The Irish Times

Believe it or not, the M50 motorway was intended to provide a bypass of Dublin for national traffic converging on the city. At least, that's what was in the minds of the engineers who conceived it all of 30 years ago. They could hardly have imagined that it would become the curved spine of an American-style "edge city". It's another world out there - a parallel universe of interchanges, slip-roads, high-tech business parks and shopping malls with colour-coded parking zones. There are very few landmarks, apart from the triple-decker interchange near Blanchardstown, with the Royal Canal and the Dublin-Sligo railway line running through it.