Thirty ways to immediately improve life in Dublin

Arguing about Dublin isn’t going to get it anywhere. What can be offered though are solutions of various kinds. We already know the answers to improving street life, social cohesion, safety, and a much improved atmosphere in the city. Here are my 30 immediate suggestions for fixing Dublin. Many of these are superficial, but they will help.

1. Develop a clear initiative with landlords and commercial property owners to address retail vacancy at ground level.
2. Do the same with landlords and commercial property owners to address office vacancy.
3. Bring together owners of Georgian buildings currently used as offices in Dublin’s Georgian squares and streets to explore the feasibility of mass-conversion – or rather, reversion – to public and affordable apartments. This would transform the city, help move businesses into purpose-built office blocks, improve footfall in the city centre, and create living, thriving streets out of ones that are currently utterly underutilised.
4. Key money – paying to access a leasehold – prices so many independent operators out. Create key money caps with legislation to allow for greater opportunities for independent businesses to access retail and hospitality units.
5. Explore how retail streets can be utilised at evening and night time. Some of the main streets in Dublin, such as Henry Street, are desolate at night. Transforming such streets with alcohol-free night-time activity increases safety, benefits locals and tourists, and spreads night-time footfall.
6. Employ eyes on the street. Designating street caretakers on every main street in Dublin city centre doesn’t only keep bins and streets clean, it provides a point of contact, and fosters community.
7. Facilitate wintertime outdoor dining. New York City responded to the pandemic with its temporary outdoor dining programme, now a permanent system. There is clear criteria set out across roadway and path dining. All of this is available on diningoutnyc.info.
8. Prioritise play. Build pocket street play parks. There is no point in creating “public space” that essentially amounts to empty stretches of concrete “plazas”. Incorporate boules, table-tennis, cornhole, and ring toss games for young people and adults alike to take a breather and have fun.
9. Invest in and open the fruit and vegetable market, the Iveagh Market, and St Andrew’s Church on Suffolk Street, with operators who are interested in creating living, affordable markets, not – and I repeat, not – tourist attractions.
10. Redevelop Aldborough House as a community centre, arts space, and whatever else the immediate community actually desires. Embed people who live in the immediate area in the design concept process.
11. Make the cycle lane system cohesive. There are too many aspects to it that feel (and are) dangerous. This is pronounced on Arran Quay, where the system switches from one side of the road to another, with no way for cyclists to cross safely unless they dismount and use the pedestrian crossing.
12. Install shed-shares and “libraries of things” in urban neighbourhoods where people can meet and borrow hardware and gardening items.
13. Dublin is a literary city. Create street library booths where people can borrow and exchange books.
14. Address street clutter by consolidating the endless array of electricity boxes, and removing unwanted poles and signposts.
15. Make the design of awnings uniform and cohesive. In parts, these could meet across entire streets to facilitate daytime and night-time markets.
16. Employ a head of aesthetics in Dublin City Council. This person should be responsible for identifying and improving ugliness in public realm design.
17. Develop a new criteria for protecting buildings and businesses of cultural and social significance that have character and a legacy in the city. Next year will see the closure of more iconic Dublin spots, for a variety of reasons, and this is a way to preserve the character of the city.
18. Improve Meeting House Square in Temple Bar, often a dead space.
19. Build a Luas line to Dublin Airport. It’s not rocket science. Go to Edinburgh. They use our trams, except their ones go to the airport.
20. Remove all private traffic, and taxis and buses from College Green. It’s bad enough that the Luas overhead lines and so much street clutter impedes the view of Trinity College.
21. Convert early and mid-century office buildings into public and affordable housing.
22. Turn the GPO into a cultural centre, with a gallery, theatre space, and interactive museum of Irish revolutions.
23. Address the over-concentration of bookmakers in the city centre.
24. Ban casinos from O’Connell Street.
25. Encourage pedal taxi services.
26. Plant trees everywhere. Dublin 1 in particular and many parts of Dublin 8 need more greenery.
27. Use the compulsory purchase order process for vacant sites, which are inappropriate for housing, for public play amenities; handball alleys, basketball courts, volleyball courts, mini soccer pitches and mini playgrounds.
28. Create urban conversation pits; communal public seating where people can read, meet, play cards and chess. We need lone benches too, but communal seating is hugely lacking in the city.
29. Involve skateboarders in public space design. We don’t just need more skateparks, but aspects of street design that can be utilised by skaters. It creates eyes on the street, and fosters community among young people.
30. Refurbish and reopen existing public toilets. The dereliction and vacancy of these in a city centre with next to no public toilets is ridiculous.

Tell us: What would you do to improve your city?