Smithfield Resi

@davidarthurs wrote:

Perhaps a group should get together to report illegal banners to avoid the problems of reports coming from an individual.

I have a ton of letters from DCC regarding illegal banners. Having emigrated I’d love to pass the torch. I can also put you in touch with some like-minded people.

I have also found calling Marketing Managers directly claiming to represent groups has worked in getting them removed. A lot of major brand name marketing teams are under the bizarre and plainly wrong illusion that fabric banners do not need permission as they are “temporary”.

The new advertising strategy document does not spell this out nearly clearly enough.

@StephenC wrote:

“Hurry on down to Bargaintooooooooown…where the signage is only famous!!”

..and the planning permission is entire absent. For anything. Ever. Great way to not breach a condition.

however I have to give them credit for the clean up of the odd triangle left by the LUAS around the corner. It has the IPA posters off and is being treated for rat infestation. Lovely. I do however understand that an urban garden has been given a grant.

Just wish they would take the ugly corner sign off.

Today I spotted 3 winos/junkies asleep on the new benches, plus a new gaggle of skateboarders enjoying the grind boxes thoughfully provided by DCC. I strolled home past the large cage of builders rubble, admiring the new ‘sandbox’ at the top of the square. God bless you DCC, God bless you.

@Smithfield Resi wrote:

If you don’t like Fresh’s prices – potentially good news, however if you like “The Complex” a disaster.

Tesco Express put in an application for the Complex units…4176/10

(no idea how to link with 1. The new archiseek baord software or 2. With the mess that is DCC tinkering with the planning search)

http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=4176/10

Great. No market. No Art. No Cultural Use. No nothing. Instead we are getting a Tesco Express. :sick:

At least no off licence – interesting as apparantly according to the courts http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0212/1224289634620.html they are not fit to hold one :wtf:

they can cause heat/singe damage to some of the higher apartments

I have been on the roof closest to a brazier when the braziers were lit, they are a good 5 or 6 metres distance away. I’d be very suprised if heat damage was possible.

I think the braziers should stay, but perhaps have high power low energy LEDs installed to make beams of light shine from them. These could be easily colour keyed for various events.

Above all however Smithfield (Market) needs a feckin MARKET! Not a half ass planting (greening) scheme or a ‘strategy’. Just get a regular market in with stalls, get some toilets into the stupid block in the middle, repurpose the old ESB station back to a market official/policing office, bung a safe in it for change (and a kettle) and run the Temple Bar Market there on weekdays. Put a specialist vintage/camden lock type market in at the weekends. Add students/tourists (generator hostel opens soon).

A look along the LUAS line at the number of new veg shops will show how the area is crying out for a fruit/veg market as well to take advantage of the proximity of the wholesale market.

More of this sort of thing!!

You are not being entirely fair Smithfield Resi. The car space you highlight is the old parking area which is to be replaced by a new landscaped area. The empty poles probably relate to those and are likely to be removed once works on this section commence.

Fair point on the car park space (I was having a bit of a dig) but the poles have been recently added – (a quick browse of Google maps confirms) and from what I can tell from the plans it is intended that the area below where the poles are located is where the landscaping will be – so I’m guessing they are staying (and there is no excuse for the concreting in of cobble setts)

I fail entirely to understand why the green is needed here. CPO of the Irish Distiller surface car park (dig them out an underground car park and create a peoples park next to the Luas would be my approach)

The tarmac lump are a result of the removal of light stands and I imagine they too will be repaired with cobbles.

I would hope so too, but DCC don’t have a good record on repair and reinstatement.

The work is undoubtedly shoddy looking at present but it is a work in process.

In process indeed, it just seems some of the work is ‘finished’ – look at the amount of redundancy in the amount of poles installed for the parking space. Roads and Traffic must have shares in the galvanised pole industry.

Signage is a mess all over the city: I see a new post for the interminably delayed wayfinder scheme, perhaps that will negate the need for these other fingerposts. I don’t know what the “bunker” is for….all will be revealed by summer.

The problem as I see it is that the solutions being offered for poor signage are to erect yet more…(is it really that hard to find a parking machine (why not some discreet brass arrows into the kerbing pointing to the nearest machine??)

The notice about parking isn’t really conflicting….at the end of the day its saying that you cant park on the square and that if you do you will be clamped. No doubt some residents don’t see the square as the big civic space that it is meant to be. And sometimes our council don’t either.

I never really got as satisfactory answer from the City architects as to why surface parking was needed at all..there’s a 1000 space car park 75m away from here under Smithfield Market. I also asked why, as 3 phase power was being put in, could these space not be reserved for electric vehicle charging (great spot next to the luas and dublinbikes stand. Whilst it was agreed that this was a great idea, the consulatation process was merely a sap to give an air of consulatation. I fear the play area will be a disaster, and take no account for what urban dwellers actually want and need from this space.

The main part of the southern section of the square has been cleared of trees and cobbles ready for relaying. A notice says that works will be completed by end of summer 2011.

They were meant to have the whole lot completed by end of Dec 2010, so had to go crying back to the EU. I have never seen cobble work proceed so slowly as they dragged out the relaying of the cobbles at the top of the square. If the rest of this work proceeds at that pace, it will be Dec 2011 before this is completed. I’m also concerned that they will take the opportunity to demolish the red brick former market police station (ESB substation) at the bottom of the square.

This square is rapidly losing any cohesive sense of a civic public space…

There would seem to be some confusion at Smithfield about Parking…

..and yet we seem to have two new spaces…

The odd thing is that these are not accessible by car…yet they seen to require a pole…

Finished to DCC’s exacting requirements when installed on an historic (protected some might say) cobbled sett. Local artistic types have added to the dynamic appeal of these bare poles in the centre of “Dublin’s Civic Space”

Its brother also has a similar high quality of finish:

Other examples are close by;

@jinx9000 wrote:

smithfield represents dublins first move towards what berlin currently offers its artists and students………good things will come from the recession, will just take time!

I think that is more by luck than judgement…

Or use mag-induction…look to Ausburg for proof of concept. Seems robust enough…

GERMANY: The Primove induction-based catenary-free electrification system developed by Bombardier Transportation is to be piloted on the tram network in Augsburg, the manufacturer announced on May 26.

Formally unveiled at Bombardier’s Bautzen factory in January 2009, Primove uses cable buried beneath the track to produce a magnetic fields which induces electric current for traction power in pick-up coils mounted underneath the vehicle.