Flats and run down buildings

STaN

Ive recently noticed how many huge, high density flat complexes there are in the north city. God helps if any1 from boards lives there. Personally to me they represent an Ireland now gone, and should be demolished and replaced with something more appealing to the eye.

I was driving down towards parnell street there yesterday night, and there are flats on the right hand side of the road as you come down. OMG the graffiti. It was all over the bottom floor, even the doors and windows of the ground floor flats. God help anyone living on the stories above.

I really think something similiar to what happened to ballymun should start happened to old, derilict, rundown buildings alike!

PiE

I agree they're an eyesore and breeding ground for scum, but where could the people be put if they were demolished? If houses were built in their place, there'd only be enough room for 1/3 of the people living in the flats. And we know how difficult it is to get housing in Dublin now anyway.

pork99

I know a Russian guy who lives here who cannot believe the number of derelict buildings in Dublin. In Moscow if you leave buildings in that condition the city government starts fining the owner of such properties and goes on imposing higher and higher fines the longer its left derelict.

And we know how difficult it is to get housing in Dublin now anyway.

I know for a fact that local authorities use residential zoning to keep up property prices. Who is profiting? Their mates the property developers! When will we wise up and run these f****ers out of Dodge?

Maybe best way would be to get overseas developers in to undercut them. But I suppose they would have to play the game i.e. backhander tennis like everyone else.

seamus

Originally posted by pork99
I know a Russian guy who lives here who cannot believe the number of derelict buildings in Dublin. In Moscow if you leave buildings in that condition the city government starts fining the owner of such properties and goes on imposing higher and higher fines the longer its left derelict.

Most of these would be very old complexes, built by the Government, so it's up to them to sort it out. Unfortunately, they're made very hard to sell off because of the area they're in. It's a bit of vicious circle really. The area gets bad and property prices go down and the area loses investment and gets worse....... The government would need to give developers subsidies or grants to entice them to start building there, even though they're mostly swimming in cash anyway.

Any shops/pubs etc seen derelict are eventually knocked down, but there's a lot of red tape (cries of history/protect our old, read crap, buildings) to cut through. On top of that, ownership of such old shops etc may be hard to trace due to death/abandonment.

That said, it is a disgrace, and any buildings left in such a state should be taken by government without paying the owner, etc (although that probably violates our constitution :rolleyes: ).

hedgetrimmer

Laid out in the national development plan, there is money set aside for Urban renewal. It's a slow process, and I am not naive as to assume it will all be roses cos our government is great. Far too cynical for that - and I work for them.

I think the next targets are Irishtown and the Docks, but some of the new flats which are council flats are a vast improvement, and it will be changing over the next five years or so. It has to, otherwise people, like that Russian chap, will stop visiting Dublin cos it looks like a hole. The economy couldn't take that impact - you'd be surprised how dependant we have become on Tourism

STaN

the docks will be great when their done up, although there is still very little work going on in the north inner city. They have knocked down some old flats at blackhall place and built new ones, and the area was givin a life as a result. They also put down marble paving or something that looks like it and redid the roads in the area. It has really lifted the place up and a now more private buildings are getting done up

Sandrius

Id really like to see alot of the shopping areas like talbot street given a new lease of life. Also I'd really like to see alot of the older run down building refurbished and tured into somethign useful. this would also probably attract alot more tourists and give Dublin a name for being a more a modern city

PiE

Apparently the whole Markets Area on the Northside is being re-built. They're taking out all the trucking/haulage crap like the old Fyffes truck depot and putting an open square with coffee shops and the like in it's place. The plan is to have it as a kind've extension from Henry St. I think.

Just gotta hang onto my house for a few more years and the value should skyrocket

Arken Thell

I actually work neat there andi t would be really cool to see happen and also have somewhre nicer thatn mcdonalds to have lunch too

LFCFan

Dublin is a disgrace. It's supposed to one of the Premier Cities in Europe and it's a dump. It's a sad situation when the people who are from the area are the ones littering and making it an undesirable place to live and visit. Anti-Social behaviour needs to be stamped out big time. Zero Tollerance works and should be used. If ever there was a country that needed Zero Tollerance it's Ireland.

Big Chief

places like dominick Street should just be bulldozed imo...

www.ratemypoo.com is a prettier site than the place (and others that look almost identical around it)

PiE

Originally posted by LFCFan
Dublin is a disgrace. It's supposed to one of the Premier Cities in Europe and it's a dump. It's a sad situation when the people who are from the area are the ones littering and making it an undesirable place to live and visit. Anti-Social behaviour needs to be stamped out big time. Zero Tollerance works and should be used. If ever there was a country that needed Zero Tollerance it's Ireland.

Aye, tis true. Something needs to be done, but nothing will be. Thats why it's in the state it is.

Specky

In the UK in the early 90s there were a lot of developments very similar to Balymun with similar problems. HUGE amounts of government money went into re-developing them...not knocking them down, just making them nicer, safer places to live.

It didn't work everywhere but in a lot of places it really did. There are some buildings I've seen that have become like little vertical villages. Good community spirit, good local supports and people like living in them.

