Report aims to improve city's public spaces

An Taisce has put it up to Dublin City Council's planners, architects and engineers to devise a consistent policy for public spaces in the city, with the aim of improving the quality of life for pedestrians in particular. Frank McDonald reports.

But its report Dublinspirations, compiled largely by Kevin Duff, had just been launched last week when one of the items it sought to protect - the ornate canopy of the Olympia Theatre - was brought crashing down by a truck. The report proposed widening the congested footpath along the northside of Dame Street, not just to make life easier for pedestrians but also to give some protection to the Olympia's canopy, which will now have to be rebuilt.

Using photographic examples and comparisons, the report highlights opportunities for greening the city and improving the quality of the public realm - to build on the "promising start" made in urban regeneration in recent years. It draws attention to the urgent need for an imaginative plan to reclaim the Liffey Quays from heavy traffic after the Port Tunnel opens at the end of next year - though its image of Elysian fields on Merchants Quay is certainly for the birds.

To compensate for a deficit of green space in the city centre, An Taisce proposes following London Mayor Ken Livingstone's example by making the provision of roof gardens mandatory in new developments, as well as new pocket parks at street level.

The report graphically illustrates how the public realm is disfigured and degraded by visual clutter and ill-advised "improvements" to historic pavements. The proliferation of poles, some redundant, needs to be tackled. It is critical of the city council's road maintenance department for ignoring the listed status of historic granite paving stones in replacing them with "non-local" white granite and storing the original material in a heap.

While welcoming the Liffey boardwalk and the Spire in O'Connell Street, the report characterises as "scandalous subversion" the re-making of Wolfe Tone Square to create what its architects (Boyd Cody) described as an "urban beach". Before-and-after images show what can be done to improve highly visible locations, such as the eastside of Christchurch Place or the corners of Lower Bridge Street, one of which is under-scaled and the other a "fenced-off parking lot".

Dublinspirations is available from An Taisce, Tailors Hall, Back Lane, D8. Tel: (01) 4541786