Future Cork: City Hall needs to embrace progression and action
My vision for a future Cork is disarmingly simple. So simple, in fact, that people tell me once they’ve seen it, they can’t unsee it. The poles. Street clutter. This isn’t some grand infrastructural overhaul. It’s technically cost-neutral. Does the city not own black paint? Are there not two people who could start doing this tomorrow? Picture: Chani Anderson
How do you get City Hall to see the problems you see?
I’m careful even saying “City Hall”, because it’s just a building and buildings don’t make decisions, people do, and it’s the people inside I’m trying to coax along with every video I make.
There’s a school of thought that says criticism has to stop at the facade, that frustration about our hometown should be so abstract that no one in particular feels addressed. But there’s a difference between something being personal and holding people accountable.
Accountability isn’t an attack; it’s the precursor to progress. If we can’t talk openly about what isn’t working, and who is responsible for fixing it, then what exactly is the plan?
There’s a tiredness to Cork that’s hard to quantify but easy to feel once you start paying attention. I don’t think I’m the only one who sees it. Working for a city should bring an enormous sense of pride. The knowledge that what you do today shapes how tens of thousands of people experience their lives tomorrow. That your decisions affect how a place looks, feels, moves, and breathes.
I often wonder if that feeling still exists inside City Hall, or if it’s been dulled by process and the constant need to defend decisions rather than believe in them.
When pride becomes something you’re expected to perform and decry on a press release rather than something you feel, something has already gone wrong.
The videos I make are both aspirational and simple. They use space imaginatively, and deliberately. They call out the low hanging fruit too. The response tells me there’s an appetite for that kind of thinking.
In many ways, these videos have become one of the few places where future-focused conversations about Cork can happen at all. Most public discourse about the city feels reactive, procedural, locked into what can’t be done right now.
The default mode is obstacle-spotting. Some people thrive on it, obstacles are a comforting blanket of warmth. But if those are the only voices allowed to dominate, then nothing meaningful will ever get done.
What’s missing in City Hall isn’t intelligence. It’s lacking diversity of thought. Where are the doers? The solution-bringers? The people who ask “why not?” Why are they so quiet? What’s stopping them from speaking up?
City Hall needs more diversity. No one takes a job shaping a city because they hate the place. They do it because they care about it. Because, presumably, they love it as much as I do. So where are the people asking the bigger questions about what kind of city Cork wants to be in 20 or 30 years?
Why is that? "Complexity" has become an excuse for inaction and procedural drag.
My vision for a future Cork is disarmingly simple. So simple, in fact, that people tell me once they’ve seen it, they can’t unsee it. The poles. Street clutter. This isn’t some grand infrastructural overhaul. It’s technically cost-neutral. Does the city not own black paint? Are there not two people who could start doing this tomorrow?
If a basic decluttering and beautification exercise gets lost in red tape, then why pretend we’re capable of delivering anything more complex? Let's not worry about what great ideas exist on paper because the basics cannot be executed in reality. How the urban fabric looks affects how people behave and whether they take pride in it. When poles are littered, neglected, and shabby, it sends a message: Nobody cares.
I know there are good people in City Hall. Plenty of them. This is a plea for those with common sense, passion, and a feel for the city to let their voices be heard. Don’t have your ambition silenced. Cities don’t move forward because someone is skilled in identifying obstacles.
Blockers exist in all walks of life but we must move beyond them. The city needs motion. You know that moment in your own life when you make a decision and then act on it? Cities can work like that too. In other countries, they often do.
Progress has to start sometime. The only real question is when. Five weeks, or five years? Because those are the options. To borrow a line often quoted inside City Hall itself: “If not now, when? If not us, who?”
They’re powerful words. They could even mean something, if we let them.
Civic dialogue is changing. People are mobilising. Expectations are rising. There is money available now that won’t always be there. Cork perpetually feels like it’s on the cusp of something great, only for the rug to be pulled away at the last moment.
My ask is small, but it’s also a litmus test. Not for vision, or strategy, or ambition on paper, but for the city’s ability to simply decide, and then act.
- Kevin Collins is a content creator
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