IT’S time to get working on your dioramas and start planning for the future. Limerick City and County Council and University of Limerick (UL) want you to get out the bright coloured pencils and building blocks and think about how the perfect Limerick should look.
If you build it, they will come, as a wise sage once said. But in Limerick’s case, it’s probably more ‘you’ve got to build ’em to believe ’em’.
The Council and UL are getting the band back together to collaborate on a new concept album that aims to examine the future of the city. Perhaps if they spent less time dreaming up hare-brained schemes and more implementing them, there would be no need for the auld Lego bricks at all.
The crayons are out and the smart boys and gals are knocking their heads together to drag us screaming and shouting into the future.
Buckle up, because if experience has shown us anything, this could get interesting.
Exhibit A.
There was that one time that UL did not have a report on the structural integrity of the controversial former Dunnes Stores site before sealing an €8million deal. One month later, a report revealed that the building, as it stands, would not support UL’s planned developments.
Exhibit B.
Need I say more than ‘O’Connell Street Revitalisation project’?
I mean, what could go wrong, right?
Failure, it is said, is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. Fingers crossed, I guess.
Ringmaster and beach pioneer John Moran believes that “Limerick’s future can be great, should be great and, indeed, will be great if we open our minds to what is now possible and take this chance to allow all our voices to be heard”.
The Mayor is all behind the UL School of Architecture and Product Design’s ‘One City Revisited’, which will examine the future of Limerick City in the context of the Development Plan, the City and Climate Action Plan, and the Limerick Mayoral Programme.
As part of all this, two public events will take place with a city model forming a key interactive element to proceedings at the UL city campus’ CityLab. The first is this Thursday (August 21), with the second the following Thursday (August 28).
If you are partial to a bit of ‘make and do’, this could be well up your pedestrianised street.
An element of Fisher Price, according to Mayor Moran, will help people visualise what change looks like.
Does it look like our city centre bus lanes or rat-infested plant beds, your lordship?
What it is, Moran maintains, is the perfect way for the people of Limerick to imagine, shape, and take ownership of the future direction of travel of our city.
Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?
Of course, Mayor Moran may be the finest master of ceremonies this side of the Galtee Mountains, but he’s going to have some job taming the savage Fine Gael tigers in the Council chamber when talks turn to the future of the city.
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
