Future Cork: Is the city ready to enter the 21st century?

Five years into our 10-year vision for the city, there has been real progress but the biggest eyesores remain, while city centre green space has been decimated, write Jude Sherry and Frank O'Connor

Five years on, it is not clear if Cork City is ready to leave behind the 20th century urban design of car-choked streets, concrete jungles, private wealth and public squalor of dereliction and really start to build a 21st-century city of co-designed public luxury, thriving local communities and businesses, and clean air with an abundance of nature. File picture

“Imagine a city where dereliction is turned into an opportunity to create a liveable urban environment where everyone can thrive with no exceptions made, where experience is prioritised over consumption and where we make the most of the resources we have.”

We wrote this as part of our ‘re-imagining a 21st Century Cork’ way back in April 2021. We asked Irish Examiner readers to time travel with us to 10 years into the future to this reimagined Cork. Halfway to that decade point, it is time to see where we are on this journey.