Would you put a bus route through a shopping mall?

There are 2 designated Major Town Centres in the local authority area of DunLaoghaire Rathdown County Council, Dundrum Town Centre (an enclosed regional scale shopping centre) and DunLaoghaire - a traditional town centre with a main street. Both have rail links to Dublin City Centre. But only one has the joy of a 20 tonne bus zoomin down the middle at 30 miles an hour every 10 minutes. One of these centres is increasing rents by 100% in the middle of a depression, the other is on its knees. Clearly theres many factors why DunLaoghaire is suffering, but this has got to be a factor. If you don't put customers first (as they do in a shopping mall), and even worse, make the place dangerous and uncomfortable to walk around(despite wasting a fortune on expensive paving) its no wonder the place suffers. When I talk to retailers, they always say that parking is the problem, but cars don't walk into shops.

Marylebone High Street, London

Marylebone High Street http://bit.ly/rkpLp is so good, when you walk down it, that you think its just happened by itself. The eclectic mix of stores is so natural,that the street is a place and somewhere you want to meander a while. Its in such marked contrast to the hostility (no I dont understand the need for 20 different shoe shops) of the typical high street (Oxford Street is just around the corner). But then people who do the right thing over a long period of time rarely make the headlines.

The Howard de Walden Estate, is the main landlord in the area, and quite uniquely (as far as I know) take a long term view on the tenant mix of the street, not because they are philantropists or do goodie types (who cares!), but because it makes good business sense, because good business is creating good place that are sustainable places because they last and have a sense they'll last, and reassure you that in you're somewhere better than the suburban retail park. This example cannot be easily followed, but it shows what can be achieved. http://www.marylebonevillage.com/en/marylebone-village/..... Adapt and prosper.

Post note: Of course like any street in London, the traffic engineers really do their best to make a mess of it.. and put up as many people cages, poles, barriers, signposts as possible...

Limerick Regeneration Hits a wall

The Irish times reports today that "Limerick’s regeneration project is in jeopardy due to a scarcity of public funding and locals in the city’s most disadvantaged estates are becoming disillusioned". The funds referred amount to a staggering €3bn.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/0209/1224264025064.html

Talk about throwing good money after bad. What the regeneration agencies want to do is bulldoze down one new town project and replace with in another one, on the presumption that we're so much smarter now that we were 30 years ago (NAMA anyone?).

According to the issues paper for the Limerick City Plan 2010-2016, The City Plan 2004 expected the population of Limerick City and Suburbs would increase from 92,000 to between 97,000 and 101,000 by 2006. It was also expected that the population of the area within the City Boundary would rise to over 55,000. However,the population within the City Boundary fell from 54,000 to 52,000 and the population of the City and Suburbs rose to a little over 95,000 persons. i.e. in a very short period 6,000
persons left the City to elsewhere in the Region and very little of this migration
settled in the suburbs of Limerick City. In fact there was also net outmigration from
the City and suburbs of about 4,000 persons.

Somebody do the maths? They're want to spend €3bn rebuilding a failed new town,for a population of approx. 6,000 when 6,000 have just left the city centre? Just imagine what half of €3bn could achieve in terms of investment, jobs, and city confidence if invested in micro-schemes throughout the city of Limerick.