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@PDLL wrote:

Its all relative – someone from Shanghai might think that London was small and Dublin was tiny! I think what is missing here is a sense of proportion. Dublin is a standalone city of 1,000,000. After you leave Dublin, there is no other town of any reasonable size for at least 180km (this is particularly obvious when you fly over Ireland at night). Compare this with Liverpool – it is part of a much larger urban conurbation which effectively spreads to Manchester and incorporates many large suburban towns. Glasgow is only an hour from Edinburgh which has a population of .5 million in its own right. In short, Dublin is – by international standards – small. I remember going round this block in another thread. It seemed to end up in a Freudian line of thinking there too. There is nothing wrong in simply accepting that Dublin is not a major metropolis by international standards

Ignoring national boundaries – our friends in Belfast are but 164.5Km from us. There is a ‘conurbation’ of sorts (comparable to Glasgow – Edinburgh – though it is but 65km) area stretching along the east coast]http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distances.html?n=78&lat=53.433&long=-6.250[/url]

You make it sound like Dublin is lost in some void. Ireland is small and Dublin takes up quite a bit of it.
It’s part of urbanised Northern Europe – itself part of the highly urbanised EU which is in turn part of the uber-urbanised northern hemisphere.

Also, Dublin may be pending a move up in the influencial Loughborough University table of ‘World Cities’ – to a Gamma Level World city. Your mates, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh aint goin anywhere – the ones that manage to get a mention languish in ‘minimal evidence of world city formation’

Dublin is in ‘relatively strong evidence of world city formation’. It’s not just size. Good oul bruiser punches way abover her dainty, pretty little weight. Its also frikin loaded – absolutley minted compared to many cities.

see: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/citylist.html

(just got back from being away for a good bot and lovin it!) 🙂

@Graham Hickey wrote:

So many posts over the past 48 hours have screamed little but ‘oh but Mammy, Johnny down the road has one’….there is little need for glittering skyscrapers in a country of four million people. Our nation is the UK equivalent of Birmingham. Our capital is a suburb in Birmingham.
…This is not contest.

But isn’t there a case for saying good architecture arises from competetion? What about the implicit Kuala Lumpur vs Chicago…most of my lakeside friends say there was more than a little disquiet in the windy city when Asia pulled ahead. Now the new Chicago trade centre will be bigger.
What about Chrystler and Empire State?
Or Hong Kongs banks?
Competetion is good. Its what Ireland has lacked for years. ‘Lets be better’ not just ‘ara sure were different for being mediocre’.

Also, Birmingham has a population of 1 million as far as I know. Not 4 million.

Why not think of Ireland as Greater NY and Dublin as Downtown NY? lol 😀 (I know NY has a pop of around 11 million)

I do know what you mean though Graham. But its not ‘oh but Mammy, Johnny down the road has one’ its lets be the best at this thing. Its not just because Johnny has one. I dont think of low and high rise as seperate their just different forms of building. Its a false dichtomy to seperate them. In some ways

@Graham Hickey wrote:

A medium-rise Docklands of 8-10 storeys punctuated by the odd ‘feature’ building of 30-40 storeys in the Docklands is much more suited to the scale of Dublin city.

thats just ‘ara sure were grand’ in a nutshell.

What about point village?

I really wish a cluster of high rises could spring up here – like a lot of people.

What I can’t get over – and I’m sure this is a well worn and age old rant – is that its obviously meant to be a ‘landmark’ building – but its only 100metres tall.

I can just see it: headline news on CNN ‘100 metre, yes that’s right 100 metre, building planned for Dublin’. Who do they think will go ‘wow’ outside a few initial irish reactions ?

US tourists will see it as something of the suburbs and Europeans will go ‘how provincial’ – it could be something in bloody Croydon to our friends to the east.

Why is an Irish landmark a scaled down landmark?
I don’t believe in ‘context’ because we need to stand out globally.

I know tall does not equal good – but in the ‘popular imagination’ I believe it does.

Why cant it be the best city quarter in the world? Not just ‘ok’. If you start by aiming high you’re on the right track.

The best stuff is the best stuff. Mediocrity is mediocrity

As regards height restrictions:

Why is very tall inappropriate for Dublin? What makes sky more appealling? What does inappropriate for an area mean when its every area? Why must people live in meath when high rise might just solve some of the endless suburban sprawl?

The scaling down of the scotch hall building by one floor just shows how ridiculous it gets.

Rant ends.

ps this is a great site.

How exactly does my comment display that a perfectly comprehensive and accessible discussion about architectural developments and their respective social and aesthetic merits is ‘clearly way over [my] head’ Corkdood?

Do you think that my straying from the major thread topic shows this? Or is it just because you weren’t bothered giving any time to my (admittedly acerbic) comment and so flung me an adolescent ‘won’t attempt to explain it to you’ ?
Always a thought provoking and truly mature response.

What exactly won’t you attempt to explain? Because I really don’t feel a single comment in this thread is in anyway ‘above’ anyones ‘head’.

I regularly visit Cork, and so took an interest in this thread.

Lets be honest now; your comment was a way of quickly brushing off my point whilst maintaining a sense of superiority for yourself by implying that I simply don’t ‘get’ this ‘exclusive’ conversation.

Pah!