Why is there so few open spaces / squares in Dublin?

murphymick

Most European cities l, if not all, have beautiful open air areas in the middle of the towns, ie, town squares. These can be used for markets, outdoor events, restaurant or bar terraces etc.

We have parks, yes, I acknowledge that. But that’s not the same thing. Our largest park, Phoenix Park is festooned with car parking spaces and cars belting through have priority. The people using it have to “ask” the drivers to cross dare they slow down cars in a park.

It just seems grim to think about it. I’ve lived in Amsterdam and Madrid and been to every EU capital and several other provincial towns.

Most of Cyprus isn’t much better than us mind.

Grayson

I've always felt that there are areas like college green and O'Connell st that could be used better. They could reduce the lanes in O'Connell st and turn the centre into an open area with bars, cafes and stalls.

There's also squares that are underused. I think of places like the square on jervis next to the shopping centre and church bar. It could be a great meeting area but there's nothing there.

It feels like they offloaded all that to the private sector.

MarkY91

The square at the Jervis centre has a recent renovated. It's beautiful.. I'm not sure why you think it's underused as it's packed with people sitting around anytime I go past.

murphymick

Look at Kraków. Beautiful open air area. Why can’t we block vehicular traffic on O’Connell St and emulate something like this?

suvigirl

Ah jaysis, you wouldn't want to be sitting in O Connell street trying to enjoy yourself.......

Kintarō Hattori

I'd guess historically climate might have played a part. Neither Ireland or the UK have town squares such as in the likes of Krakow above. Our climate has always been damper with a sunny warm summer not guaranteed. A guaranteed summer would have led to a lot of continental cities and towns developing thriving markets, cafes etc, which really didn't happen here. Just eating outside is culturally a fairly new thing in Ireland.

Also, just a longshot but would the Romans have had anything to do with it? They never got as far as us :)

murphymick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776435#Comment_120776435

what do you mean?

mrslancaster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776399#Comment_120776399

That's a beautiful square but we'd need to knock down loads of buildings to give us an open space that size around o'connell street.

We do the opposite in this country, we build on every bit of land available. Green spaces for public use in cities and towns? Nah, never happen.

suvigirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776517#Comment_120776517

Cos O Connell Street is horrendous and I'm not sure pedestrianising it would improve it!

murphymick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776619#Comment_120776619

It’d be a start.

Start by forcing out all the junkie scum.

Round the clock Garda presence.

Cover over the roads and replace with green areas.

You’d be surprised what can be done.

suvigirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776658#Comment_120776658

Oh I agree, I would be surprised if anyone ever bothered though!

Shame

magicbastarder

bit late to really pedestrianise o'connell street with the luas running down it. plus having to rearrange all those bus routes.

murphymick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776683#Comment_120776683

Could we not pedestrianise it and keep the Luas is a segregated corridor? Buses can be diverted down Parnell St if coming from the northside.

Peregrinus

26% of Dublin's land area is public open space; this compares quite well with other European cities. (Amsterdam 13%; Barcelona 28%; Brussels 13%; Lisbon 18%; Paris 10%).

The difference, I think, is that Dublin's open space is much more suburban, and much more oriented towards green spaces and parks, and less to urban paved squares. There are historical reasons for this; mainly that Dublin was not a capital city hosting a court willing to commit resources to the construction of monumental civic spaces to project power and prestige, which accounts for a lot of fairly splendid open spaces in European cities. Climate also enters into it; in a city with Dublin's rainfall, paved public squares are dismal spaces a fair amount of the time. Green spaces do better in the rain than grey spaces.

HeidiHeidi

I've been in plenty of European cities where there's a middle strip down a main street, like in O'Connell Street, and the buildings are lined with bars and restaurants, the tables are in the middle bit (sometimes under cover), and the waiters and punters dodge the traffic from one to t'other. The set up on OCS is an absolute model for this.

But a combination of the weather, our penchant for litigation, the absolutely mindbending shift in thinking that would be required, and just the planning nightmares involved (plus probably a whole load of other things, those are just off the top of my head) mean that will never happen.

It's such a shame, because OCS could be a real flagship centrepiece for the city, instead of the filthy kip it currently is. (I'd settle for a team of roadsweepers and powerhoses to tackle it every single morning at 5am. That alone would transform it).

con747

Plenty of parks around Dublin, maybe not all around the city centre but still a lot around Dublin. "Parks form just over 17% of the land area of the city, that is some 2,020ha of the 11,761ha available."

https://www.dublincity.ie/dublin-city-parks-strategy/4-resources-and-services/41-parks/415-quantity-parks#:~:text=Within%20the%20Dublin%20City%20Council,228%20Community%20Grade%202%20Parks.

murphymick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776737#Comment_120776737

Climate also enters into it; in a city with Dublin's rainfall, paved public squares are dismal spaces a fair amount of the time. Green spaces do better in the rain than grey spaces.

