Deloitte (2007) suggested that the diseconomies of segregation could amount to £1.5b in direct, indirect and opportunity costs, in terms of ‘lost jobs (27,600 from 1983-2000), investment (£225 million GVA) and tourism (£1,461 million at 2006 prices)’ (Deloitte, 2007, 90). The Portland Trust (2007) also highlighted the economy as the major driver in improving community relations, closing the differential between Catholics and Protestants and increasing the prospects for integration.  Residential integration is thus presented as a moral, rational and political project in which material prosperity will overwrite tribal allegiances in the creation of new social and physical spaces.  In ‘the good city’, this is worked out via the housing market or what Squires and Kurbin (2005) called ‘diversity by circumstance’, whilst ‘the recalcitrant city’ slips further into social disadvantage, fatalism and competition for scarce resources.

This paper seeks to locate this restructuring within wider shifts in property capital, gentrification and local labour markets. Yiftachel and Yacobi (2003) argued that the ‘ethnocratic city’ is shaped by a complex interplay between capital, governance and ethnicity. Where ethnicity prevails and the state bolsters the dominate group, segregation is reproduced. Where capital is attracted to new investment sites and when the state incentivises the property economy to challenge spatial sectarian inefficiencies, ethnic structures become less relevant. The analysis suggests that these three drivers are configured differently in different parts of Belfast and it sees value in linking gentrification with processes of gating, studentification, elite investment sites and heritage planning as part of a wider process of post-conflict normalization and urban competitiveness. The analysis concludes by highlighting the dark side of Belfast boosterism, especially for communities largely untouched by economic progress and where ethnicity still matters in space and politics.

In Belfast, the local and the nation state are problematic, forcing a deeper banality on public space and design. Minty (2006) showed how part of the reconstruction project in South Africa involved symbolic reparations and restitution in which ‘independent producers of non-governmental cultural projects, critically engage with issues of geography, memory and transformation’ (p.422). In modernising Belfast, difficult territories and pasts are sanitized with the zoning of new quarters that tell of a different social economic history. Even that, however, is contested. The adoption of Titanic Quarter instead of the area’s traditional name of Queens Island, may help veneer over aspects of the shipyard’s unsavory past in terms of discrimination and poor working conditions. The fact that the ship, itself, never actually made it anywhere seems to be a minor point of detail given the global recognition of the brand, bolstered by the Hollywood blockbuster. Fortification, studentification, quarterisation and the promotion of new investment sites play into each other in the reproduction of south Belfast. For Minty, conflict transformation needs to be a story of ‘reconciliation authenticity’ about places and their memory which can open ‘a whole set of new narratives linked to previously marginalized stories and histories and its imaginings for a better future’ (2006, p.438). As we show in the next section, it is the construction of a new set of modernist narratives that most characterises the formation of south Belfast and it is the housing market, in the form of vigorous gentrification, that provides the dynamic for change.

Case study: The south Belfast housing market and mixing

This section summarises research into the recent performance of the south Belfast housing market in the context of ‘mixed’ religion communities. Methodologically, it consists of three components including: secondary data analysis of mixed religion areas in Northern Ireland; a survey of households in the mixed ward of Ballynafeigh and a series of in-depth interviews with local housing actors and community representatives.

Mixed wards in Northern Ireland

It was noted earlier that there have been a number of authoritative studies on the changing nature of spatial segregation in Northern Ireland and the problems with inter-census comparison, the level of spatial analysis and data reliability (Shuttleworth and Lloyd, 2006). The analysis presented here is less concerned with the temporal or spatial distribution of segregation and more with the structure of areas that are not dominated by one religion or the other. Drawing on research on tipping points and institutional capacity (Boal, 1996) the analysis categorised Northern Ireland’s 582 wards into: segregated Protestant (where the P population is >70%); Roman Catholic segregated where the RC population is >70%; and mixed where the population of P and RC was <70%). The analysis of the 2001 Census showed that of all 582 wards, 236 (41%) were Protestant segregated, 154 (27%) were Roman Catholic segregated and 192 (33%) were mixed. In order to understand the structure of mixed neighbourhoods, 15 socio-economic variables were subjected to Factor Analysis, which is a data reduction technique aimed at producing summary variables from a larger array of indicators (see table 2 for a list of the variables). When the mixed ward data were analysed, two summary factors emerged and these are shown in the factor structure table, which together account for 68% of the variation in the data. 

