Council plans to add trees and remove some parking in part of the south inner-city

Dublin City Council plans to add more trees, seating and green ground – and remove some parking – in a block of streets east of St Patrick’s Park, councillors learnt at a recent meeting of the South East Area Committee.

The Whitefriars Greening Strategy covers an area that stretches from Bride Street to Aungier Street, and from Kevin Street north towards Dublin Castle and Crown Alley.

It is part of a suite of plans the council’s parks department and public-realm teams have been developing across the city, said Daibhi Mac Domhnaill, a landscape architect and founder of Áit Urbanism and Landscape, at the meeting.

Áit Urbanism and Landscape assessed what is there at the moment, he said. Green spaces and trees and landmarks and views, as well as demographics, traffic flows and parking. And then they made this plan, Mac Domhnaill said.

Councillors at the meeting welcomed the plans, although they also quizzed officials on whether there had been – and will be – enough opportunities for local residents to shape the changes.

Greening a grey area

The idea is to have a kind of main “green hub” for the area, focused around Golden Lane and Wood Street Park, said Mac Domhnaill at the meeting.

Then, to see the  east-west streets as an opportunity to improve green linkage in the city, he said, meaning pedestrian routes that feature trees or plant life like vertical climbers.

“So to connect green linkages from Whitefriars to Patrick’s Park and east onto Aungier Street,” he said.

They wanted to make sure any features that they add have multiple purposes, he said.

“So rather than just planting a street tree, can the street tree also help in filtering water before it gets discharged to the sewer network, reducing the amount of water that goes to the sewer network?” he said. “Can it support urban biodiversity?”

They also looked at opportunities to put in little rest areas and play spaces in the city too, he said.

Interventions in the plan include street trees, hedgerows, vertical greening, sustainable drainage systems (SUDS) plantings – where the water can run into planted areas from roads and pavements – and pollinator plantings, he said.

Also, the firm is also looking at depaving certain footpaths, Mac Domhnail said. “There’s opportunities to identify areas of footpath or carriageway that aren’t required to be hard, and incorporating in seating, incidental play.”

The strategy envisages fewer parking spaces along Peter Street, Bride Street and Bishop Street, as well as Peter Row. The number would drop from 63 to 35.

Peter Street, for example, has a high level of on-street parking, Mac Domhnail said. “We looked at interrupting the on-street parking with a series of tree pits.”

Currently, the Whitefriars Strategy covers 11.58 hectares. Tree canopy coverage is low in this block, around 4 percent of the area compared with the city average of 10.71 percent, the architects found.

Under the strategy, the street trees would multiply from 13 to 52, it says. And, the amount of groundcover planting is proposed to increase from 90 to 707 sqm.

Meanwhile, on Peter Row, the idea is to use greening to get a bit more traffic calming, he said, and switch where some of the on-street parking is.

Mac Domhnaill said they would also look to work with TU Dublin to introduce some planter boxes outside its college building. “And sometimes those planter boxes could double up as a form of seating.”

More communication

At the meeting, independent Councillor Mannix Flynn said he thought there was a lot of merit to the strategy, and supported the principle.

But he queried the extent to which locals have been engaged in this design process.

“I just want to know was there a consultation with the people living in Whitefriar Street flats, in MacDonagh House, the people in John Field [Road], Golden Lane and Bride Street?” he asked.

The general population doesn’t seem to be in the loop with this strategy, Flynn said. There should be more consultation, he said later.

Fine Gael Councillor Danny Byrne also called for more consultation, and asked that school children be involved more.

Dublin City Council and Áit Urbanism and Landscape organised a public information evening in May at the Kevin Street Library.

Ahead of that, the council wrote to every household in the area, said Colm Ennis, a senior executive engineer at the council. “There was certainly an earnest effort to publicise it and to make ourselves available, but likewise there is still an opportunity to go back and talk to people again.”

Gareth Toolan, an executive superintendent in the council’s parks department, said the strategy covered an overall concept. “And every single street is going to be in future projects, so we’ll be going back to the residents on every single project we deliver.”

At the meeting, Fine Gael Councillor Paddy McCartan said he welcomed more trees and hedging. Who would the loss of car parking spaces likely affect? he asked.

Toolan, the council official, said it would mostly affect drivers from outside the area. “It wouldn’t be the residents themselves.”

After the meeting, Byrne, the Fine Gael councillor, said losing parking spaces may concern some but he welcomed it in the bigger picture.

“We’re in some way having to move away from this, and have more active travel. But certainly, it is good idea to have more green, more trees, more oxygen,” he said.

A council spokesperson said they hope to start work on some of the simple greening projects in 2024.