Amsterdam, Brussels and Copenhagen have very similar climates to us. Rainfall included.

Homesick Alien

Grand Canal Square is the only purpose built plaza/square in Dublin AFAIK. Gets a lot of people in summer evenings even though it has potential for more. It's not really in the centre though

murphymick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776737#Comment_120776737

There are historical reasons for this; mainly that Dublin was not a capital city hosting a court willing to commit resources to the construction of monumental civic spaces to project

Dublin was always “a” capital. It may not have been the national capital when we were part of the UK but it was still Ireland’s capital in the same way Edinburgh is Scotland’s capital and Cardiff is Wales’ capital.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058302734/why-is-there-so-few-open-spaces-squares-in-dublin

Historic areas do, Georgian squares do.

You have to say it's modern Irish planning is just bad.

Take the Phoenix Park side since you mentioned it. They done very little to improve the transport links from D15 and bottlenecked many of the alternative routes. So it's not rocket science why is get diverts through the park.

Opw had an opportunity to move the traffic to the perimeter when they closed the main road for almost a year. Instead they rebuilt it. Same with parking, they make no provision for parking on the boundary so people have to drive though the park to get to parking. No logic to it at all. It's a confused mess.

Look at new estates very little green space in the plans. No central focus to new developments and towns. Look at 3 Arena, point village. They built a high rise office block on the existing plaza/ open space.

It's just bad planning and we've been doing it since the foundation of the state.

Flinty997

Then you have this ..

https://jrnl.ie/6103861

Arthur Pants

Junkies and beggars, OP.

murphymick

Why can’t the city have a small cluster of very high rise buildings in a location very close to centre such as the docks. Mixed purpose of offices and residential units. Free up the suburbs for green spaces instead of sprawl and allow open spaces in the very centre of town…

magicbastarder

i remember during the lockdown, alice mary higgins raised in the seanad, that it should be a simple tenet that every resident of the city lives within a certain distance of a decent green space. i wonder has anyone calculated, for example, what percentage of dubliners live within say 1km of a council or OPW run park?

iffandonlyif

We haven’t got a particularly good track record with plazas – Smithfield, Meeting House Square in Temple Bar, the already mentioned Wolfe Tone Park at the end of Henry Street. I accept that none of those is ideally placed, but they illustrate the fact that you can’t just build it and expect a pedestrian realm to flourish.

The point about weather is crucial. Not simply because markets and events can’t be held but because a wet and windswept plaza empty of people looks bleak. To my mind only College Green is crying out for conversion to a plaza. And not because of fantasies about thriving markets, etc, but because it would pull together Grafton Street, Trinity College, Temple Bar and O’Connell Street.

And it can’t be denied that Stephen’s Green, the pedestrianised Grafton Street and the front square of Trinity College all provide elements of what European plazas do. It’s preposterous to say that Phoenix Park is packed with car parks. There are vast areas accessible only to walkers. If you find it oppressive to have to wait to cross a single road, that reveals grievances peculiar to yourself.

murphymick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776836#Comment_120776836

I live in County Dublin. I’m 50 metres from a park. The park is quite central. I live in a small town so the few thousand people are all within a 1.5 km walk of it.

Thelonious Monk

When I'm in town and want to chill out in the sun or eat outside, I go to Merrion Square or St Stephen's Green or Iveagh Gardens. All gorgeous city parks within a stones throw of each other. I used to work around Oxford Circus in London and the few bits of green nearby that I could reach on my lunch break were nowhere near as nice.

College Green could be nice whenever they pedestrianise it.

murphymick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776851#Comment_120776851

If you find it oppressive to have to wait to cross a single road, that reveals grievances peculiar to yourself.

Why should pedestrians have to yield to cars in what is (or should be) a green space primarily for pedestrians?

murphymick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776858#Comment_120776858

The national school is also beside the park. Most of the kids attending the school live in the vicinity (according to my neighbour who is the principal).

The area is chocked with cars every morning and afternoon. Despite most kids living less than 2 km away. The disabled bays and bus stop for the school bus and the zebra crossings leading to the school are fair game.

TagoMago

Dublin is badly missing something like this, it only becomes more apparent when the weather is nice. When you see the huge crowds outside the Barge and right along the canal it becomes really apparent that we're really limited in this regard, there are very few other places to go. Some very nice parks but most have poor transport connections, close early or have few amenities close by.

CreadanLady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776435#Comment_120776435

Take away the car and all you'll be left with is junkies, winos and beggars.

murphymick

Deport Roma gypsies.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776851#Comment_120776851

The park by Patrick's Cathedral also does all the things a plaza does and its a lovely spot.

In terms of a European style central plaza you just cannot create one. Any attempt to create one from scratch leads to some commercial looking lifeless zone like Smithfield.

The closest we can come in Ireland is to pedestrianize streets that already have life and character.

