Background to this report
This Cork City Revitalisation Action Plan charts a course for land use and economic development in the Cork City Centre to provide a coherent vision for growth and development up to 2025.
Background and Context
In 2013, Cork City Council published its Cork City Centre Strategy, which set out a number of recommendations for the revitalisation and regeneration of the city centre area as Cork, and Ireland, emerged from a period of recession. The intervening period of recovery has led to renewed economic and spatial development across Ireland, particularly in its key urban centres. Cork City has continued to grow both spatially and economically, with the allocation of significant funding for the renewal of the Grand Parade Quarter and the development of the Cork Docklands ensuring that Cork will continue to grow throughout the next decade. Though there has been significant progress in the city centre, the emergence of the pandemic in 2020 and its impacts have created new challenges for the city centre, as well as new opportunities. Work-from-home and blended working patterns have improved workers’ flexibility, while also leading to short-term uncertainty around the use of office space post Covid-19. Long-standing digitisation trends in the retail sector create challenges for traditional city centres, while also unlocking new opportunities for enterprises that might occupy these spaces. On a wider level, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of access to services and amenities for citizens’ physical, mental and social health, and the concept of the ‘15- Minute City’ (i.e. a city in which daily services and facilities are accessible within 15- minutes travel of a persons home) will continue to influence how we plan and engage with our cities. Cork city can be a leader in the development of this concept in Ireland.
Since the launch of the City Centre Strategy, Cork City Council have been proactive in addressing many challenges, embracing opportunities, providing supports for businesses, and creating new green and blue infrastructure. This Plan builds on this progress, setting out an updated list of actions to support enterprise, combat dereliction, revive the experience of the city, and improve services that serves the needs of Cork City’s dynamic and diverse population. To achieve an ambitious and coherent vision for Cork City, the preparation of this Action Plan examined a number of key thematic areas: • Retail - creating a sustainable retail core that offers high quality employment opportunities • Residential - leveraging investment to create a city for people to live and work in • Commercial Life - identify opportunities to align current and future commercial development • Attractions and Activities - promoting culture and heritage to defines Cork’s offering • Use of Existing Building Stock - opportunities for re-use and redevelopment
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