“I combattimenti iniziano all’ora di pranzo e continuano a andare avanti” – Capel Street Workers condividono le preoccupazioni dopo aver pugnalato Garda

I have been [downvoted on this loads of times](https://tenor.com/RFz6.gif) but until people who are huge proponents of “pedestrianise everything” grapple with this, their big plans are going to continue to be delayed and objected to.

The pedestrianisation of the street, and the installation of loads of free outdoor seating, has led to the area becoming even more of a magnet for antisocial behaviour. Nobody normal wants to walk down and shop on a street that has a dozen wasters off their faces on it. Nobody normal can use the street furniture. Pedestrians also can’t use the “pedestrianised” street because (by design) it’s still full of bikes.

The shop owners have said all this a million times. This is one of the few streets in the city that still has a variety of normal/interesting/niche shops. The response from posters on the last thread about this was “they should just all move to the suburbs”.

The current setup is great for Capel Street’s restaurants and bars, whose owners usually have a lot more pull than many shopkeepers and who basically got a load of public real estate given to them for free as a result of this.

“We need more free third spaces” is what posters on here come to whine on the one week a year it’s dry and sunny enough to want to sit around outside after work. I agree, it is very nice for twentysomethings to be able to sit around drinking in the sun 5 or 6 nights a year. However, this is a crazy price to pay for this.

If you want a better public realm, you have to engage with this. Nobody normal wants extra seating because 99% of the time it’s being used, it’s being monopolised by the worst people in the city. If you want to do this to Parliament Street and beside the Custom House and wherever else, you have to have a plan to stop the antisocial horribleness.

The first thing to do is to actually pedestrianise things (force cyclists off the bike, like on Grafton Street). The second is to make the outdoor seating the property/responsibility of restaurants and cafes (like all the European plazas do). And the third is to vigorously enforce the existing ban on public drinking.

They should also strongly reconsider the shopkeeper’s original request to pedestrianise only after 7pm.