MORE THAN two square kilometres of land in central Belfast is lying idle and could and should be used to regenerate Belfast’s inner city, according to a group of leading architects and planners.
More than 70 architects, engineers, planners, community workers and politicians are gathering in Belfast today for a week-long summer school designed to formulate a “masterplan” that could potentially create private and public homes, schools, parks and other services for 20,000 people.
Ken Sterrett and Mark Hackett of the newly formed Forum for an Alternative Belfast said they hope to capture the support and imagination of the public and politicians behind the “visionary” project and to devise and implement a strategic, scientific and viable plan for the regeneration of Belfast by 2020.
Dr Sterrett, director of the urban design programme at Queen’s University Belfast, and Belfast architect Mr Hackett say there are more than 500 acres of land, much of it publicly-owned, located throughout the centre of Belfast over a length of two kilometres that is lying largely unused.
“It’s hard to believe that an area the size of 500 football pitches is not being more productively used given that it is all located within a two-kilometre walk of the city centre. This important, valuable land could be better used to make Belfast a more vibrant, cosmopolitan city that isn’t disjointed by ad hoc development,” said Mr Hackett.
“Years of bad or mediocre redevelopment have continued to isolate large swathes of the city, creating ugly, dead facades and leaving it largely empty at night,” he said.
Mr Hackett described the summer school as an intensive and voluntary think-tank that will “examine what would happen if we stopped leaving the development of our city to chance and instead started to plan a common vision for how we see ourselves in 2020”.
He wanted everyone in Belfast and beyond its environs to take part in the wider discussions about the plan. “Belfast is our city; it’s our environment, and it’s essential that we create and develop a place that’s accessible, connected and safe. It should be a good place to live in and a good place to invest in,” he said.
“We want to find out exactly how many people could be living within one and a half miles of the City Hall. However, our preliminary study indicates in excess of 20,000 extra people would comfortably be housed in the fractured inner city. With that comes the challenge of making new schools, parks and connecting with existing communities in an equitable manner – and doing so with development of enduring built quality,” said Mr Hackett.
He said the land was lying idle after more than a decade of a construction boom which saw a lot of “hastily planned, profit-focused” development”.
Dr Sterrett said that due to peace walls, sectarian tensions and the general nature of development, Belfast was a “disconnected” city with no seamless links between the north, west, east and south of the city. The proposals of the forum, if implemented, could create a city centre fulcrum that would establish that connection and improve the social fabric of the city.
“This will be about how can we reconnect with the city, how do we create a city where you can walk comfortably, pleasantly and safely between the different parts of Belfast,” he said.
Dr Sterrett acknowledged that Belfast has improved hugely in appearance in the past 10 years or so but that there was still a crucial need to continue development, particularly in the inner city.
“Belfast has come a long way over the last number of years but let us have the confidence to be more visionary about what we want to achieve for the city,” he said.