Michael Moynihan: Things we could achieve month by month over the first half of the year
Face Of Being Marina Threat Shut An Market Annual Does Why Cork's Down?
Happy 2024 to all. Seems like a year since I last inflicted my thoughts on everyone, and that’s the last lame new-year joke I’ll inflict on everyone.
To kick off 2024 properly I note a Brent Toderian post on social media which asked a simple question.
Did your city get better or worse as a “city for people” in 2023?
This is a great question to ask — Toderian is a city planner and urbanist, a past Vancouver chief planner, by the way — and the answer options were varied. My city got a) better b) worse c) stayed the same, or d) it’s complicated. And yes, there were one or two pointed observations about Cork that were difficult to argue with.
I just wanted to turn that question around slightly. Is it possible to see ways to make Cork a better city for people in 2024? Are there easy wins we could achieve month by month, even for the first half of the year alone?
This is an obvious place to start, not least because it’s been going on for so long (this problem goes back to the middle of 2022).
The quay wall has already been declared derelict, as reported here a full year ago, with the city council being told that securing repairs to the wall was a “complicated process”.
Luckily there’s a workable precedent available to local officials here.
Just take the discussions with the local Freemason’s lodge which preceded that organisation receiving part of Bishop Lucey Park for €1 as a template.
Surely that “series of informal talks between City Hall and the Freemasons” could be replicated here to progress repairing the wall?
Can we put this market on a more secure footing, please?
Every year we seem to have sabre-rattling about its legal status, with huffing and puffing before those swords return to their scabbards once more.
Here we have a large space which is accessible to families and children, where they can mingle without fear of a drunk throwing up on them, where schools can bring entire classes, where a part of the city dead for years is now vital, lively and busy.
Shouldn’t we examine ways to see if this phenomenon can be replicated in other parts of the city rather than finding an annual threat to shut the Marina Market down?
This venture should be supported wholeheartedly and an end brought to the annual threat of closure.
You’re probably expecting some feedback on BusConnects here, and though I have some views on that process, it’s not why I mention bus infrastructure here.
(But just on BusConnects . . is everyone happy to see busybodies trawl through the BusConnects submissions in order to pull out chunks of those submissions to post on social media? They are? No queasiness about those submissions being circulated far and wide? Fair enough then.)
I mention the bus station here specifically because in the US several cities have seen bus stations move from traditional city centre settings to remoter, less convenient locations — or bus stations have simply closed. The Greyhound bus company has shut or is shutting its bus stations in Chicago and Philadelphia, while Cleveland’s bus station is to be moved 11 miles away from the city centre.
There are other factors at play here related to ownership of those stations, but given the way discredited US theories of urban development eventually trickle over here, I place this warning on the record. The bus station in Cork needs to remain in the centre of the city.
The only real green space in the heart of the city is shut down for redevelopment at the moment. It’s expected, per Eoin English’s reports, to be finished in 2025, over a year after it was closed for works.
By springtime this year, when we begin to yearn for grass under foot and the open air, will we know if this work will be on schedule?
There’s a lot involved. According to Eoin’s report, the new-look park will include “improved access to the historic city wall, a new events pavilion and plaza, improved access and seating and a new tower to mark the eastern entrance”.
Hopefully, we’ll have good news this spring — that the new tower plus the Freemason’s Hall extension leave some room for what we usually expect in a public park. Some trees and plants. Easy win.
Or should we just move the park down the road to the event centre? I ask because, while I don’t like to be negative, is there a case for calling a halt to the event centre altogether?
As reported here recently, Cork City Council provided Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien with a final detailed submission before Christmas which included a request for additional State support.
Asked if he felt the project still represented value for money, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said, “I think there is still a strong case, yes, to be made for the Event Centre,”, which isn’t quite the powerful endorsement one might think at first glance.
This would be a tricky relocation, admittedly, but at least we’d have . At the moment our event centre resembles nothing so much as an art prank Banksy would be proud of.
There hasn’t been a ceremony to switch on the Christmas lights in Cork since 2019 “for reasons of public safety and challenges related to crowd management”.
City council officials have pointed out that “it is notable that Galway City, Limerick City, and Dublin City have not announced plans to have a public ‘switch-on’ event".
So, if Galway, Limerick and Dublin decide not to do something, then Cork simply follows suit? That’s an interesting way to assert our independence.
As for public safety and crowd management, the above is bad news for every event planned for Cork in 2024 which will be attended by more than a dozen people, surely. How can any of those be run safely?
On a more positive note, take the new year’s eve event organised... Checks notes. Sorry, nothing. Certainly nothing compared to, say, Dublin’s New Year Festival.
So: we follow Dublin’s example on large public events. When it suits.
There are plenty of other challenges facing us, not all of them as narrowly focused as the matters mentioned above.
From the general lack of enforcement of existing legislation and regulations in many areas of Irish life to the casual attitude to the general obligations of citizens in modern society, we have a lot to deal with.
Tackling the specific issues above would be a step forward both in terms of the resolution of individual problems and maybe in improving morale overall within the city.
Gloom and disappointment are contagious, but adopting a can-do attitude is a good way to combat that. It’s certainly better than a can’t-do attitude.