BACHELORS WALK, according to estate agents Hooke and MacDonald, is "the best located site in the city centre". That is unquestionably true. But what has happened to it over the past 25 years is surely an urban tragedy - now compounded in solid form by its spanking new mock Georgian Hollywood set.

Bachelors Walk deserved better. Right in the heart of the city, it faces south over the Liffey and forms a backdrop for that most memorable view of Dublin, looking upriver from O'Connell Bridge towards the Ha'penny Bridge and the domes and spires beyond. If there is an essential Dublin, this stretch of the Liffey Quays is it.

In any city with a sense of its history, such an important place would have been cherished. Instead, it was destroyed by two decades of property speculation - the worst of it directly encouraged by Dublin Corporation, which sold off freeholds and leaseholds to Arlington Securities and persuaded at least one long established firm in the area to do likewise.

What Arlington was planning - a huge shopping centre with a bus station on the roof - was a madcap scheme. But rather than being firmly rejected, this bizarre idea travelled quite a distance before the company (a subsidiary of British Aerospace) finally pulled out in March 1993 and sold the site to Zoe Developments for £3.5 million.

At the time, I recall telling Mr Liam Carroll, the man behind Zoe, that Bachelors Walk deserved the most exceptional architectural treatment; indeed, the site was of such importance that it should have been the subject of a major architectural competition.

Unfortunately, it was his view, expressed to me at the time, that architects are "only interested in designing penthouses for fellows with Mercs".

Mr Carroll was once a mechanical and electrical engineer with Jacobs International. Since 1990, he has become the main engine of urban renewal in Dublin, building more apartments than anyone else - more, perhaps, than all other developers combined.

The running total easily exceeds 2,000 units, with more in the pipeline.

Zoe's output has been staggering. It includes Fisherman's Wharf in Ringsend; Portobello Harbour on the Grand Canal; New Row Square, Bertram Court, Olde Dock and Tailors Court, all in the Liberties, as well as substantial developments at Arran Quay, Ushers Quay, Blessington Street, Mountjoy Square, Ringsend Road, Bridge Street, Watling Street and St Augustine Street.

Still to come are further apartment blocks in Mountjoy Square, Brunswick Street, Capel Street, Upper Abbey Street, Ushers Quay and the Grand Canal Docks, where Zoe hopes to build a soaring 12 storey tower.

Mercifully, the company has moved beyond what had become its trademark - predictable configurations of shoebox style flats.

In the case of Bachelors Walk, however, what Zoe has produced is a scheme of 335 "apartments", of which no fewer than 294 are single bedroom units - and nine of these are so small that they cannot even be called apartments because they are below the minimum qualifying size of 30 square metres.

Surprisingly, for such a prime site, only five of the flats have three bedrooms.

Never has Bachelors Walk been more aptly named.

The carpeted concrete staircases and depressingly long and narrow corridors (just over four feet wide) are redolent of a budget hotel.

Practically all the kitchens are windowless galleys, tacked on to the rear end of living rooms while many of the bedrooms have just 15 inches of clearance between the ends of the bed and the nearest wall.

Each apartment also has only minimal space for storage.

Its mock Georgian facade has an assortment of neo traditional shopfronts at street level, most in timber and some in stone cladding, as well as some curious interpretations of 18th century doorcases.

Its roofline is decorated with a variety of chimneys; "decorated" is the appropriate word, for there is not a single working fireplace inside any of the flats.

About the only plus is that No.7 Bachelors Walk, the most important 18th century house on the Liffey Quays, has been quite lavishly restored. The landscaped courtyards, though rather fussy, are also an improvement.

However, in terms of unit sizes and amenities, this scheme falls well below the new apartment design guidelines set by the Department of the Environment.

In the drive to recreate Bachelors Walk as a "Georgian" stage set, Dublin Corporation's planners were content to permit the demolition of the imposing art deco building once occupied by CIE. Dating from the early 1930s, it had a balcony over the entrance and was "probably the only building in Dublin from which one could credibly hang a swastika", as Ian Lumley once observed.

This fine building, which could so easily have been retained, has been replaced by what I would regard as an architectural farrago, made all the more offensive by the bastardised replication of an Egyptian style coved parapet which crowned its demolished predecessor.

But then, the planners seem blind to the idea that quality architecture of all periods deserves to survive.

Apart from reducing the overall number of units by 70 or so, it seems that their principal preoccupation in dealing with Zoe's scheme for Bachelors Walk was surface treatment and, in particular, the "face" it would present to the Liffey Quays. Indeed they actually "designed" the Georgian style facade, with the assistance of some outside advice on mid 18th century proportions and detailing.

None the less, it has about as much architectural integrity as the version of O'Connell Street erected in Grangegorman for the Michael Collins film; worse still, it makes the few pre existing original Georgian houses stick out like sore thumbs. Yet, some of the corporation's planners actually believe the remaking of Bachelors Walk represents a triumph for planning in Dublin.

Mr Dermot Kelly, the planner who dealt with it, has even suggested to Temple Bar Properties that it should develop the west end of its area, between Parliament Street and Fishamble Street, along the same lines.

But then, he firmly believes Temple Bar has been ruined by contemporary architecture. Given a choice, he would have preferred a mock Georgian, or even Tudorbethan, treatment.

Who is to blame? Hardly Mr Carroll, who is merely a developer - working with the vagaries of market forces. The real blame lies with the planning authority, Dublin Corporation, which is meant to intervene in the interests of "proper planning and development".

HOWEVER, the senior public official who is responsible for planning in Dublin refuses to be interviewed. Mr Derek Brady, assistant city manager in charge of the planning and development departments of the corporation, has presided over urban renewal in the city since 1988 with considerable efficiency.

But he has declined to discuss its successes and failure or even to answer any questions about it.

Yet Mr Brady, who wants to be the new city manager, must realise that when it comes to apartment buildings there is no second chance to get it right.

Unlike Lower Mount Street, which can all be rebuilt because each of its dreary office blocks is owned a pension fund or insurance company, this cannot be done with apartment buildings which almost immediately pass into multiple ownership.

In this, sense, arguably, it would be better if Bachelors Walk had remained derelict for another year or two, because then there might still be a chance of developing it to a high standard - preferably, in a contemporary idiom more true to the 1990s.

By allowing it to be covered in mere architectural wallpaper, we have all been complicit in the betrayal of this major site in the heart of Dublin.

Incredibly, nobody saw fit to appeal to An Bord Pleanala against the corporation's decision to approve the Zoe scheme - not the Arts Council, not the Dublin Civic Group, not the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, not even An Taisce.

Are we to take it, then, that they all approve of the creation of unsustainable developments such as this, dressed up in a pastiche cloak of "Georgian" finery?

There are many who might say that what stands on Bachelors Walk today is infinitely more desirable than the dereliction that blighted it for so long.

But this essentially suburban view is little more than an "anything is better than nothing" argument which does no justice at all to the importance of the site or, indeed, to Dublin's status as a European capital city.

I am not suggesting the corporation's planners have been negligent in carrying out their duties. For the most part, they are dedicated public servants doing a largely thankless job. Indeed, Dermot Kelly himself toiled long and hard to ensure that Zoe "got it right". Where we, part company most emphatically is on the perception of what is right for Bachelors Walk and for Dublin.