Dublin vs Cork

SoundProof

With Cork having started ~10 years ago to create something a kin to Dublin, I am curious what you have to say about it. I am interested in getting some viewpoints as to what the major differences are between Cork and Dublin if any (other than size of course). As an example the bus system in Cork has got to be the worst anywhere, with buses arriving up to an hour late, early or not at all.


If you think Dublin is better than Cork, then please include a couple of your main view points.


TY in advance

RuggieBear

Cork is only 10 year old??

SoundProof

RuggieBear wrote:

Cork is only 10 year old??

Yup sure and Ireland is only 11 years old ..


I wrote that roughly 10 years ago Cork started to build up to become something like Dublin, with it having increased business' etc... So I'm looking for more up to date differences between the two and ......

Solair

I don't quite understand what the point of this post is?
Cork didn't try ~10 years ago to "Create something akin to Dublin". It just continued to develop at a relatively normal pace and, due to being Ireland (Rep. of)'s second city it has many of the same services, shops, facilities etc as Dublin. It has the critical mass to sustain all of these things, much like any other equivilantly sized European city. It's always been something "akin to Dublin" at any given time.

15-20 years ago neither city could be described as thriving. Things have changed a lot!

The city limits are rather more tightly definied that Dublin City. It would be the equivilant of defining Dublin as limited to about Dublin 1,2,3 and 4. The population of Dublin City is infact (according to Census 2006) 505,739 persons i.e. the City Council area. Often, the figure quoted to indicate Dublin's population is the total population of Co. Dublin

The Greater Cork Area / Cork Metropolitian Area, which includes the full range of Cork suburbs gives the City a population of well over 250,000.

Yes, the Cork bus network does absolutely suck, but it's actually completely outside the control of the city itself. Bus Eireann's cork service is entirely managed out of Bus Aras in Dublin. There's no accounting for CIE's logic!

However, Cork City and County councils came together in the 1970s to design the Cork Land Usage and Transport Scheme, unfortunately abreviated to CLUTS. This set out a very well put together programme for creating transport infrastructure and using land in the area. The space for peices of essential infrastructure like the city's ring road and major highways was reserved and the designs largely completed. That plan and its succesors have allowed the city to create a transport network that actually does work. Compared to most other urban areas in Ireland, Cork's infrastructure copes quite well. There are bottle necks caused by signalised roundabouts that simply weren't specified to cope with the traffic flows, but these are rapidly being replaced with junctions that can deal with traffic volumes. E.g. the Kinsale Road "Magic Roundabout" - Cork's equivilant of the Red Cow Roundabout, is now completely transformed with the addition of grade seperation, extra lanes and a flyover across the top.

Also stricter adherence to the various land usage plans has resulted in significantly less sprawl. Most out-of-town development is concentrated in clusters, with far less ribbon development than seen in Dublin.
Towns like Ballincollig, Carrigaline, Riverstown/Glanmire, Midleton etc are all much more compact and better planned than their counterparts in West and North Co. Dublin.

It's a combination of better planning and lack of political interference in the planning process. Much of west and north county Dublin is totally destroyed with unsustainably low density poorly planned "development".

Also, Cork's commuter belt has better road infrastructure. It can generally cope with the traffic volumes. Most of these towns are served by dual carriageway built to motorway specs. (Carrigaline only partially, but that's due to change)

We're seeing significant development of Cork's commuter rail network with the re-opening of lines as far as Midleton and the opening of new stations along the Dublin-line towards Mallow.
There already is an existing commuter rail service serving stations to Cobh.
This system is also due to get a new fleet of DMU rail cars to expand services and increase frequency.

There's also a drastically improved intercity service between Dublin and Cork. A new fleet of trains with a very high level of service. As of this month they'll begin to provide hourly service between the two cities. Operating at up to 100mph they connect Dublin to Cork in 2hrs30 to 2hrs45 (depending on the number of stops). There's also a plan to upgrade the service on the line to 200km/h (125mph) with the upgrading of signals and the provision of new powercars for the trains (they're designed to ultimately operate at 200km/h / 125mph)

They city also has Ireland's most modern airport with a considerable and growing number of destinations.
There's generally absolutely no need to use Dublin Airport. Anytime I need to fly tranatlantic or further afield I tend to route via Shannon (to avoid US-based US immigration queues) or else via Heathrow, Paris CDG or Amsterdam Schiphol or Frankfurt. For European destinations many are served directly ex Cork, but if not, there's regular service to all of London's airports. Ryanair (stansted & gatwick) and Aer Lingus (codeshare with BA) (LHR)

Cork City centre tends to be more compact than Dublin as it tends to be almost exclusively shopping, restaurants and entertainment. There's very little residential use of the city centre (hence the declining population in the central core). It also seems to have fewer social problems, there aren't so many people homeless on the streets, it doesn't have anything even approaching the tragic heroine related problems that afflict parts of Dublin's old inner city residential areas. As a result, street crime and violence is significantly lower. It does happen, but not anywhere near as frequently.

I think Dublin really needs to do something about the problems in its city centre as it's starting to really get out of hand. The number of people homeless on the street is indiciative of a serious problem brewing. It's also pretty clear that the violence and petty crime is almost entirely linked to the city's struggle with drugs, particularly heroine which has been a major issue since the 80s but also with the newer drugs now "in the mix".

Overall, I would say that Cork has pretty much all of the normal lifestyle advantages that one would expect to have living in a reasonable sized city. However, it doesn't have many of the disadvantages that Dublin has developed over the last decade or so particularly crippling traffic and very bad planning.

Anyway, I hope that provides some insight.

A Dubliner living in Cork.

ChuckProphet

Main difference - Cork's a nice city. dublin's a kip.

Rb

ChuckProphet wrote:

Main difference - Cork's a nice city. dublin's a kip.

Debatable. Both have nice and bad places in it, both have high amounts of scumbags hanging around the streets etc. I don't think theres much of a difference other than the sizes, Dublins obviously bigger and busier but Cork always makes a nice change from being up here.

dudara

Both have their merits. Cork is cosier but can be limited in entertainment options. Dublin is far better in that sense, but there is a feeling of isolation sometimes.

Balmed Out

To be fair i think Corks planners are getting far too much credit, the most desirable area of the city around douglas is still expanding with absolutely no thought given to transport carrs hill, the rochestown road etc. are completely overwhelmed but more and more developments in carrigaline, passage, monkstown etc keep going up.
Spent only a few months in Dublin and didnt fancy it at all the pub scene is poor but the club scene is far better then Corks which has been in decline for several years. Do only thing that i think is impressive in Dublin compared to Cork is the amount of parklands and statues. Ireckon theres more statues of corkonians in dublin then there is in cork. One other point Dublin is a lot more dangerous then Cork on a night out, never had hassle here but any time im in dublin or galway (never limerick which is strange) i always see fights or have some idiot giving us aggro.