It's just a quirk of the style popular in the UK when many of our centres were built. C'est la vie

suvigirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776888#Comment_120776888

Iveagh gardens is a little gem

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776937#Comment_120776937

Roma gypsies are not the reason for our lack of public spaces. Roma are all over Europe.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776899#Comment_120776899

Because for all the talk about pedestrians having priority. There's almost no pedestrian crossings in the park that would give them priority. Opw had sat on its hands for years.

magicbastarder

let's assume the stereotype of OCS is true. why would that be? the only reason i am ever on it is because i'm getting on or off a bus; there's nothing to hold someone there regardless. so it's gone into a downward spiral where businesses other than newsagents/convenience stores won't bother opening there, and no-one uses it except for access to PT.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776965#Comment_120776965

And so what though? It's never going to be a Champs Elysee type street with tourists drinking under canopies. I actually think they did a good job on the surface around the Spire etc. and it looks a lot better than it used to.

It's currently just a street for buses and people passing through, so be it. Plenty of other nicer parts of town you can get something to eat or drink in.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776913#Comment_120776913

People play all sorts of game to get into a school not in their area. Officially they might be in the area, but actually aren't.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776925#Comment_120776925

I always find it mad that people think the solution to these social problems is to make sure there are cars and traffic in the affected areas.

Sleepy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776658#Comment_120776658

Realistically, in order to do this you'd need to flatten and/or gentrify all the low-rise social housing areas that exist around the North end of O' Connell Street. Managed properly, it should be possible to do it in a close to cost neutral fashion (using the funds taken from developing lots of what should be high value inner city real estate to cover the development of much higher standard social housing out in the suburbs) but politically it's next to impossible as you'd have the community reps up in arms about it etc.

iffandonlyif

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776943#Comment_120776943

I completely agree. There’s a particular naivety in thinking all it takes is a bit of imagination to create a plaza with the atmosphere of somewhere on the continent. My point about College Green is that there is an objective that would be accomplished even if people used it only to criss cross.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776997#Comment_120776997

And I also wholeheartedly agree with this, for related reasons! The gravity of the city has moved elsewhere. Of course we should continue to try to improve O’Connell Street by policing it better, enforcing directives on shop fronts, etc, but we should stop trying to reassert it as the central boulevard of city and just accept it for what it is.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776997#Comment_120776997

Champs Elysees is crap anyway. It's mostly just big expensive international brands. The street is way too big to saunter over and back across the street to browse and mingle.

Las Ramblas and Oxford St./Regent St. Are shockingly overrated too.

Smaller fully or semi pedestrianized streets are far more attractive prospects. Temple Bar, Powerscourt and Chapel St. are all better suited if people want cafes on the street. Same goes for Quartier Latin, Soho or the Gothic Quarter.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120777166#Comment_120777166

To be fair I don't think anyone rates Oxford St, it's just tatty American candy and vape shops these days. Regent's Street is quite nice though apart from all the traffic. But yes, O'Connell St just is what it is, and it's grand, apart from the social problems but that's not the street's fault.

If I want to enjoy Dublin city centre I just go to South William St and surrounds or the nice streets off Grafton St.

o1s1n

Remember that a lot of these European cities were bombed to absolute oblivion during the second world war, so they've been rebuilt in the last 70 or so years with lots of planning in mind.

Dublin is more of a medieval styled organic sprawl that at no recent point had people sit down for a single cohesive planning vision for the whole thing.

Saying that, I'm only a 10 minute walk from The Phoenix Park, absolutely great resource for anyone in it's vicinity.

satguy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120776937#Comment_120776937

I donk think this could happen,, But they could be forced to keep at least 100 yards away from ATM machines ...

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120777238#Comment_120777238

I see this bombed thing mentioned a lot but what cities in particular are you talking about? Like take Hamburg for example, they suffered bombing on par with Dresden, but if you walk around Hamburg it was rebuilt to the same spec as it was previously, and there are public spaces everywhere there. Same with Koln and Munich. Polish cities too, they rebuilt them as they were, at least this is what it looks like.

Strumms

Here, the mindset now is … space = build something for someone on it. Housing or industrial units.

Look at the beautiful Phoenix Park Racecourse ….

an amenity for people ? Nope, A gargantuan ugly as sin, development.

Larbre34

Dublin has a decent selection of Georgian squares and little parks and publicly accessible options like Dublin Castle and Trinity Cricket Grounds.

What it is lacking, is a grand square; a focal point for events and demonstrations, public concerts and celebrations.

I don't think even a fully pedestrianised College Green will address that, its too irregular of a shape and has no natural focal point.

Personally, I would turn the old canal basin at George's Quay into one, the spot that was identified for both white water rafting and a public Lido. Though I accept that it is not particularly central or surrounded with old architecture in the way some other grand squares might be.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120777265#Comment_120777265

Which former public areas of Dublin were built on ?

You make it sound like the place was once full of plazas.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120777280#Comment_120777280

George's Quay is just another lifeless Smithfield.

You just cannot force an area to become a focal point.