Chapter 6 I Green and Blue Infrastructure, Open Space and Biodiversity
be multi-functional in order to ensure that they are focal points for a broad spectrum of people and neighbourhoods as a whole, as well as ensuring excellent city landscapes.
Public Open Space Protection
6.43 Cork City Council aims is to ensure that public open space is available to meet the needs and demands of the city. This will involve a combination of protecting, enhancing and providing new spaces. With an intensifying city it will also require a creative approach to meeting recreational and amenity needs, particularly in the historic areas of the city with a tighter urban grain. 6.44 The quality of public open spaces is paramount, in terms of design, accessibility, shared use, biodiversity, sustainable urban drainage systems and provision for allotments and community gardens. For development proposals that comprise or include open spaces, details of the proposed landscaping, hard and soft should be submitted as part of planning applications. 6.45 Public open space plays a vital role for people in providing exposure to nature, opportunities for physical activity, wellbeing and social interaction for all age groups, but especially children and young people. Public open spaces should be designed to
City Parks
6.46 Cork City Council recognises the need for a network of large city parks of an appropriate size, scale and nature. Due to the limited opportunities for large open spaces within the city centre, these parks will mainly be located within or at the edge of the existing built up part of the City. The City Hinterland area will also provide opportunities where new parks can be developed in line with the Open Space Strategy. The city parks will combine large areas of well-connected open space to provide for active and passive recreational needs to meet the needs of the city hinterland population, including sectors of the city and areas of the north city environs and south city environs and beyond into the hinterland. Together the City Parks will form a ring of green around the built up part of the City, incorporating existing landscape assets, in perpetuity for the benefit of future generations. The proposed network of city parks is set out in Table 6.11.
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Cork City Development Plan 2022-2028 I Volume 1
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