Here’s a quick glimpse into St. Stephen’s Green. The squares and greens in Dublin are separated from the street by dense vegetation and high wrought iron fences. That technique doesn’t work it the States, where such separations tend to yield dangerous spaces. But here they seem safe enough (at least for me to occasionally pass through by myself at mid-day).
Due to the separation, the squares and greens are peaceful, quiet, and serene. They offer respite from the hustle and bustle of the city. Like New York’s Central Park, St. Stephen’s walled off Green was designed to be seen, not heard. The views were designed to be “scenic” in the tradition of English landscape design (i.e., they were carefully composed for the visitor’s viewing pleasure). St. Stephen’s Green is not a park for playing football/soccer or dodge ball. Frederick Law Olmsted would probably not be pleased with all the sport that’s been carved into Central Park (it runs counter to his original intentions for serenity, visual perfection, and individual contemplation).
St. Stephen’s Green is often quite still. And far fewer people go in than if the edges were transparent, “perforated,” or “porous.”
The Green is fine (and at times quite delightful) but I do quite prefer bustling, noisy, stone-paved plazas myself. Dubliners, too, want urban spaces like that and many hope for the addition of new piazze (Italianate plazas) in the center of town. They have only three to my recollection: Meeting House Square, Temple Bar Square, and Smithfield Plaza. The first two are quite small and the third is very large. It is, I’ve been told, the largest cobbled plaza in all of Europe. (Or perhaps, just the longest?)
What Dublin lacks in piazze though, it makes up for in bustling pedestrian-only shopping streets. Dublin clearly has the corner on the market with regard to streets, with some of the finest pedestrian shopping streets to be found in the world (Grafton Street and Henry Street, for instance).
Ireland by Chance 