Table 1 Total variance explained

Component	Total	% of variance	Cumulative %
1	7.605	50.700	50.700
2	2.602	17.344	68.045

Factor 1 is strongly correlated with social housing and poverty sensitive variables including: unemployment; receipt of Income Support; receipt of Housing Benefit; being a lone parent; and having a Long Standing Illness.  It is also negatively correlated with owner occupation, higher social class, and car ownership. Neighbourhoods that score highly here include wards in regional towns that have a tradition of shared space including Limavady which contains a number of wards with high coefficients in this factor.  Areas that score highly in this factor also include some middle-city communities such as Botanic in Belfast and Ebrington in Derry/Londonderry.

Table 2 Factor structure

Factor 2 clearly reflects a more middle-class distribution, evidenced by the comparatively high coefficients for social class, occupational status and ownership of up-market cars. The most recent estimates from the Noble Index of spatial deprivation (DSD, 2005) show that these areas, in the main, are the least deprived in Northern Ireland. The table below shows that there were 14 wards with a coefficient greater than 1.5 and of these 10 were in the outer south Belfast area, including Ballynafeigh and a cluster of wards in Castlereagh, which are, Beechill, Cairnshill, Galwally, Knockbracken and Newtownbreda.

Table 3 Wards with a coefficient >1.5 on factor 2

The next strongest cluster was Malone, Upper Malone, Windsor and Stranmillis.  It is argued latter that Ballynafeigh performs a pivotal role in linking housing markets in these areas as a transitional neighbourhood offering a bridge from the wider University district to housing in south east of the city in particular.  Moreover, it is important to see Ballynafeigh nested within a wider coherent spread of mixed housing in this part of Belfast as shown in the map below. The conditions to maintain and reproduce mixed patterns are still strong in Ballynafeigh, albeit that they are both social and tenure specific.

Demographics and attitudes

Figure 2 shows Ballynafiegh in the context of south Belfast and here, context is all important. The area is surrounded by open space, parkland and a river, which itself has become a focal point for waterfront investment. The relative topographic porosity of the area, with especially strong public transport connections, contrasts with the high levels of segregation in the west and north of the city. It is also physically well connected to the Central Business District and new elite investment spaces in the former gasworks site, which was the last major project of the Laganside Development Corporation.

Importantly, the area is contiguous with the University precinct and as noted, studentification has displaced an established working class community in the Holy Lands and pressure is mounting on the small Nationalist community in the lower Ormeau. Interviews with a local estate agent also suggested that a ‘graduate population has moved big time into Ballynafeigh’ as the nearest cheapest district to the high rent Malone and Stranmillis areas (interview with estate agent A). The questionnaire survey involved a random sample of 287 households of the 2,538 in Ballynafeigh ward. It records the changing socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the area, especially linked to the arrival of younger, professional, single person and primarily Catholic households. Of the households who have lived in the area less than 5 years, 49% were Catholic, 26% were Protestant and significantly 68% were Mixed religion, suggesting that Ballynafeigh offers a retreat space for the later group. The majority of households have moved to the area from the wider University housing market (71%) and the data showed comparatively little penetration from more working-class neighbourhoods in the lower Ormeau or Ravenhill. Protestant households were more likely to be Older Person (33%) than Catholics (13%), with the latter more likely to be Single Person (25%) or Smaller households (22%). Similarly, Catholics earned higher incomes than either Protestant neighbours or the Northern Ireland population as a whole. Thirty percent of Catholic households in Ballynafeigh earned more than £20,000 per annum compared with 18% of Protestant households in the area and 21% for all households in Northern Ireland as a whole.

