The Changing Built Environment and Socio-Economic Structures of Belfast

Liam O'Dowd, Ian Shuttleworth and Chris Lloyd

Outlining the evolution of the city’s built-up area and its main physical, economic and social structures over the last four decades, from before the onset of the recent ‘Troubles’ in the late 1960s up to the present. Partly based on previous work (by O’Dowd and Shuttleworth), it analyses how the city has been re-structured by various combinations of conflict-related factors and so-called ‘normal’ urban processes such as de-industrialisation, suburbanization and market-driven consumerism. It focuses on the transitions from ‘industrial city’ to ‘city of troubles’ to the presently developing ‘consumer city’, and on how these transitions have been shaped by the ethno-national conflict and have in turn influenced it.