneration company for a concrete crushing plant for the towers near Dublin Airport.While living in Waterford a couple of years ago, I was in a brand new estate of very suburban houses with large gardens less than a 10-minute WALK from the main thoroughfare.
What a waste of land.
The old city gives way to two-storey houses so quickly it’s hard to see how the urban core can be expanded at this stage. Maybe the current plans for the north quays could help the planners start again on that side. But with only one bridge…Sady you’re may be right to an extent about it being too late for Galway, Waterford etc. On the road out to the Regional hospital in Waterford theres nothing but low-density semi-detached houses lining the roadside, and yet more being built gobbling up way more land than they need and creating a massive problem that’ll be left to future generations to deal with (just like Dublin is beginning to face now). My only hope is that the regional cities are still small enough to change.
To be honest I’m not sure the planners we have in this country have any sense whatsoever, and I’m less than optimistic that anything will change before they’ve crippled the place for good. It really is frustrating living in a country like this.
‘Annoyed’ Drogheda is putting it mildly… The Drogheda Independent’s lead story this week is something along the lines of ‘fury over city snub’.
You can’t blame them – it’s the largest provincial town in the country, it’s got feck-all facilities and now the government is saying ‘let’s develop Dundalk’.
As for developing cities like Galway and Waterford, I think it’s probably too late to reverse the approach that has already turned them into mini-Dublins – tiny centre, a few apartments, acres of low-density suburbs, all-day traffic jams.How do they expect Cork and Limerick to reach a population of 700,000 within a few years? Do they mean the entire region between these two cities or what? The population of Cork city is only about 150,00 at the moment and Limerick is about 70-80,000.
I do think this plan offers a great opportunity for these cities and places like Waterford and Galway to avoid the mistakes that were made in Dublin and plan responsibly from the very beginning i.e. higher densities, and better planned services and amenities in general. These cities are still small enough to have avoided the headaches that disastrous planning has imposed on Dublin so its not too late.
I’m not really sure about this myself either. It could be the redevelopment of that old Eircom building on one of the quays, but I didn’t think that had planing permission yet, much less construction begun. That was supposed to be about 9 stories high or so.
On another point, 8 “skyscrapers” in the entire country, 3 of which haven’t even been built yet! Thats pretty poor by any standards. I think even Iceland has more than us! When will we drag ourselves into the 20th century, never mind the 21st?
And once again (for the 100th time) I’m not calling for height for heights sake, I just think when done well it’d add another dimension to what are some very boring cities (modern architecture-wise) in this country.
As a newcomer, I’m annoyed at the opinions expressed on the ‘types’ of people in places like Ballymun.
Of course, if you filled a development of tower blocks full of middle-class home-and-car owners and hired a management company to look after it all, it would not turn out the way Ballymun did.
The problem is, people with a bit of money will never want to live in places like that.
Dublin Corporation populated those buildings with low-income families, provided no facilities to speak of, stepped back and left them to their own devices.
It just wasn’t the right kind of design for a major local authority development and was a perfect breeding ground for the bad minority that took over.
Of course the tenants have to shoulder some of the responsibility.
But proper, appropriate design in housing is crucial to the quality of life of the people who live there. It helps shape the kind of community that develops in a place. If you don’t believe that, what’s the point of hiring an architect?N3 is obviously battling a superiority complex at the moment, perhaps its best we leave him alone. By the way, the only embarassing thing I’ve come across on this forum so far is the following comment:
The general standard of appraisal of architecture by many of the contributors to this website is embarrassing
Maybe you’re just counting seats on the Copenhagen one. The Luas capacity involves an awful lot of standing room and only about 100 seats or maybe less. Are you sure the capacity for the Luas is just one car? Other then that I can’t think of an explanation.
I think the greens are in favour of the offshore windfarms being proposed. Yes, the Green Party in favour of something, I’m shocked too.
These people whinging about the effect on the landscape need to see the bigger picture i.e. if we don’t start replacing fossil fuel burning with things like this then we won’t have any landscape at all in the not too distant future.
Like LOB I think its being delayed both because of problems with the company itself and because of the slowdown in the economy. They were talking about building some of the apartments first then doing the tower later. The guy who owns Zoe developments is really interested in the site too, which would be okay as long as he builds what is planned for there and not some crappy apartments that are his style (although to be fair I think he’s responsible for the Charlotte Quay apartments which are pretty cool).
I reckon it will be built eventually because its too good an opportunity to do something different and set a precedent for the city to let slip away. I think with this and Tara Street getting the go-ahead we’re beginning to chip away at the conservatism thats rampant in both Dublin and the country as a whole.
How long do planning permissions like the Hammond Lane one last? I know Georges Quay was built on a 10 years one so it was left for ages. Does Hammond Quay need to be started soon in case the permission runs?
Thats just what I was thinking! Someone will surely object to them because they block the lovely view of the smoke spewing chimneys! And the authorities, not wanting to be in the least bit controversial, will either turn the thing down completely or order another horrible five story sprawl be built instead – in red brick of course.
Its a sad state of affairs when the tallest structure in your capital city is a pair of feckin’ chimneys at a power station. Only in Ireland.
This is out near the power station chimneys isn’t it? You would think that since they’re of similar or greater height that they’d pave the way for some other tall structures out there – I mean its fairly remote from the city centre and I don’t think theres a lot of residents out there so it would seem like an ideal place for buildings like this.
To be fair to An Bord Pleanala they didn’t pointlessly chop floors off the Tara Street building this time although I’m sure they were severely tempted, so maybe they’re growing up a little. They must think they’re not doing their job unless they alter every proposal they get in some way.
Maybe the economic downturn has put this particular project on the back-burner, although you’d think they’d still try to get it through planning. I know our planning system is rubbish but a 2 year delay seems a bit much.
