Madam, – Reading the article by Carl O’Brien about my home town, Dún Laoghaire (April 7th), was heartbreaking. Although moving to the smaller areas of, first, Glasthule, and then Dalkey, I have always regarded Dún Laoghaire as my main shopping area. It was the place to find a variety of shops and merchandise and also a place for the social “cuppa” with the friend or an acquaintance that one was bound to meet. Shopping was a pleasure.
Now it is a nightmare. Shops and businesses have had to close their doors. People still lucky enough to have cars will go to those centres with free or good-value parking. Dún Laoghaire, our county town, is not a city, and should have parking rates equal to those “satellites” of Monkstown or Sandycove. Although a certain amount of shopping centre parking is available, the shopper will often need to use the on-street parking, especially if elderly, or carrying heavy weights, or if they are just stopping for a quick purchase and or a reviving cup of tea or coffee.
Every cent counts locally, and the more expensive parking charge and the extreme vigilance of the traffic wardens are putting me and people like me completely off coming to Dún Laoghaire. We are all the poorer for it. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Perhaps Dún Laoghaire could be reinvigorated if every attempt to inject new energy and life wasn’t met with opposition from a small group of locals determined to preserve Dún Laoghaire’s “integral character and heritage” as they define its “faded splendour”. One of the most recent examples of this is the long delay to the proposed library and cultural centre despite a specific local objective in the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown draft county development plan which provided for a library and cultural amenities at Moran Park. The new library was the subject of an international architectural competition won by Carr Cotter & Naessens, a Cork-based practice with a fine design record. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Carl O’Brien’s series (Uptown Downtown, April 2nd-8th) on the problems facing Irish rural towns focuses attention on what is an important issue to approximately one-third of the population who are inhabitants of towns.
While rural towns are suffering as a result of the economic recession, most have experienced similar demographic and economic shocks in the past. There is an inherent robustness in the fabric and culture of towns that makes them resilient and able to adapt to change.
Many of the current problems, including the “doughnut effect” referred to in the article about Youghal (Weekend Review, April 2nd), occurred as a result of over-zoning of agricultural land by local authorities, which has led to emptying-out of town cores and suburbanisation of what were formally compact urban settlements. Many town development plans are still zoning huge amounts of agricultural land outside the town cores for residential use. This makes no sense when space within town cores, close to services and amenities, lies vacant.
There is an opportunity now to re-imagine a more diversely inhabited town core model. Towns can be a great place to start new businesses. More flexible leasing arrangements and imaginative strategies for the setting and collecting of rates could be implemented with immediate effect.
It is important also that town cores do not become frozen by restrictive conservation measures. Towns have to change with the society and culture of those who inhabit them, in order to remain vibrant and relevant. If the accommodation they provide is neither spatially innovative nor economically suitable to those who might potentially live, learn or work in them, then desertion of town cores will continue.
The manageable scale of rural towns makes them potentially great places to live, rear children, work and learn in. What is important now, is that we analyse and learn from previous mistakes and actively work to facilitate future growth of towns as an alternative choice of urban model to that provided by the city. – Yours, etc,