1 A little Venice
Designate half of the nearly empty marina in the Grand Canal Docks for houseboats, and provide a mooring nearby for a boat hotel, as in Amsterdam.
2 Pocket parks
Some of the numerous sites under the control of Nama could be turned into pocket parks, pending their eventual redevelopment. A proposal for a “vertical park” in the hulk of Anglo Irish Bank’s putative headquarters on North Wall Quay caught the public imagination.
3 A great urban piazza
The one big project must
be the remaking of College Green as a great urban piazza, with the city’s Central Library relocated to the former Irish Houses of Parliament, now occupied by Bank of Ireland. Fittingly, it was built at a time when Dublin got a sense of itself.
4 Wider footpaths
The council could start by widening the footpaths on O’Connell Bridge to match the generous footpaths on the street itself.
5 Clean up Christchurch
The council should draw up a design brief for Christchurch Place – southern end of the “Civic Spine” – with new buildings to replace the mess on its east side and on the site of the padlocked pocket park.