Doughnut Dublin

Dublin Chamber of Commerce provided an interesting view on city centre vacancy by saying we need more cars and parking spaces! They got national coverage on RTE on Monday for their submission to the Dublin City Plan http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0322/dublin.html This seems to ignore all evidence from city development of the last 50 years, where its been shown time and again that its people that are needed in city centres not cars!

This headline is a shame because their submission does say some sensible things (www.dubchamber.ie/Uploads/Development_Plan-Dublin_Chamber.pdf). They're right to focus on the importance of delivering public transport. The evidence from studies such as Jan Gehl's of Copenhagen (which the Council are well familiar with), is that you have to improve the quality of the city centre, make it more people friendly and get more people living there, and enjoying the city as the 3rd space. Dublin has hundreds of iconic buildings already; it doesn't need an iconic 'tall' building to define the city, no more than the 'Gherkin' says anything about London (of course an iconic building doesn't have to be tall either!). There is a lot of space to build a flourishing city without indiscriminate glass towers.

The most disappointing aspect of their submission is their lack of understanding as a representative commercial body of retail. The first thing they don't say is that institutional investors/landlords are killing the city's main shopping streets through greed.

Secondly they point to the sad Retail Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area statement that: “The reality is that most shoppers, especially families, do not have the luxury of daily shopping (as in other parts of Europe) and will do one or two big shopping trips per week, necessitating the use of private transport, especially in more rural areas and in urban areas where there is a lack of competitive foodstores.” This was presumably written by Tesco.

The answer to this question is not more supermarkets everywhere (as they suggest), but make daily shopping convenient, attractive and affordable, because this is one of the key elements that makes urban living advantageous and enjoyable. I could go on......