QUEENS UNIVERSITY BELFAST

SCHOOL OF PLANNING, ARCHITECTURE AND CIVIL ENGINEERING

Essay
City centre vibrancy elusive or reality?
Dublin's Temple Bar - Study case

EVP1013 Contemporary Issues in Urban and Rural Planning

Prof.Dr. Michael Murray
Barbara Ferronato dos Santos
40117808
March/2014

CITY CENTRE AND URBAN VITALITY

As one of the most important pieces of the urban fabric, the city centre plays an extremely
important role regarding the city functions. It reveals itself as a location in the citys territory,
though, more than a simple location in the urban fabric of the city, a city centre might be
characterized by certain centrality as well. Centrality in this case, is presented as the capacity of
the urban space of playing the role of an attractive hub for people, and in that way, being
centrality intrinsically connected to social and economic issues in the city, it is provided with
certain movement, as different parts of the city are able to obtain or lose the capability of
attracting people in the course of time (Sposito, 2001 apud Junqueira, 2006).
However, it is very unusual to a city centre to completely lose its centrality. Even when
different areas of the city seem more vibrant and attractive for most people, in the city centre are
usually concentrated a significant amount of urban facilities which will remain well or poorly as a
significant focus of peoples attraction. Though, even ensuring certain centrality, these facilities
by itself are not able to guarantee the maintenance of urban vitality, crucial to a desirable
vibrancy in public spaces.
The urban vitality has always found place in debates regarding its influence on the quality
of public space. Jane Jacobs (2000) and Jan Gehl (1989) argue that the streets play a
fundamental role regarding the quality of urban spaces. The successful urban places might be
those where people's presence on the streets is stimulated throughout the day.
In cities, liveliness and variety attract more liveliness; deadness and
monotony repel life. (Jacobs, 2000)
To Montgomery (1998), Successful urban places combine many things, but in particular
the opportunities to meet, conduct transactions and experience diversity and variety. Variety
and diversity play, in turn, a very special role in relation to street's vitality. To Jacobs (2000), one
of the fundamental circumstances on generating diversity is the presence of different uses
sharing a common area of the city.
According to Jacobs (2000) there are basically two different types of uses which take place
in citys space. First, there are the primary uses that act as main people attractors once are
related to peoples most common activities, such as living, working and shopping. Falling into this
type of use, are the residences, offices, stores and restaurants, for example. In response to the
primary uses, emerge the secondary uses which provide a variety of options to the people

attracted by the primary uses. These secondary activities would be capable to intensify the
vitality on streets, once they could complement the primary activities, attracting people in
different times of the day. Yet, a desirable diversity in order to promote vitality can only be
achieved when the difference types of uses are associated.
The presence of mixed use is also a relevant subject regarding the vitality and quality of
urban spaces on Jan Gehls work. Though, Gehl addresses this issue making reference not simply
to uses, but rather to types of activities carried out by people in the life of the city.
Initially, Gehl (1987) defines three different categories of outdoor activities performed in
public urban spaces. They are: necessary activities, optional activities and the resultant of both,
social activities. The first includes "all activities in which those involved are to a greater or lesser
degree required to participate" (Gehl, 1987). Such as go to work, school or even shopping.
Optional activities are those related to a lower or non-existent degree of compulsoriness.
They relies mainly on people's wish and disposition to do so.
"These activities take place only when exterior conditions are optimal, when
weather and place invite them. This relationship is particularly important in
connection with physical planning because most of the recreational activities
that are especially pleasant to pursue outdoors are found precisely in this
category of activities. These activities are especially dependent on exterior
physical conditions." (Gehl, 1987)
What happens when city's public spaces are not capable to offer the required satisfactory
conditions to optional activities take place, is that only necessary activities are developed,
resulting on a unwelcome lifelessness, since there is a lack of experiences variety happening on
streets. This event might be especially noticed on city centres where the remaining centrality
sufficiently supports the necessary activities, since they are places still capable to provide certain
urban facilities. However, on the other hand, living streets become scarce due to a lack of
diversity, and consequently, the city centre turns into a place with reduced vitality.
Though, it is not only the simple mixture of uses and diversity that makes a place vibrant.
Density plays an important role on making city's spaces succeed. For axiomatic reasons, a larger
amount of people is directly related to the load of interactions on streets. Parks and squares, for
example, need, first of all, a significant amount of users to succeed, as Jacobs (2000) observes.

