Tommy Barker: I'm back in love with Cork's urban core — What are your favourite city sights?

Some recent summer downtime wandering around Cork city centre has me in love with all of its recent (and long-overdue) improvements

Might it have been rose-tinted spectacles or the necessary sunglasses? Was it the heat of the moment and the hot days and nights of the summer weeks that were in it?

Was it the good company after attending a book launch at Cork City Library during Heritage Week, and the multicultural buzz all about of a sun-saturated Saturday afternoon?

Some recent summer downtime wandering around Cork city centre and chilling in and around the Grand Parade put me back in love with the urban core, and all of its recent (and long-overdue) improvements.

A view of the Ferris Wheel that was been installed on the Grand Parade last winter. Picture: David Creedon

By pure coincidence of timing, my rekindled native pride in my city was echoed only last Saturday with a four-page paean of praise for Cork’s gems in the Irish Examiner Weekend magazine by colleague Esther McCarthy.

She commented that it’s too easy to take our home place for granted. Similarly, we shouldn’t take the city centre’s very real physical recovery and new ventures for granted.

Clincher for me was the bustle around the rejuvenated medieval quarter around Grand Parade, along Tuckey St, and following the linkages now over two pedestrian bridges towards the Gothic confection of St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, UCC, and the Crawford College of Art.

CBA Better Building Awards for 2026 includes a new category 'Best Placemaking' Award

Bishop Lucey Park during Cork on a Fork Fest. Picture: Thalia Greaux

Thoughts turned to how the new city library site at Brewery Quarter will be further transformative too: Who needs an events centre site here? Give us something else with a cultural heft, please.

Tuckey Street has come into its own, a lot to do with new paving and pedestrianisation, outdoor seating, and outdoor (responsible) drinking and latte-sipping. Add in the sight of people balming out in the revamped Bishop Lucey Park, feeding the pigeons, walking dogs, pushing buggies, flicking frisbees, minding smallies, or just having the chat and the craic: Cork city was putting on its finery for visitors and its citizens alike, and even the usual begrudgers and cynics would have found it hard to find anything to grumble about.

Niamh Delaney and James McCarthy hanging out in the sun and feeding pigeons at Bishop Lucey Park. Picture: Noel Sweeney

The gritty city seems to have reached a turning point given a raft of improvements and investments, with St Patrick’s Street regaining its mojo, and Oliver Plunkett Street with its mixed offshoot streets giving Pana a run for shoppers’ money and shoe-leather.

Paul Street is pulling itself back up by its bootstraps with the plaza and shopping centre food offerings a smorgasbord of new tastes and flavours to suit the city’s increasingly multi-culturalism: Any chance of roof-top picnic spots on the car park here or at North Main Street? Some of the most intriguing city glimpses can be had peering down and about the roofscapes from the various multi-storey car parks.

MacCurtain Street and the links to Horgan’s Quay and the train station is hopping, with more energy to flow once new apartment residents claim their own turf.

The Morrison’s Island flood relief works now unfurling at the top of the South Mall, with a new sit-out pocket park and planting is another tiny bright spot and that’s without going any further east to where the Marina Park and extension with play areas and walks out past Blackrock have added so much to Cork’s urban and suburban experience.

Flood protection quay walls and public realm upgrades under construction at Morrison's Island/ South Mall, Cork City. Picture: Larry Cummins

To paraphrase a certain political slogan of old, ‘a lot done, more to do’ (we’re looking at you, North Main St, Sullivans Quay, Shandon, to mention just a few persistent spots in need of TLC and investment).

But, bright side out, count the blessings and, while we’re at it, put in a good word for some of your own favourite city sights, scents, and sensibilities in the just-announced Better Buildings Awards, run by the Cork Business Association (CBA).

The annual event now spans nine categories, from café, restaurant, shop, and pub fronts to other transformative residential, commercial, heritage, and other sectors, with a new category this year, notes CBA director Cliona Barnes, that of Best Placemaking Award.

Placemaking is a superb new addition, in this writer’s opinion, given the welcome shifts the city has made in the last few years, and there’ll be keen contenders for this 2026 gong. The deadline for public nominations is October 5 and I’m going to make it my mission to find nominees in all nine categories, and my research trip is going to include a first-time ever open-top bus journey — since my colleague Esther McCarthy seems to have missed the bus on this one.

I’ll be upstairs, at the front, in sunglasses, and only slightly morto…

• Visit corkbusiness.ie to enter or nominate a building for the CBA Better Building Awards 2026