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If a disabled person that requires family assistance is not allowed live beside their family
I call your b*llshit. If there was a single case of a disabled person being forced to live miles from their families because of evil planners, they’d be paraded around like the goat at the Puck fair by the usual selection of local councillors, builders, auctioneers and landowners keen to to peddle sites. This is similar to the b*llshit claim that local children are not being allowed to live near their parents on the family farm. There are simply NO documentated cases of this happening.
Let’s face it; this is a big industry which makes money for landowners, auctioneers and builders. Except for this small self-interested group, most country people are against houses being built all over the place. Of course there are some country people who’ve swallowed the “evil Dublin 4 city types telling us what to do” false populist indignation peddled by the aforementioned concillors cum builders/landowners/etc. but most see it for what it is.
I heard councillor a particular FF councillor from Mayo being made look like a complete fool on the radio about a year ago as he berated An Taisce for wanting to “ethnically cleanse the countryside” . The An Taisce representative asked him could he put a number on the amount of objections they (An Taisce) had made in Mayo in the previous year. After a whole load of bluster he admitted he didn’t; the An Taisce representative told him that they had made ONE SINGLE objection during the year. In the meantime, drive about five miles out the road from this councillors home town in Mayo and observe the rows of not yet completed bungalows with “For Sale” signs from the councillor’s auctioneering business. This is happening all over the country; “local people” apply for and get planning permission on the farcical basis that they intend to live “near their roots” only to stick up a “For Sale” sign four months later without ever spending a single night on the property.
Obviously if I was involved in this industry myself, I’d probably feel threatend by planning guidelines. However I think it’s pretty despicable to use false and unfounded images of disabled people being forced to live apart from their relatives and farmers’ children being driven away from the land to promote an environmentally damaging industry.
From what I recall, the tombstones were at opposite ends of the park; i.e. at the Church end and the other, Strand Road(?) end. So I think many or most would have already been moved before the redevelopment.
While the park looks nice in the photos, if you look closely you can see that it was also pretty neglected; basically the grass was cut and that was it. There may have been some flowers but I never remember seeing any. There were only a couple of poorly maintained benches, one battered rubbish bin and only two small entrances. I used to use the park now and then as it was a good place to allow small children let off a bit of steam after been dragged around shopping. The park was generally empty.
The whole “plaza” concept is flawed for this park. The streets around are very busy both with footfall and with traffic (especially going to and from the Jervis car park). The space would be far better utilised in a traditional “garden oasis” way. Basically they should have just planted some flower beds and shrubbery, updated the benches and bins and improved access; it would have been great.
I dislike that park redevelopment. I knew I would as soon as I heard a description of a plan for a “plaza-like” development (what is it with planners’ current fixation with the word “plaza”?) containing “interesting street furniture” based on the theme of “opening the space to the public”. Ya, it’s grand and open now but I personally don’t get the urge to “enter” a glorified area of pavement. If they actually maintained it as a park when it was there, it could have been lovely; instead it was one of the most under developed parks in the city center. It must have represented one of the last public green areas in the north inner city. I guess a big factor for the council was cost although they presented it as an improvement to the urban environment; the “plaza” is probably much cheaper to maintain than a garden-like park.
That’s it alright. I used to pass it every day a few years ago and was slightly shocked to see the gaping hole. It’s a pity it’s gone. If it had been properly restored, it could have been a gem; there aren’t many buildings of interest along that stretch. It’s a small site so I can’t see a financial imperative to demolish it.
The government have spent almost a billion providing a light rail system to the back door of the “Lakelands” so the inhabitants have the facility to be whisked in and out of town in minutes in the most modern and comfortable form of public transport available on this island. And now they’re up in arms about a high density development across the tracks?
As Moe would say, “aw jeez”.
“Houses will be totally blocked from natural light”? Really? What sort of laws of physics have ye out there in Sandyford?
Woops; I just saw the question from yesterday by burge_eye. I can’t find a way of deleting the above and copying it into a response in the earlier thread.
A NEW town is to be built on Poolbeg peninsula by Dublin city council, turning acres of Dublin Bay wasteland into an integrated community with its own ecology park.
