We've got the pizza, we've got the pizzazz. Now we need piazzas. Gerry Godley wants more public space for culture, not shopping
Ormond Quay, Dublin 1, 7.50am: Out the door, sleepyhead. When you live on the city's quays, your rude awakening to the full shock and awe of the capital's morning traffic is but a few strides from the hall door. A sharp intake of carbon-monoxide-infused breath and you're ready to go mano-a-mano with the articulated trucks hurtling in both directions, as you and your fellow bipeds dawdle at the pedestrian crossing, the light sequence firmly weighted in favour of your 16-wheel adversaries. Hello, Dublin!
Don't get me wrong, I love living in the heart of Dublin. Growing up in Monkstown, deep in the heart of the "borough" and its hissing summer lawns, "town" held a dangerous allure, a place far from Mammy's apron strings, where you could finally emerge from your suburban chrysalis and blossom into the very embodiment of downtown, boho cool. A quarter of a century on, that last bit remains elusive, but Dublin stubbornly remains the city where I want to be. A few improvements wouldn't hurt, though.
For this lifer, a cohesive approach to the concept of public space, and all it implies, would be a good place to start. I acknowledge the significant achievements of the past decade, such as the Liffey boardwalk (zut alors!), Temple Bar (heavenly on a Saturday morning, less so come nightfall) and Smithfield (jury still out), it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Dubliners get thin gruel compared with the inhabitants of the fine continental cities among whose ranks we've grown so fond of breathlessly including ourselves.
See, metropolitan life is a fairly straightforward transaction. In exchange for stratospheric rents, buggy-skinned shins, panhandlers at the ATM queue, traffic roulette and that special Dublin din, you get choices. Increasingly, those choices are being eroded, wiped out in our perfect storm of consumerism, as public space falls prey to our seemingly insatiable appetite for more, eh, shops. Yes, shopping, along with eating and drinking, and the working that pays for it, seems to be modern Dublin's sole reason for getting up of a morning.
Growing up, for example, music was an easily exercised choice. Not so today. Mother Redcaps Tavern, McGonagles, the TV Club, the Magnet, the Baggot Inn: all places woven into the rich folklore of this city, and all gone, along with the recently departed Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, on Foster Place. Granted, the redevelopment of the National Concert Hall, on Earlsfort Terrace, will be splendid, as will Daniel Libeskind's auditorium on Grand Canal Plaza, but by the time the ribbons are cut on that brace of grand architectural trophies - Libeskind's auditorium is due to open in 2008, the redeveloped concert hall in 2011 - it will be a miracle if a small venue is left standing in the so-called city of 1,000 bands.
Those choices, whether it's daydreaming in a little green oasis, promenading in the evening with your lady on your arm, putting the world to rights over an alfresco cuppa or walking the dog of a morning (when did you last see that in the heart of town?), are manna from heaven for us apartment dwellers, whose only garden is the window sill. Our ranks are legion, and our army is recruiting daily. The planners say Dublin could have 2.2 million inhabitants by 2015 - all grist to the economic mill - and it's fair to surmise that most of us will not be acquiring landmark properties in Dalkey. A few amusements to keep the worker drones happy with their lot might not be a bad idea.
Suffolk Street, Dublin 2, 11.15am: Never mind the drivers, the bipeds need AA Roadwatch to issue updates. Foot traffic has ground to a halt; it's shanklock on Suffolk Street, whose pavements are rivalled only by Dame Street's for Himalayan precariousness. It's a snarl-up, and the Dubliners are snarling, mostly at tourists waiting for the Aircoach. The worst culprits are Spanish students, insouciantly flirting, smoking and gossiping, static in the pedestrian equivalent of the fast lane of the M50. More than one gets the hard shoulder, but it's not their fault. If you grew up in a town with a piazza, you'd be the same.
History has certainly disadvantaged us. In their colonial pomp, the British knew a thing or two about crowd control, and big open plazas where surly mobs of disgruntled sharecroppers could gather to air their grievances were not in the best interests of a harmonious empire.
