If the controversy over Spencer Dock illustrated anything, it was that there is still a great sensitivity in Dublin about where high, bulky buildings should be located - or, indeed, whether the city needs them at all.
Not long after An Bord Pleanala's decision last July to refuse planning permission for the overblown master plan commissioned by Treasury Holdings, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) commissioned a draft planning scheme for the north docks.
Its publication yesterday has been eagerly awaited by developers. Once it is finally adopted, anyone interested in building in the area will be able to avail of a fast-track planning process under which any proposal that complies with the scheme can go ahead without objection.
The draft scheme takes a conservative approach. It includes just one significantly high building, located at the Point Depot, which was apparently added by the DDDA's executive board against the strong advice of its more cautious director of planning, Mr Terry Durney.
On everything else, he seems to have got his way. Despite the breadth of the Liffey in this area, maximum building heights along the riverfront have been set at seven storeys, thus ensuring Dublin will "dribble away into the bay", as architect Brian Hogan put it last March.
This limit is an improvement on the low-rise, almost flat character of the recent extension to the International Financial Services Centre. But even on the Spencer Dock site, where there might have been an opportunity for tall, slender structures, the ceiling is set at 11 storeys.
What the DDDA has taken away in height, it has given back in volume. The higher plot ratio of 4:1 now being permitted would produce quite a dense, street-based scheme in place of the taller, bulky blocks set on a podium that the Irish emigre architect, Kevin Roche, proposed.
But the opportunity to relocate Roche's massive, largely blank-walled conference centre to front a square in the middle of the site has, unfortunately, been shirked. This could still be done, according to Mr Durney, but its canal-side site would then become a public park.
Treasury Holdings had no comment to make yesterday on whether it would be willing to comply with the draft planning scheme, other than saying it was being studied closely. But as time goes on, the long-delayed conference centre becomes more unbuildable, wherever it is located.
The scheme's vision is also compromised by its retention of existing two-storey houses on Mayor Street Upper and New Wapping Street - largely due to sensitivity towards community representatives on the DDDA's council.