I'd been hearing about this part of town called Smithfield quite a bit. Well, apparently there is a 'market' there and there's quite a bit of new development and a couple of galleries.
The Motor Tax Office is in the area, so I managed a look around last week. Hmmm, not sure what the fuss is about, but there's something drastically wrong in Smithfield. Lots of new housing developments, mainly 5 story apartment blocks, looking out over a large public square. Commercial units on the ground floor of all of the buildings. So why are there no commerical outfits occupying these spaces? It seems like a bit of a vicious circle...lots of vacancies in the apartments, so the shops never really opened, and because the shops didn't open then nobody wants to live there. The place was deserted. There was a Subway open, but many of the other shops looked half finished or in suspended occupancy. Even the large hotel facing onto the square has closed. An ambitious development that just ran out of steam.
Looks like another failure in urban planning in good old Dublin.
Here's another bloggers take on it.
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