Newton Emerson: Many reasons to hope Belfast’s new campus will be its salvation

At the end of this month, Belfast will embark on an extraordinary urban experiment. The opening of a new Ulster University campus will suddenly triple the number of residents in the city centre, ending half a century of persistent under-population. One of the emptiest inner cities in Europe will not only fill up but become among the most student-dominated in the world.

The Troubles displaced the original population of central Belfast and peace failed to restore it. At the last census in 2011, there were fewer than 3,000 people living in the two postcodes north and south of City Hall, which encompass the middle of Belfast. The past decade has only added about another 1,000 residents, far below government and council targets.

However, since the new campus was announced, 5,000 student accommodation units have been purpose-built in the city centre, with another 2,500 approved or under construction. All these buildings have been developed by the private sector and the majority will be receiving their first full complement of occupants in the coming weeks.

Only an overloaded sewage system appears to be holding up planning approvals, with no consideration given to transport and amenities for the new population

If the experiment succeeds, it will only be the start. The new campus will have 15,500 staff and students, equivalent to the entire population of Armagh. So even at the university’s current size the initial cohort of resident students could double, with additional demand for conventional apartments for staff.

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Queen’s University Belfast, just outside the city centre, has 25,000 students and 5,000 staff. Three-quarters of its students live in nearby rented housing, which is often grotty, over-crowded and expensive. Thousands could want to decamp to the city centre and developers will be happy to cater for them. Purpose-built student accommodation is a thriving industry across the UK, with an apparently limitless supply of capital.

Another 900-unit proposal for the city centre was submitted in June, with thousands more units under construction or planned closer to Queen’s. There could easily be 15,000 students living in the middle of Belfast by the end of this decade, outnumbering other residents five to one. The total city centre population would be comparable to central Manchester.

Being Northern Ireland, of course, this is not some well-planned vision of dreaming spires and groves of academe. It has been a chaotic free-for-all, with Belfast’s usual mix of official ineptitude and pathetic gratitude for anyone building anything. Most of the new residential blocks are clusters of huge, bland cubes, overwhelming the streets and skyline. Some are squeezed on to their sites so tightly students cannot assemble outside in a fire — an issue that has only come to light this week.

Much of the new accommodation is marooned on one side of the eight-lane inner ring road, with the campus and the Cathedral Quarter nightlife district on the other. The university and Stormont’s Department for Infrastructure have wasted years on a petty stand-off over who will pay for road safety, so nothing has been provided — not one extra pedestrian crossing, let alone the traffic calming and ‘boulevardisation’ proposed by architects and consultants.

Belfast’s dead centre is anathema to the urbanism and sense of creative capital necessary to attract service industries and high-quality jobs

Only an overloaded sewage system appears to be holding up planning approvals, with no consideration given to transport and amenities for the new population. Developers want to use parts of buildings as budget hotels, raising safeguarding issues for young people in communal facilities.

Central Belfast has been partially shut since a major fire in 2018, with the affected area only set to reopen at Christmas. This has exacerbated the impact of lockdown and exposed crises of dereliction, homelessness and drug addition in the city centre. The overnight arrival of 5,000 students threatens disaster and little urgency has been shown to prevent it.

Nevertheless, there are many reasons to hope the new campus will be Belfast’s salvation.

With effectively no pre-existing population to displace or neighbours to annoy, students have a blank slate to redefine the city. A chance to sustain hospitality businesses and reinvent the High Street has arrived in the nick of time. A commercial regeneration scheme covering about a quarter of the inner city has been stuck for 20 years, with no progress in sight. This could finally get it off the ground.

Belfast’s dead centre is anathema to the urbanism and sense of creative capital necessary to attract service industries and high-quality jobs: there was a complaint about it last week in the Hollywood Reporter, in an article that otherwise sang the city’s praises. Relocating students to the middle of town will free up swathes of period property in the inner suburbs, making it available to the employees of any new businesses. A belt of affordable, desirable housing within a mile of a lively centre would be a boon for all residents and a lure for prospective investors. It is exactly what young professionals want and increasingly cannot find.

Certainly, Belfast is about to be transformed. We will find out how very soon.