What's different about Balymun?

Well firstly UNBELIEVABLY bad management by the local authority. Right from the start there was no estate management in place and there continues to be none today. Decanting people out of flats and into houses won't solve all the problems unless the people running the estates start managing them properly. (Ask some of the people living in Northern England new town housing estates about this...it just doesn't work unless you manage them properly).

Another really big issue in Balymun, Fatima Mansions and pretty much every other local authority run apartment complex in Ireland is that all the doors are open. How can you police the stair wells and corridors of these places???? It's impossible.

And how, as a tenant, are you supposed to feel safe living at the top of a tower block when you have no idea who or what you could be confronted with when you open your door?

Lock the doors. Access control systems are designed for this purpose, again look at what has been done in the UK with concierge based systems (yes, I'm still talking about local authority flats here) with receptionists in the ground floor, secure parking compounds around the building and cctv covering the public spaces.

You think it sounds a bit "big brother" for your liking? Well think about it when your granny gets mugged outside her own flat and then wonder if its a bad thing or not.

As for the whole question of apartments and high density living, go to the continent. Have a look around France, Belgium, Italy. These people have been living in high density inner city apartments for the best part of the last century and they don't mind one bit.

It works, you just have to manage the gobs****s.

And on graffiti, go to Milan, capital of style and walk around the streets. There is graffiti from the floor up on every single structure big enough to spray paint onto, it isn't art, it's all tagging.

The difference is there is almost no other form of destructive vandalism and they do not graffiti onto apartment entrances. In this country as in the uk, there is an element of the population who see anything which isn't broken as a challenge and immediately set about breaking it. I don't know how you fix this problem but it has to be something about strong policing, community based correction schemes, education and government sponsored "cop yourself on" campaign.

...imho....

Dazzer

A few years ago they actually selected a block of flats in Ballymun and refurbished them, they put in a great security system (which the kids and anyone else who wanted to figured away around) they cleaned the graffiti, cleaned away the dirt and grime and put in new playgrounds and community centre's. Did it help? nope the kids and scumbags just destroyed it all over again. With in the space of two years it was back to the way it used to be.

Now I'm from Sillogue Gardens in Ballymun and we do have a resident commity who are always asking the council for new pavements, better drainage system (the area always gets flooded even with the slighest bit of rain) new street lights, better roads but for nigh on 8 years now we are still in the same situation. It's annoying and a disgrace to say the least.

Most if not all the flats in Ballymun are due to be either demolished or taken apart bit by bit and sold on. Three new hotels will go up, 1 in the centre of Ballymun, one approaching Santry Lane and one at the end of Santry Lane. The second largest shopping complex in Europe will be built on the site of the existing shopping centre.

Several tech centres are planned for the industrial estate near the motorway. Dozens of new commercial office space and shop space will be built.

For a full plan visit www.ballymun.ie

This won't work however unless the govermant educates the people on how to look after thier town and it rid's Ballymun of the scum that stains it. You will find that 80 to 90% of people in Ballymun are decent people who want change in the town and have faught to get this far and will fight to get further

LFCFan

It has been said many times before and I'll say it again. You have to have a license to drive a car, own a TV, have a dog, use a fishing rod etc etc yet you can bring a child into the world as often as you want and all the government does is throw more money at you. Until we get away from being a Welfare state there will be no change in our society. Scum breeds scum for the most part and any kids that have a brain and want something better for themselves get dragged down by the rest of the scum who think nicking cars and causing damage is the way to live. Ireland is a horrible country when you stand back and actually 'SEE' what it's really like. It's full of racists, anti social assholes, corrupt government officials, rip off merchants and it's only getting worse.

Specky

I was very closely involved with the redevelopment of some of the worst high rise council estates in the uk, all around Manchester, Salford, Glasgow, Newcastle, London and elsewhere. Many of them definitely rivalled Ballymun, and were considerably larger, but often had a lot less going for them because they were packed in tight in the inner city.

I haven't seen anything going on in Ballymun that I didn't see in a similar development in England (ok...I never saw a horse in a lift over there but....;) )

There are reasons why I believe the single block refurb you mentioned didn't work, I don't want to skim over the issue but I would have to say a lot of the reasons are technical. I can go into them in a lot more detail if you'd like but they come down to:

1. lack of established proper boundaries and "defensible space" (sometimes this requires fencing and secure parking, something that would be very easy to achieve in Ballymun as there is so much good quality space between blocks)
2. incorrectly selected and installed security systems (you may think the one used was a good one, but that's a relative thing. What was required would be a fully isolated door entry system, with concierge control, a proximity access control system and cctv coverage around the block). The science of vandal resistance is well developed elsewhere.
3. lack of an on site local authority representative (in particularly difficult locations a 24 hour concierge is the only answer)
4. insufficient community involvement in the design
5. lack of sufficient powers (or perhaps lack of will) from local authority to manage the estate properly (i.e. evict problem tenants)

...this is really only scratching the surface, but it's a lot to do with management and local authorities in Ireland are ineffective at best and incompetant at worst. The uk has both a citizen's and a tenant's charter that can result in council tenants withholding their rent unless the local authority meets its obligation to provide a good quality of service...amazing how things like this focus the minds of the council when they realise they aren't going to receive any money if they don't sought out a problem.

