Plans to turn a large brownfield site in D8 into an integrated urban community are in hand. Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, reports

Victor Griffin, former Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, often complained that there was nowhere in the Liberties where kids could kick a ball safely. The only park available, St Patrick's Park right beside the cathedral, is certainly not geared for five-a-side football.

A hugely-ambitious redevelopment plan for the John Player cigarette factory and nearby Bailey Gibson packaging plant off South Circular Road - both now redundant - aims to put that right by providing two all-weather grass pitches covering six acres for junior soccer teams. The existing pitches, on an L-shaped site owned by Dublin City Council, are rudimentary and accessible only from St Teresa's Gardens, which flanks them.

The council agreed that they could be included in the planning application made last month for the development, in return for their upgrading. The pitches would be complemented by well-planted and hard-landscaped areas for all the community to enjoy, in what Gerry Cahill Architects (GCA) describe as a project that will "remake this part of Dublin in a 21st century context" by creating "an integrated and qualitative urban environment".

Players Square, as it's called, has been generated by the National Association of Building Co-operatives, which bought the site and proposes to develop it in partnership with BeeBee Developments, a British firm with wide experience of urban renewal, and Irish contractors P J Walls.

Provision has been made for up to 20 per cent of the 875 residential units to meet the purposes of Part V of the 2000 Planning Act for social and affordable housing.There would also be commercial units as well as neighbourhood shops, cafés, crèches, medical and GP facilities.

Gerry Cahill knows the south inner city well. To him, it has always been "a vibrant community characterised by an essentially Dublin mix of people, housing, jobs, markets, pubs and sport". But in terms of urban renewal, there is a sense of "lost opportunity to create more than just urban dentistry".

Since the 1980s, the area has undergone great social change as traditional industries closed down or moved out. Rising house prices have also hit first-time buyers badly, while secure rented accommodation is scarce, sports facilities poor and there's also a lack of meaningful civic space.

Too often, there is a sense of "barrenness" about many earlier infill developments. "Not enough happens on the ground, there is a lack of life's colours, variety and vibrancy at street level," Gerry Cahill says. What's needed now are schemes which set out, as Players Square does, to "put some heart into place".

"Players Square can provide the missing piece of the urban jigsaw to address these societal imbalances - a development that embraces change, in place, people and fortunes," he says. "The real challenge is to turn this classic brownfield site into a new and rejuvenated urban community."

The last thing it needed was to become a "single-use commercial precinct which dies at five o'clock in the evening, is empty at weekends and echoes to the footfall of security guards and barking dogs", or a privately-policed "gated community" that ignores the urban grain.

GCA's "urban wish list" for Players Square is that it would be a place where single people, one or two-parent families, retired, elderly and disabled people can find bright, spacious, well-designed homes to rent or buy, close to amenities and services, as well as a location for small businesses.

Urban design drawings produced for the planning application show the impermeability of the existing industrial uses and the "non-option of an introverted scheme".New routes through the site will provide "opportunities for pause, meeting and activity" not only within the scheme but at its edges.

To make the community more sustainable, there is a large proportion of two-bedroom apartments with a substantial quantity of three-bedroom units.But even the one-bedroom apartments exceed recommended minimum floor areas to provide "sustainable, adaptable and lifetime homes".

The John Player factory, which dates from the 1920s, was a revolutionary modern structure in its day inserted into a 19th century neighbourhood of two-storey houses. But its light, airy and progressive working environment now lies empty, "inhabited by security men and memories". And vandals.

It is envisaged that the factory will become a "galleria" akin to the market buildings of France, Italy and Spain or the Iveagh Markets in Francis Street and the English Market in Cork.Its lower floors would be converted to retail and other job-creating uses, with loft apartments overhead, some with roof gardens. Hard and soft landscaping is continued behind the renovated 1920s structure into the main "civic space" provided by the scheme. And it is so generous in extent that it allows for a higher scale of buildings around the edges offering future residents light, space and "stunning views over the city".

Although it is scaled to respond, at least to some extent, to the low-rise character of the area - the GPs' building is single-storey, for example - its centrepiece is a 27-storey residential tower which is conceived as a landmark to "signal the presence of a new community heart for Dolphin's Barn".

Throughout Europe, GCA says high buildings can be accommodated provided thought is given to the spaces between and beyond them. "Nowhere else in the south inner city is such a gesture possible. Nowhere else can buildings of such scale be created which have such a minimal impact."

Though Dolphin's Barn was overlooked by DEGW in its high-rise buildings study for Dublin, Gerry Cahill maintains that it can take a tower because the location overlooking the football pitches meant that it wouldn't be casting any other building in shadow. "It puts itself in shadow rather than anything else."

The scheme is immensely larger than any other projects completed by GCA in its own right or in partnership with Derek Tynan and McGarry Ní Eanaigh in Urban Projects, chiefly known for the award-winning Clarion Quay apartments in Docklands. Much of GCA's work is in social housing.

Throughout the Players Square scheme, practically all of the apartments are dual aspect. Where the remainder are single aspect, they face either east or west, in the renovated Player building. Of the total 875 dwellings in the scheme only four are solely north-west facing; that's real ingenuity.

The landscape design also follows international best practice, gaining from the input of urban design consultants, Gehl Architects of Copenhagen. In fact, the variety of spaces proposed result from an urban space design workshop between Lars Gemzoe of Gehl and the GCA design team.

The main civic space is seen as flexible in its use, to accommodate ice-skating, outdoor markets and concerts. As in Clarion Quay, the apartment blocks around its edges would be set on a two-storey podium, but they would rise higher, to 11 storeys. All car-parking is to be put underground. No doubt many will be startled by the sheer scale of what is being proposed. But it surely makes more sense to develop brownfield sites like this one so close to the heart of Dublin as an alternative to suburbanising the city's rural hinterland.