Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article

Cork Independent, 20 December 2012

“Technical Memories (Part 38) –The Genius of Place”

As noted last week, in March 1922, the Cork Housing and Town Planning Association was formed. In the Dictionary of Irish Biography D.J. Coakley (D.J. or Daniel John), Principal of the Cork School of Commerce became honorary secretary of the association. Under the direction of Professor Patrick Abercrombie, D.J. organised a survey of Cork city, a report on which was published as Cork: A Civic Survey in 1926. This work was built on the back of a booklet for the Cork Incorporated Chamber of Commerce & Shipping under the title Cork, Its Trade and Commerce (1919), which is said to have achieved an international circulation. As an aside D.J. was one of the five sons of John Coakley, a farmer in Donoughmore, Co. Cork. D.J. lived at 5 Newenham Terrace, Cork.

Different committees were formed to deal with different sections of Cork’s civic survey. The groundwork was headed up by a sub-committee from the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute and well known Cork Architects. All gave valuable assistance. Diagrams were prepared by Alec G. Jenson. Professor Patrick Abercrombie and Sydney Kelly, both working in Liverpool were invited and agreed to act as special advisors to the Survey. The UK National Biography for Professor Patrick Abercrombie reveals an architect whose recurrent pre-occupation was with the human side of his profession- his concept of a town as primarily the setting for human life, rather than a mere pattern of roads and land uses.  In general, his work through his career strongly emphasised the need to preserve and underpin the traditional character of each locality. Abercrombie was also influenced personally as an architect by the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and particularly by Baron Georges-Eugéne Haussmann (1809-1891) whose city planning of Paris he admired. Hence Abercrombie had an interest in creating wide boulevards and pubic squares, where the emphasis was on the public.

Abercrombie’s interests are indirectly highlighted in the introduction of the Cork Civic Survey, published in 1926. It set out it aims clearly: “One of the results of a Civic Survey should be that the genius of the place emerges, and the artificial control to which it submits is thus not an arbitrary or foreignly conceived yoke, but rather a sympathetic course of direction. To adopt another simile, the Survey is the diagnosis of the symptoms for which the Town Plan is the prescriptive remedy.”

The introduction reflects that there is a multitude of smaller forces at work in shaping the city of Cork; “it has not been progressive in the recent past; if rightly directed, should put a slow and steady growth in future years”. The survey denotes that Cork exists to fulfil a number of diverse purposes; “The creation of the Irish Free State with its impulse towards devolution, should tend to make it more markedly a provincial capital with possibilities of specialised growth”. Cork was, at the same time, a sea port, a distributing centre, market town, manufacturing city, residential area and educational centre. The Survey denotes that each of these aspects has made “characteristic impression, but without orderliness”.

On matter of trade, the Civic Survey outlines a decline in trade: “Changes in the nature of trade have for years been sapping the city’s nineteenth century prosperity, while political upheavals had a bad effect upon the city’s finances. In order to progress a greater civic self-consciousness it  is essential that a knowledge be attained of the physical facts of the city, of its blemishes and how to remedy them-in short, a proper Town Planning Scheme is needed. During the past decade many local problems have arisen.”

The introduction praises the work that went into attaining and building the Ford Factory in 1917 and how it had set the “seal of industrialism” on what had been the city’s race course known as “The Park”. The survey claims that the burning of Cork four or five years previously opened up a series or problems which the city was not equipped to meet. Street improvements might have been made if the Council had had the necessary plans and powers. The introduction outlines that the postponement of the re-building of the City Hall was fortunate as proper consideration needed to be made in relation to its position in the city. and its relation to the future development of the whole City.

The survey reveals the question of a new cattle market, which opened up a big problem of traffic and communications by rail, road, and water; “A site chosen merely by methods of opportunism, is likely to become a nuisance rather than a gain to the City”. The City’s housing problem is also set out; “Slums are the breeding ground of disease, political as well as physical. They are a source of danger and of expense to any community. To build even much better houses on the sites that are, or may become unsuitable is merely to provide a heritage of slums for the next generation. Re-housing, to be affective, must be planned on a comprehensive scale. The right sites must be found, and the right services and communications.

To be continued in the new year…Happy Christmas to all readers of this column and thanks for the support during the year, Kieran Mc

Caption:

672a. Professor Patrick Abercrombie, c.1944 (source: National Biography, UK)