**UPDATE BELOW**
I’m in Dublin for a few days working on a [murmur] project we’re starting here. Today was warm, people were out in force, sitting in cafes, and the city seemed exceptionally happy. A good day to wander around and look at advertisement-free garbage cans. Joyce probably meant to include a chapter about Dublin’s garbage cans in Ulysses, but the book is already long enough.
No dirty flap to deal with, and a nice cover to keep the rain out.
On the River Liffey, in the Docklands district that is undergoing massive renewal. This was all industrial, derelict land just 10 years ago. This is where our Dublin [murmur] will be.
There was a group of young Irish parkour enthusiasts out today. This fellow was so pleased that Dublin hasn’t made its infrastructure ugly he saluted this regal looking can. Mark down one more city that hasn’t sold its infrastructure out.
Horribly out of focus, but this recycling station popped up today. Didn’t see very many of them though, and the mouth on each bin was a bit small.
7 comments
I love all these, especially the one mounted on a railing, just for the sheer simplicity of it.
I noticed some of the slim shapes here … is there any problem with capacity? Are there enough of them to handle trash, or do people in Dublin simply don’t produce as much garbage as Torontonians seem to? One of the major problems I have with Toronto garbage cans is that they are often bulky, like the new blue plastic ones, which look nice but have a chunky shape.
It has to be said though … when I read “great Irish cans”, what occurred to me right away was not trash disposal.
Gloria> It’s true, and I will admit that I have seen some magnificent Irish cans of a non-disposal sort in the last two days, but the disposal ones are good too. This is an unexpectantly sexy city.
They cans do fill up. Tonight, a saturday night, after a balmy day of excessive human traffic, some of the cans were full. However, I was able to place the wrapper from the ubiquotous UK/Ireland late-night triangular sandwiches in a full can, no problem. So, nothing was on the ground. They must empty them a lot. Must be some weird priority/obsession with cleanliness.
I am so sick of journalists, City staff, and politicians try to convince me that an ad-funded “Coordinated Street Furniture Program” is okay because “every major city is doing it!”
The design problem is made easier for Dublin by the (apparent) lack of on-street recycling. Trying to squeeze two (or three) cans into one is part of the reason for the chunkiness here.
One solution would be to put two cans of Dublin’s size near each other, and simply mark one for recycling and one for trash.
Dublin is selling out – they are doing a deal with an ad company in exchange for a bike loan scheme 🙁
http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=5715&page=4
Shawn, last time in Dublin I found the downtown quite dirty and littered. What did you see ?
Scott> Nope, found the downtown really clean.
Some litter of course, but still clean. A problem with dogshit though. Perhaps a cultural thing, but it was at Parisian levels.