From the hill of Stormont Gregory Campbell has much of Belfast laid out beneath him. This is true in more ways than one, for the Regional Development Minister is deliberating over plans that will set the course of the city's development for the next 25 years.
His department's Regional Development Plan (RDP), which will provide a strategic blueprint for planners throughout the North, is expected by mid-summer but most attention is focused on the chapter on the Belfast Metropolitan Area.
In the late 20th century, industry and displaced populations fled its centre. The city crept along the shores of Belfast Lough and up the hills to the east and west, leaving an increasingly derelict core behind.
Whether this continues or whether the city reinvents itself for the 21st century will largely be decided by the development plan, which predicts a demand for as many as 200,000 new homes.
The bulk of these will be in Belfast. But where exactly will they go?
The main issue is the choice between new, so-called "green field" sites and "brown-field" sites, using redeveloped land, often derelict industrial sites.
There has been some brownfield development in the city centre and on the shores of the Lagan, but it is in its infancy.
Its supporters say it will stop the spread of the city, help maintain community structures, and most importantly use only existing land and infrastructure. Its detractors say it is suitable only for those without families. Mr Sammy Wilson, the Lord Mayor of Belfast and a DUP member of the Assembly, says the city's infrastructure is already stretched to the limit with road, water and sewerage systems barely able to cope.
As it stands, the development plan sets a minimum target of 40 per cent brown-field development.
In the Assembly, Mr Campbell agreed there is a "compelling case for setting a more challenging and ambitious target" but he has yet to say what this might be.
Mr Tony Doran, managing director of the Construction Employers' Federation, says his members are not against building on brown-field sites, but a proper study of available land has not been done.
Even when speaking about 40 per cent brown-field use, he says "there's a doubt about that".
While he admits people have concerns that Belfast will explode like Dublin, Mr Doran points to another possible explosion - in house prices.
Prices in Belfast have increased rapidly in recent years. If the amount of building land is restricted, "what happened to house prices in Dublin could happen here and that's in nobody's interests," he says.
Mr Doran also points to the trend, especially prevalent in south Belfast, where large homes, many over 100 years old, have been bought, demolished and replaced with flats. This erosion of the "Victorian and Edwardian characteristics of the city" could also spread.
Mr Peter Carr, of the Belfast Metropolitan Residents' Group, an umbrella body also calling for a brown-field target of 70 per cent, says brown-field housing would not erode any of these characteristics and would instead capitalise on the great potential left by the city's industrial past.
"We can create seemingly spacious and uncluttered developments made up of apartments, terraced housing and semi-detached houses," he says.
The alternative will be worsening traffic problems and "high levels of dereliction in the inner and middle city".
"With the right will, there could be a revolution in planning here comparable to the revolution that has taken place in politics," he says.
If he has any doubts about the impact his decisions may have, Mr Campbell can ask the opinion of his DUP lord mayoral colleague. "You only get one chance like this every hundred years," Mr Wilson is on record as saying.