kefu
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The key difficulty for me is overcoming the fact that the markets have always been a very hidden part of Dublin. I know native Dubliners who would get lost in that entire area bounded by the quay, Capel Street, Church Street, and North King Street aside from the Four Courts.
That to me is the conundrum. How do you open up an area that up to now has had little to nothing by way of attraction or ordinary business, and is in truth, a quarter that has long had an air of abandonment (and doesn’t feel particularly safe).
For me, that would have to start with Mary Street Little, and if it could be given some of the new lease of life Capel Street has, it could be a great success.I’d also have concerns that it may have a negative impact on the plan for a floating island of buildings in the Liffey.
Frank McDonald made an interesting observation about the braziers in a recent article.
He said that aside from enormous costs, they can cause heat/singe damage to some of the higher apartments, which were built after the braziers had been put in place.
Don’t know whether that is true but he raised the point that if they are never going to be used, they should simply be taken down as they have no function.
What would people think?More bad news for Smithfield:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0415/breaking33.html
An absolute disaster for this part of Dublin. The Department should step in with grant assistance for the cinema. Better to spend another €175,000 now than let the €1.75 million grants involved go to waste.It’s staggering how quickly the city has degenerated. You could carry out the same exercise in 3/4 of the city centre area and find similar. I cannot even imagine what things are going to be like in five years time.
De Paor project in the new Terminal at Dublin Airport, attractive if a little fussy:
If you look at the site’s footprint in the above picture, it appears to have been shaped to fit precisely into the land available.
If they were to go with a traditional square, then the view of the original building would be even further obsccured.
I personally think it would work if as I said above, the buildings to front and back were stepped back another 20 metres and perhaps had a storey or two added to make up what has been lost.
Maybe I am acting as if browbeaten, but the alternative to this project is the continued dereliction of this particular part of disappeared Dublin, and the inevitable situation where this building can no longer be salvaged in any form.Set them back another fifty yards and I’d have no problem with this.
Considering it’s virtually impossible to get a view of this currently derelict building as it stands, reopening the vista in this format seems a welcome development to me.
We’ve already seen historic buildings in Trinity and DCU (to a minor degree) very well integrated with their modern elements.Can’t agree with you about Francis Street and Kildare Street, the one-way system is what keeps them relatively traffic-free. If they are arbitrarily made two-way, the potential is there to turn them, particularly Francis Street (in the evenings), into complete rat runs. Leave them as they are, the width is certainly there for a counter-flow cycling system, if DCC is willing to sacrifice some onstreet parking.
What’s wrong with a bit of ambition? 5,000 may be a touch too many but certainly the numbers currently in use could do with expansion.
Dublin and its small scale is a bicyclist’s paradise, notwithstanding the poor state of the roads and cycling facilities.Another Luas stop? There’s less than 400 yards between the existing ones. If people are too lazy to walk the 200 yards, then I’m not sure they need to be facilitated with another Luas stop to make the journey to Tallaght even more interminable.
A one-hour journey from Dublin to Galway/Limerick etc would only concentrate further economic activity around the capital. We would then have the strong possibility of people commuting from these cities, a virtual replication of the extant problem with car commuters transferred to long-distance rail commuters.
Building a high-speed rail line between Manchester and London is one thing when you have two separate population centres, both with a greater number of people than this entire country.
If people complain about economic value from the infrastructural projects we have, the motorway projects, Metro etc, then how can they suggest a €20 billion investment on high-speed between Galway and Dublin or elsewhere is viable. On no possible measure does it add up.Also pro: how many lives that would otherwise have been lost have been saved.
Road deaths were down to 239 last year, the lowest on record.
You can’t attribute all of that to the motorway network but it was a major contributor.Is there the room to extend out on both ends at Thomond – there is one very busy road to contend with.
That’s what I find most confusing about these pictures: then, we had two traffic lanes in either direction, now, we have … the exact same. What was actually achieved by this wholesale destruction?
Getting on to the bridge from the Northside is also very difficult. You cannot turn left on to it from either the quays or from Sheriff Street so effectively it’s not meant for anybody using the Tunnel or the Ports. The only access seems to be directly down from Seville Place.
BigJoe, you are able to turn right onto Pearse Street from Macken Street.
Seems a bit of a mess and even when I was there on Sunday – with very limited traffic around – there were pretty bad tailbacks forming. Any idea if it is helping improve Pearse Street from a surface car park on week nights?