They did bequeath some exceptional properties, though, and it's quietly satisfying that these iconic houses and their lands, once so symbolic of the Crown's omnipotence, should now be reborn as communal parlours for the diverse inhabitants of 21st-century Ireland. Their custodian is the St Stephen's Green-based Office of Public Works, housekeeper for a portfolio of historic properties.
The green - an example of public space at its most effective - is today open to all because of Arthur Edward Guinness, the first Lord Ardilaun, who secured legislation that ended its 200 years of private ownership. Pint drinkers everywhere should also raise a glass to Guinness's younger brother, Edward Cecil, the first Lord Iveagh, whose former home Farmleigh, in Phoenix Park, is today a sanctuary for the senses, from music to gastronomy, literature to gardening, painting to sculpture - or, best of all, doing nothing.
Sloth isn't a sin, it's a luxury. Last weekend we attempted some modest social engineering in the estate's spectacular gardens, with the Farmleigh Affair, a free festival featuring Latin, soul and traditional musicians performing to 5,000 of your fellow citizens. It was a further expression of Farmleigh's remit to be a resource for all of us, regardless of our ethnic, social or economic status. Our society is increasingly stratified, defined by where we can afford to live, who we work for and how we get there, insulated from the outside world on our axles of evil. At its most potent, public space circumvents all of that, providing a chance to get up close and personal with all those other Dubs, the people you have unwittingly entered a social contract with to make this a better place to live.
Civic Offices Amphitheatre, Dublin 8, 2pm: Hanging out at a free jazz gig with my fellow bipeds, most of whom are flaked out on the grass, shoes off and ties loosened in a small act of liberation before they return to the daily grind. A temporary truce has been declared between the office workers and the junkies, whose terrain, in Civic Office Park, this really is. They seem happy to have us, and everyone's digging the music. The weather is mighty, and, according to the climatologists, we had better get used to it. Won't be long until oil is $200 a barrel, private-car ownership is as rare as air travel in the 1930s and the bipeds walk the earth again.
Like a chat with your neighbour as you ride the Luas, public space is a benign and civilising influence. It fosters the notion that a successful city requires all its stakeholders to share its resources, be kind to each other, tolerant and good-natured in spite of our shortcomings. Despite their reputation to the contrary, New Yorkers have always understood this, in common with the vibe of many of the world's great cities, and it's time we got used to the idea, too. Our 18th-century city will never cope with the 21st century if we don't.
Enter the art. Farmleigh's summer programme, and initiatives such as Temple Bar's Diversions programme, the Docklands festivals, Dublin City Council's Music in the Parks series and Dún Laoghaire's Festival of World Cultures, are leading the way, teaching us the new value of culture in this city of profound economic, cultural, spiritual and social flux.
They are a vital organ in the city's corpus, and without it the city cannot fully respire. Just as it requires healthcare, policing, traffic management, education, public transport, employment and other assets to attend to the physical well- being and quality of life of its citizens, so it requires a healthy cultural stratum to attend to other aspects of their welfare.
Provision of public space for culture is not adversarial, pitted in competition with these other demands in the hierarchy of needs. It is complementary to them. We cherish playtime as a creative stimulus for our children, but stressed-out Mammy and Daddy need it, too, and we'll truly have matured as a city when they get the opportunities to be just as playful as their brood. All work and no play makes Jackeen a very dull boy.
Hairy Mick's Enoteca, Millennium Walkway, Dublin 1, 10pm: Hairy Mick's is what I call Enoteca delle Langhe, anyway. Dublin's first new street in years is a pedestrian artery between Temple Bar, the Millennium Bridge and Abbey Street. I've yet to hear its official name pass a Dubliner's lips. Most people call it the Latin Quarter, but every creed seems present here, the bipeds now quaffing the fine northern Italian wines of Mick Wallace - who developed the quarter and now owns a delicatessen in it as well as the enoteca - and snaffling antipasti as if they were born to it. I do my daily audit of John Byrne's witty Last Supper fresco that dominates this public space, its 12 apostles rank-and-file Dubliners. Six hundred and twenty-one vandalism-free days and counting. Go on Dublin.
Gerry Godley is director of the Improvised Music Company