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August/September VILLAGE
achievements in recent years. Ringsend
Nature Park is a wonderful linear park
between the city and the sea on the site of
a former landfill site. St Catherine’s Park in
Lucan combines old woodlands and play-
ing pitches beside the banks of the River
Liffey, and it must also be one of the few
Irish parks with its own Twitter account.
In Dublin’s North Inner City the City Council
finally landscaped a derelict site on North
King Street that had been in their owner-
ship for a quarter of a century. It now has
been grassed and planted with shrubs and
trees and is a model for ‘temporary use’
parks that make use of lands that face an
uncertain future. A similar approach was
I
T’S Sunday morning in the Phoenix Park.
A group of Brazilians are playing foot-
ball under the shadow of the Wellington
Monument. In the distance a herd of deer
look on. One suspects the Duke of Ormond
would be happy to know that years after
he purchased the lands for a royal deer-park,
deer and residents happily share the space.
Yet all is not well with the state of
our parks. As cities increase in popula-
tion development pressures threaten the
future of green space. A new generation of
city residents living in small apartments
expect more from their parks, and cash-
strapped local authorities find it difficult
to meet changing expectations on shrink-
ing budgets. The Phoenix Park itself is
riven by roadways and has been described
as “remorseless prairie, pitches and link-
roads” with little of the sequestered charm
of New York’s Central Park or London’s
great parks. The Croppies Acre Park in front
of Collins Barracks is currently closed to
the public and was recently transferred
from the Office of Public Works to Dublin
City Council. The ambitious plans for a
park at the Royal Canal beside the National
Conference Centre in Dublin’s Docklands
have not been realised. The Liffey Quays
which could be a linear park from Heuston
Station to Dublin Bay are choked with cars,
with footpaths barely wide enough in parts
for a single pedestrian. Uproar in certain
quarters greeted proposals for traffic calm-
ing there. The park at Ormond Square in the
north inner city has a sign banning football
a few metres away from the plaque marking
the birthplace of footballer Johnny Giles.
Green spaces are often converted to ‘hard’
spaces as local authorities find them easier
to maintain. Eyre Square and Wolfe Tone
park are unfortunate manifestations of the
tendancy.
However, there have been notable
taken with Granby Park, a ‘pop-up’ park on
Dominick Street last summer, though critics
worry about the long-term legacy of tem-
porary interventions. Nearby St Michan’s
park on Green Street on the site of the site
of an old jail provides a meeting place for
Irish and immigrant families with a range
of play facilities. The City Council has com-
mitted to reinstate the grassland integrity
of Mountjoy Square.
At a time when funding is scarce much
can be achieved with some creative think-
ing. Glasnevin Cemetery and the Botanic
Gardens share a common boundary and
recently opened up a gate allowing visitors
to walk between the two, adding civic value
Parks are good for the environment, quality of life and human health: a series of
articles will explore opportunities to expand and develop them imaginatively.
By Ciarán Cuffe
Parklife
ENVIRONMENT
PARKS
Eyre Square,
Galway
VILLAGEAugust/September
at a low cost. A pedestrian crossing linking
the National Gallery and Merrion Square
could greatly increase access to one of the
great Georgian Squares. Nearby, however,
Fitzwilliam Square remains under lock and
key, sharing the dubious privilege along with
De Vesci Gardens in Dún Laoghaire of being
private squares in neighbourhoods lacking
in publicly accessible green space.
Little headway seems to have been made
in addressing the ubiquitous challenges
new grassed
area on
Smitheld
locked park
at Dublin’s
Aisling Hotel
and opportunities of our post-war soulless
suburban stretches of grass. Perhaps local
councils, the Office of Public Works and
indeed, crucially, Nama are not protect-
ing and enhancing public spaces with the
zeal and imagination necessary if they are
to become engines for a transformation in
our quality of life.
The role of parks and open space in fos-
tering biodiversity is now recognised. The
“Green City Guidelines” published in
by the UCD Urban Institute, Dún Laoghaire
Rathdown and Fingal County Councils
showed how nature and green networks can
be enhanced in cities and towns, even next
to high-density urban developments. They
also illustrated the importance of green
roofs, green walls, permeable surfaces and
sustainable drainage systems in protect-
ing and enhancing the environment. More
importantly they emphasised the impor-
tance of access to nature in an urbanising
world. Guardian writer George Monbiot
has written of the crucial role “re-wilding”
of open spaces can play, not just in foster-
ing biodiversity but in opening up human
nature and imagination.
A debate is needed on the risks
of promoting wild spaces where
children are exposed to the real-
life risks of climbing trees and
encountering strangers and of
the dangers in lost spontaneity,
and lost exercise in a world of
burgeoning obesity of cosseting
our children in carefully manicured spaces
and gated playgrounds with shock-absorb-
ing surfaces.
Over the coming months in a series of
articles Village will take a look at green
and public spaces across the country and
ask what needs to change to ensure that
they are suitable for today’s needs. We will
highlight the best and worst examples of
the planning of open space and parks from
recent years. •
ENVIRONMENT PARKS
Ciarán Cuffe is a Dublin
City Councillor and
lecture in the School of
Spatial Planning and
Transport Engineering
at the Dublin Institute of
Technology.
swimmers at Grand
Canal Dock
