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

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.

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

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

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

Shame

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).

Then you have this ..

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

George's Quay is just another lifeless Smithfield.

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