Ok, there was a lot of bad press concerning the community tax/council tax in the uk which is where the local authorities collect the money they need locally to provide local services, but I like the concept a lot more than just getting money extracted from my earnings and me not knowing where that money is going even though I'm still driving on the same pot holes and looking at the same graffiti.

UK local authorities also have a wealth of experience with high rise developments, the problems they have and the possible solutions. This expertise does not exist in Ireland and for some strange reason Irish planners and architects are not interested in learning from others. Whilst Ballymun was being built the lessons about high rise developments were already being learned in the uk.

It's all very well to point at some of the continental countries and model yourself on them but it's the culture that makes people the way they are and the culture in Ireland is a lot closer to that in the UK than any other country, so if lessons are going to be learned I'm afraid they have to be learned from the uk, like it or not.

When we were refurbishing blocks over there the most common thing we would hear, every single day, time and time again from tenants were things like "Don't know why you're bothering, the kids will wreck that in five minutes". It was like nobody actually wanted to be helped out of the crappy situation they were in, they'd rather see it fail so they could use the old "told you so" line and go on complaining.

Very strange to hear the same people after the systems were in and how much they relied on them.

I like many of the things that are happening with Ballymun and elsewhere but things don't work just because they're new. If the area isn't managed then it won't change. Another spin off issue is that they're trying to attract more business into the area, this can actually contribute to many of the problems if it isn't managed properly. The businesses simply become targets for crime, they move out, the empty units become targets for vandalism, this makes everyone else move out. There is a spiral of decay that can be very difficult to stop once it starts, so I hope that the Ballymun Redevelopment crowd aren't just in it to make a fast buck like Temple Bar Properties and all the other property developers around at the moment.

Ranting about this stuff is what I do for a living so I will shut up now and go rant at someone who might pay me some money.

:rolleyes:

ballooba

Show Me The MOney $!$!$!

Dazzer

Originally posted by LFCFan
It has been said many times before and I'll say it again. You have to have a license to drive a car, own a TV, have a dog, use a fishing rod etc etc yet you can bring a child into the world as often as you want and all the government does is throw more money at you. Until we get away from being a Welfare state there will be no change in our society. Scum breeds scum for the most part and any kids that have a brain and want something better for themselves get dragged down by the rest of the scum who think nicking cars and causing damage is the way to live. Ireland is a horrible country when you stand back and actually 'SEE' what it's really like. It's full of racists, anti social assholes, corrupt government officials, rip off merchants and it's only getting worse.

Sorry but not everyone get's dragged down with the rest of the scum. In my 21 odd years in Ballymun I had 3 sets of friends, I stopped hanging around with them when they turned to drugs, drink and robbery. I made the choice.

It's full of racists, anti social assholes, corrupt government officials, rip off merchants and it's only getting worse

Sorry but your the pot calling the kettle black.


Specky

You're not rambling, it's interesting to see someone else's point of view I agree local managment needs to improve ten fold, but the residents are at the moment doing as much as they can, I feel so anyway.

When we were refurbishing blocks over there the most common thing we would hear, every single day, time and time again from tenants were things like "Don't know why you're bothering, the kids will wreck that in five minutes". It was like nobody actually wanted to be helped out of the crappy situation they were in, they'd rather see it fail so they could use the old "told you so" line and go on complaining.

I actually had this attitude when they started, but then I relised Ballymun has a lot going for it now and in the near future, it's near town, the airport, the motorway and a few more that I won't go into

/Dazzer better get back to work

LFCFan

Originally posted by Dazzer
Sorry but not everyone get's dragged down with the rest of the scum. In my 21 odd years in Ballymun I had 3 sets of friends, I stopped hanging around with them when they turned to drugs, drink and robbery. I made the choice.

I didn't say everyone got dragged down but there's more chance of it happening in these places then anywhere else. Your post just proves that places like where you live are full of scum. 3 sets of friends turned to crime? I've lived for 25 years in this country and I have yet to know anyone who's turned to crime.

Sorry but your the pot calling the kettle black.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you saying I'm racist? Anti-Social? A corrupt Government Official? A Rip Off Merchant? What? Explain what you are implying.

pork99

...amazing how things like this focus the minds of the council when they realise they aren't going to receive any money if they don't sought out a problem.

oh nice one!

Sorry but your the pot calling the kettle black.

what?

I've lived in Dublin since birth and broadly agree with LFCFan

I think the problem is not social welfare itself but how its applied. It needs to be applied to encourage people to get of their arse and get involved in training & education. (You cant spend enough money on education)

Flukey

Big Chief wrote: »

places like dominick Street should just be bulldozed imo...

Well, it has taken a long time, but you've finally got your wish.

These are recent and work is ongoing.

It is all part of a major plan to do up the street. An overview is here:

Dominick Street redevelopment plans

The Hill Billy

A 9yo thread? You should know better.

Closed.

tHB