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

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.