The new district will cover a 7km (4.3-mile) stretch of Dublin 4. It will run along South Bank — the planners’ new name for part of the peninsula — Sean Moore Road, and the rest of Poolbeg, with 3,000 residential units and more than 100,000 sq ft of offices.
…See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-1432232,00.html for the rest.
Anyone seen the actual plans for this?
Other details are available in an article by Treacy Hogan in the Independent which requires registration.
Apparently the seafront will be lined with five storied buildings with “canopied ground-floor bars, restaurants and theatres”. Sounds good but five stories is too low; the new five/six story buildings along the outer quays are too low and out of scale with the expanse of water in front of them. Poolbeg faces an even a larger expanse of water and one of the best contexts for tallish buildings is in front of large expanses of water, in my opinion.
Also it seems it’s been used to resurect the old Rasputin like eastern bypass idea. I really don’t know why planners and road engineers have such a fetish for this stupid 70s era traffic plan. It was stupid back then; it was stupid when it was resurected and killed in the late 80s and it’s stupid and shortsighted now. How about providing DART or Luas to the area for a fraction of the cost of the billions it will cost to tunnel under Sandymount strand?
I was about to admit to not hating the Bachelor’s Walk scheme – from a suitable distance, it does look Georgian to philistines like myself. Then I was reminded of what it replaced in the above two photographs and changed my mind. Thinking about it – it’s not the pastiche that bothers me really, it’s the destruction of the original buildings.
To separate these conflicting feelings, how many here would like to see the ESB buildings on Fitzwilliam Street demolished and replaced with Batchelor Walk style pastiche? I’m afraid, I’d probably be in favour of it.
While I’m a big fan of higher buildings for Dublin, I’ve a certain amount of sympathy for the previous position. Ideally I would have liked to have seen a distinct and contiguous area of tall buildings while maintaining the character of the existing urban areas of Dublin. East of the Matt Talbot bridge would have been ideal for such development but unfortunately through lack of imagination, the DDDA have largely bestowed us with low rise, low density unimaginative suburban office park type development. The opportunity there has been squandered, so now Dublin is effectively forced to allow tall buildings in infill sites in order to increase the density in the city centre. I don’t really like this pattern of development; London has gone for a similar approach with out-of-place looking tall buildings dotted seemingly at random around a largely low rise city scape. I much prefer how it’s done in Paris for example with it’s high rise quarters.
Numbering your ideas:
1. The most likely outcome.
2. Is not practical. Houses in Rathmines are typically twice the size in terms of floor area of a typical three bed semi – some are substantially bigger. Most are terraced and so the floor area density (to coin a phrase) is already many multiples of that of a semi-detached seventies suburban housing estate.
3. I believe the rezoning could happen but the chances of significant development happening along these lines are slight. Buying contiguous houses will be horribly expensive and even then you can be sure that the other neighbours will fight tooth and nail not to have a three story building “tower over them” or “ruin their view”. It will not be economically viable and for it to have any discernable affect it would need to happen all over the place. I know it has happened in one or two places in Dublin but these are exceptional cases.
4. You’re joking? It would be political suicide.
5. This is my favourite but will never happen. I’ve often fondly imagined certain housing estates being transformed in this manner.This is what horrifies me about suburban sprawl. Apollo house will be lucky to reach it’s fortieth birthday; the Ballymun towers lasted thirty odd years while the estates around lucan will be there for a century at least if not many centuries. I’m often perplexed when people are more outraged by standalone architectural monstrosities which can be relatively cheaply “corrected” (i.e. replaced) than the permanent and practically irreversable damage caused by covering hundreds of acres of land in unsustainable poorly laid out low density suburban housing.
Asdasd, maybe I didn’t make myself clear with my gristle analogy. I wasn’t going to bite at your attempt to bring racism into the debate and I certainly don’t find the prospect of discussing “the class struggle” with you any more appetising; in fact I’m not going to argue with you at all since you seem to have fuck-all to say about planning or urban sprawl. You haven’t a clue what my background is and your assumptions about me are the product of some odd fantasy. I pointed out three dumb things you claimed about planning – that’s it.
My mistake; I was actually giving you credit of being xenophobic instead of just being stupid. What the hell has racism got to do anything and why did you bring it up?
