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Making Space for Each Other: North Belfast Mulholland, C. (2019). Making Space for Each Other: North Belfast. Queen's University Belfast. Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights Copyright 2019 The Authors. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:07. Oct. 2021 Making Space for Each Other: North Belfast North Belfast for Each Other: Making Space Produced by the Planning for Spatial Reconciliation Research Group Acknowledgements The work behind this report was carried out in partnership with the Department of the Environment, Northern Ireland, and we benefited from the assistance of Mr Angus Kerr, Director of Planning Policy Division. Also, the authors appreciate the wise counsel they have received during the course of this project from their Advisory Committee. The authors would like to acknowledge its members who have provided us with valuable Making Space for Each Other: insights and reflections during various stages of the writing of this report: Chris Carvill, Jacqueline Irwin, Tony Gallagher, Claire Hackett, Mark Hackett, Jennifer Hawthorne, Linda MacHugh, John McCorry, Duncan Morrow, Jackie Redpath, Karen Smyth, Robin Wilson, and Suzanne Wylie. North Belfast Especially, we thank the chair of the Advisory Committee, Mr Paul Sweeney, Former Permanent Secretary of the Department of Education, Northern Ireland. Acting in a personal capacity, Paul devoted time and attention to the project, always available to offer us helpful guidance. In addition to the Advisory Committee, other people who gave us useful comment included: Mark Batchelor, Contents Beverley Bigger, Neil Galway, Greg Keeffe, Brendan Murtagh, Callie Persic, and Ian Shuttleworth, and we thank Alan McCarten for his contribution on Girdwood and Adam Street,. 1. North Belfast Challenges 2 Internationally, the following people made a useful contribution to the project: Prof. David Perry from the University of Illinois, Socrates Stratis, from the University of Cyprus, Tovi Fenster, from the University of Tel Aviv, 2. What Has Been Acheived? 20 and Seneda Demirovic, from the city planning department in Mostar. 3. A Way Forward 36 While recognising all the support that the above people generously donated to our work, we emphasise that the content of this report is exclusively the responsibility of its authors. 4. Context - Belfast Development Plan 68 The authors of the report are: Ken Sterrett, Clare Mulholland, Mike Morrissey, Chris Karelse, Frank Gaffikin 5. Final Thoughts 76 For further information contact: School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering Queen’s University Belfast, David Keir Building, Stranmillis Road, Belfast. BT9 5AG, Northern Ireland, UK. Website: www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/PlanningforSpatialReconciliation Email: [email protected] © Queen’s University Belfast 2019 Making Space for Each Other: North Belfast The Challenges 1. North Belfast Challenges In essence .... North Belfast encapsulates many of the problems facing Northern Ireland as a whole. Five features stand out: 1. its loss of industry -- in terms of its textile mills, tobacco production, and dockland activity -- has been severe. It operates now without a dynamic economic base; 2. in turn, this relates to a severe and durable pattern of multiple deprivation; 3. its degree of residential segregation, both social and religious, has created an intricate pattern of small enclaves that render contact across divides problematic; 4. its witness to a disproportionate share of violence during the Troubles, with related legacy issues; and so-called ‘leftover’ paramilitary activity, together with contemporary hate crime also directed to an increased presence of other ethnic groups, mark it out as a place of bitter contest; and 5. there is a very tight electoral contest between Sinn Fein and the DUP, with implications for how any new housing allocations are seen in terms of shifting this knife-edge electoral arithmetic. If a radical solution could be found to the challenges associated with these inter-connected conditions in North Belfast, it could point the way for the wider region. 1 2 Making Space for Each Other: North Belfast The Challenges Whose Boundary? The first challenge is to define North Belfast. Various agencies adopt different These include: historic concentration of Troubles-related violence, particularly geographies. Since territory and identity are very much tied up in this deeply in the form of sectarian killing; multiple, largely single-identity enclaves, with a divided part of the city, boundaries matter a great deal. Lack of common definition record of incident and confrontation; and the post-1998 residue of ‘paramilitary’ makes for a problematic spatial unit of analysis, and public policy intervention. intervention either as the physical force ideology of a section of republicanism or the criminal substructure that forms a prominent part of contemporary For instance, when estimating levels of housing stress between people from the loyalism. Far from supporting what they presume to be their ‘own communities’, two main community backgrounds, the figures depend on where the boundary both these manifestations of enduring ‘paramilitarism’ impose further harm on is drawn. already bereft people. Moreover, small divided geographical communities do not have the ‘critical North Belfast thus represents a microcosm of some of the biggest challenges mass’ to sustain any kind of sustainable development. So, viable public policy faced by the region as a whole and exhibits the unforeseen consequences of has to present the issues on a scale sufficiently large to permit appropriate urban programmes that fail to grasp the complex and contradictory interplay development but also small enough to be able to properly monitor and judge amongst deeply seated social, political and ethno-religious processes. results. On these terms, North Belfast (with a population of roughly 75,000) is appropriate for study and intervention. It has been subject to the ‘Zone Culture’ (Enterprise, Health Action and latterly Education) and littered with partnerships which do not have the means to But, it makes it difficult to develop a common North Belfast ‘voice’, when it’s deliver meaningful co-production/integration of a range of services. unclear who is being included. For the purposes of this study, we have mostly used the North Belfast parliamentary constituency. (For more detail, see Examining the place in detail suggests most of all, that repackaging old Appendix 1.1. on the website) programmes with new labels will not cut it as a serious attempt to transform the area. It is thus worthy of a new conversation about how its many problems should be tackled. A Troubled Area People and Place Although ideally situated (rising from the shores of a sea lough to a striking Belfast is a compact, modestly-sized city, which has not been growing at the same basalt ridge), North Belfast not only shares many of the problems of the less level as similar cities in Britain. Between 1971-2011, it lost about one third of its buoyant urban areas of the UK – loss of a traditional industrial base, spatial residential population. Seen in that context, North Belfast itself is a small area. concentrations of deprivation, relatively low educational attainment, and the With this in mind, dividing the area further into a series of communities, many graveyard of many programmes targeted at the most deprived areas – but also single-identity, for the purposes of ‘community regeneration’ poses two main exhibits specific problem characteristics of its own. problems: 3 4 Making Space for Each Other: North Belfast The Challenges The Thorny Housing Issue (1) the areas concerned are too small to offer the scale and scope for major development; and (2) given that the working class areas are mostly segregated on the basis of ethno-nationalist allegiance, the risk of rivalry for scarce urban resources becoming part of the general conflict around territory and identity is both immense and unhelpful. Although North Belfast’s population appears to be relatively stable (a small decline in numbers and a marginal increase of smaller-sized households from 2001-2011), the headline figure conceals significant changes. For example, those of Catholic Community Background (CCB) became the majority (52.6%). But, more than a majority, the CCB population is younger (possibly assisted by inward migration from post-2003 EU states) with more than half (51%) aged under 40. Conversely, a much higher proportion of those of Protestant Community Background (PCB) is aged over 65. (see Appendix 1.2 on the website) North Queen Street Thus, North Belfast has seen a younger, more buoyant Catholic-background Related to this demographic