Hence, density becomes a fundamental element in order to provide the desired vitality and
vibrancy that human experiences are capable to lend the streets.
The feeling of safety is another important aspect to allow vitality on streets. People tend to
use the public space when it provides a sense of certain security. Jacobs (2000) calls of natural
surveillance an aspect naturally provided by the presence of a significant amount of people on the
street, or at least capable to 'observe' the activities which take place on it.
The basic requisite for such surveillance is a substantial quantity of stores
and other public places sprinkled along the sidewalks of a district; enterprises
and public places that are used by evening and night must be among them
specially. Stores, bars and restaurants, as the chief examples, work in several
different and complex ways to abet sidewalk safety. (Jacobs, 2000)
Thus, vitality and safety are aspects which are mutually reinforcing.

DUBLIN'S TEMPLE BAR - A CASE STUDY

In order to illustrate the real ability of vibrancy that a city centre is able to present, a brief
analysis on Dublin's Temple Bar becomes opportune. As one of the oldest areas of the city, the
Temple Bar quarter is located in a central area of Dublin, between O'Connell Bridge, Dame Street
and River Liffey. Its street pattern keeps most of its characteristics from the 17th and 18th
centuries, which is composed by narrow paths, where during its history had always concentrated
"craft and creativity, culture and exchange" activities (Montgomery, 1995).
Accordingly to Montgomery (2004) during the 1980's, under the risk of becoming a new
transportation centre, which would desfigure the local identity, in Temple Bar quarter was
triggered a paradoxical and at the same time crucial phenomenon for what the area would
experience in subsequent years. The low rents and short licences had attracted many artistic
activities, reinforcing the already existing 'cultural nature' of the area.
During the 1990's, a process of renewal of this central urban space has transformed its
reputation, "from an area of dereliction to a place of discovery, vitality and exchange"
(Montgomery, 1995). It emerged from a revitalisation plan, the consciously focused idea of
creation of a cultural quarter, where the establishment of different types of uses should be placed
to provide a full time use of the public space.

On Temple Bar's renewal project, it was "adopted mixed-use zoning to achieve diversity
and to stimulate the evening economy, urban culture and street life; and initiated a major area
marketing and information campaign. In 1992 there were 27 restaurants, 100 shops, half a dozen
arts buildings (some of them falling down), 16 public houses, two hotels, 200 residents, 70
cultural industry businesses and 80 other businesses in Temple Bar. By 1996, when most of
TBPL's* own development schemes had been completed, there were five hotels, 200 shops, 40
restaurants, 12 cultural centres and a resident population of 2000 people." (Montgomery, 2004)
Though this exemplar of urban revitalisation revealed the "increased involvement of
private forms of management and control within public space" (Van Melik et al, 2011) the Temple
Bar's renewal experience provided the placement of a range of activities capable to complement
each other, producing a vibrant space throughout the day.
Thus, Montgomery (1995) argues that the Temple Bar's new plan has succeeded in creating
a vibrant, living space in Dublin city, with culture as main proposition on its urban renewal
improving the capacity to produce and maintain a spectrum of activities variety capable to feed
and reinforce each other.

CONCLUSION
City centre vibrancy, as it was presented, is a real capability of urban spaces regarding the
potential competence that those present in always stimulating rich and new experiences.
Though, as defends Frank (2012), "....'vibrancy' was surely an outcome of civic prosperity, not its
cause." In other words, city's vibrancy arises from a series of other factors, such as urban vitality,
that is intrinsically linked to an urban place that in fact works.
The Temple Bar's revitalising project was capable to bring out the vibrancy potential
present in this old Dublin's quarter through the practical application of concepts related to what
makes a place succeed or not. The activities variety, such as the pre-existing demand for a good
quality place in Dublin city, have been doing the Temple Bar quarter a hub of urban attraction,
contemplating not only its role as urban centrality, but mainly as a vibrant space in the city.

*Temple Bar Properties Limited

REFERENCES
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John Montgomery . (1998). Making a city: Urbanity, vitality and urban design. Journal of Urban
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P. T. Junqueira (2006). De cidade centralidade: a formao dos centros e o processo de
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