You actually believe that immigration is the reason we have urban sprawl and causes damage to the environment? You really believe that nobody noticed Irish urban sprawl before the Guardian printed that article or that it hasn’t been an issue in Irish planning for years? You really believe that supporting the M3 is an expression of humanism? These are your claims and I’m saying they’re rubbish.
( I am also opposed to mass migration for the effect it has on lower income workers and the house price rises which make Dublin 4 snobs richer – I wonder if the reverse were trun would you luvvies be so in favour of mass migration). Your class hatreds make me sick.
When I read this, it was like looking over a horribly gristley piece of meat on my dinner plate wondering which end to start from before thinking, fuck it, I’m not even going to bother.
The same is happening in other traditional tourist areas around the country. Restaurants, traditional hotels, B&Bs and even pubs are all sufferening. It’s hard to prove a causal relationship but I’d imagine that more visitors are just loading up the boot of the car from their local supermarket and spending most of their time in a holiday home. Also many scenic routes/walks for visitors have been damaged by lots of new bungalows and holday home “housing estates”.
Hi Diaspora. That’s great news. Any idea of when itt’s likely to start? Originally it was suggested Autumn 2004 no?
That’s about the dumbest post I’ve read on this message-board.
To blame immigrants for poor planning and urban sprawl in Ireland would be almost funny in its stupidity except that it suggests a nasty xenophobic attitude.
This attitude is confirmed by you trying to present the issue as simply British sourced anti-Irish propaganda and suggesting that there is something reprehensible about Irish people daring to criticise Ireland.
To suggest that we should support building the M3 as a gesture towards humanism takes the fucking biscuit.
Sorry I should have been clearer; I read the original message as referring the whole of Beresford place. Of course it’s worth preserving those buildings. Beresford Place in it’s entirety is horrible and fixing railings and installing sash windows will make very little difference to the street. The nice thing about the above picture is that it removes that terrace from its context with the elevated rail lines, the wall of the Irish Life centre (sorry not the ILAC), the dirty end of Busaras and what is effectively a six lane traffic interchange junction.
Sadly, getting rid of PVC windows and fixing the colour of railing paint is practically pointless. This is one you’ve got to let go from an architectural point of view – it’s a lost cause. I can’t see any way back with the ILAC, the elevated loop line and the fact that it’s part of one of the busiest traffic arteries in the city.
There very well could have been some unwritten rule of thumb applied to a similar effect.
I distinctly remember an interview with a DDDA representative where “sympathy with the tranditional low rise nature of Dublin” was stated to be a guiding principle. Admittedly this has changed and back in the mid-90s it was heretical to suggest that tall buildings be allowed in Dublin so this principle was probably in tune with the times.
But as far as I’m concerned massive damage has already been done. Even if future development to the east of the IFSC is better, it will be cut off from the O’Connell street area by a soulless business park/apartment complex.
My fascination is not with height itself but with density. Dublin is already a sprawling low density conurbation and it needs a counterweight in the centre before most of Leinster is covered in motorways and semi-detached housing estates. The population of Dublin has risen dramatically in the last ten years but most of the growth has occurred around the fringes; growth has been modest between the canals. Soon all the brownfield central development opportunities will be used up and then that’s it as far as population growth between the canals is concerned. Practically all further population growth will be accomodated on green field sites in the periphery and further afield in Kildare, Meath and Wicklow, etc. I’ve stayed in such suburban wastelands in the US and it’s not a future I want for Dublin. The docklands represent a one shot deal to correct the centre of gravity in Dublin and as far as I’m concerned they’ve blown it.
@Diaspora wrote:
A little injection of reality,
All decent spec commercial development is marginal between 8-10 storeys
All decent spec commercial development produces at a negative value above 11 storeys
This is assuming rental values of 450-520 euro per square metre.Where do these numbers come from? How is it even possible to make these generalisations?
Surely the price of the land is a massive factor? An acre of development land in the right part of Manhattan would cost billions so it makes sense to build 40 story apartment blocks, while an acre on the outskirts of Navan relatively speaking costs feck all and so three bed semi-ds make more sense. Even though adding 10 stories to a 10 story building may treble the cost of the building, it could still be cheaper than paying for a second plot of land to build two 10 story buildings — depending on the cost of the land, obviously.
As far as I know, the DDDA actively capped the height of all buildings in the area. The resulting mess is due to DDDA policy and not to free market forces.