The data also showed that the residents of Ballynafeigh were much less concerned with the state of community relations, more optimistic about the peace process and enjoyed stronger social closure than the rest of the population. For instance, 46% of Northern Ireland households said that they were concerned about community relations between Catholics and Protestants, whilst 33% of Ballynafeigh residents felt the same way. Similarly, the data showed that Catholic networks of association tended to be more aspatial with Protestants more likely to participate in locally based voluntarism, community work and neighbourliness when measured against a range of social indicators. Only 32% of Catholics felt that their ‘local community felt like home’, compared with 40% for Protestants, whilst 35% of Catholics ‘had lunch or dinner outside the neighbourhood’ in the last week compared with just 21% of Protestants. Forty two per cent of Catholics described themselves as Nationalist and 40% of Protestants called themselves Unionist. Catholics, in particular, were more likely to express multiple identities although relatively even numbers of Protestants and Catholics asserted that their primary identity was that of a parent (21%) and 21% of all households said that they did not identify themselves with either traditional political category.

Evidence of these demographic shifts were reinforced in interviews with estate agents, letting companies and mortgage providers operating in Ballynafeigh. The interviews highlighted the dynamic nature of recent change and in particular, rapid house price increase, the attraction of the area to investors and the restructuring of tenure, linked in particular to the growth of the private rented sector.  The two largest estate agents suggested that half of all sales in the last two years have been investors, although the market has cooled in the first quarter of 2008. Part of the attraction to investors has undoubtedly been the stability and growth in the market and ‘the way it (Ballynafiegh) has a good image as being safe, neutral and attractive to renters’ Interview with Estate Agent A). One estate agent pointed out that the Ormeau area has developed a distinctive image, which is appealing to and is reinforced by the arrival of young professional people:

The area has a certain cache – it has replaced Stranmillis which has been ruined – its all renting and people have been put off by the prices and number of rented properties.  Ten years ago you wouldn’t go into a pub in the Ormeau Road and now there are fancy restaurants and niche shops – it’s a good place to hang out (Interview with estate agent B).

The displacement effects of Stranmillis on investors are mirrored in the behaviour of renters.  In general, estate agents were able to identify three sources of demand:

• Students graduating from the University find the Stranmillis and Malone areas too expensive and are priced out to cheaper but familiar markets in Ballynafeigh.  Linked to this, a number of agents suggest that people working in Belfast and moving from outside the city find its cost and neutrality attractive.
• There are also young two person and new forming households who both rent but more especially purchase in the apartment sector. Interestingly, a number of agents identified this cohort (together with investors) as contributing to the affordability problem for indigenous households. Local people can be active and enthusiastic at the start of the bidding process but are ‘quickly out-bid by people from outside the area’ (Interview estate agent C). 
• Migrant workers, principally from eastern Europe find the area safe, especially in the context of rising racial attacks across Belfast. One estate agent highlighted the role of Ballynafeigh in assimilating new, wary and uninformed migrants into the city. ‘They use texts and e-mail back home to Poland and Latvia telling people where it is safe and unsafe to live. Some houses will accommodate 12 people until they get sorted. They like it because they get no hassle’ (Interview estate agent D). 

People who are selling tend to be: older households looking to downsize; families cashing in on house price increases; and people selling to go back to their ‘home place’ outside Belfast. Estate agents suggest that households who sell and stay in Belfast, migrate up the Ormeau Road to Four Winds, Cairnshill and Carryduff.  The Bell Towers, which was built in the upper Ormeau Road is shown in figure 3.  Interestingly, the development is on the site of an old convent and the high surrounding walls have been retained as a design feature but are now complemented by a gated security system and restricted access to reinforce insulation.

The lead estate agent for both the Curzon site (figure 4) and the old Ormeau Bakery development suggested a similar profile in each case.  In the Bakery, a planning application has been made for 145 ‘loft’ apartments together with ground floor retailing. Estate Agent B pointed out that these three sites, in pivotal locations, will reinforce the changing character of the area and will have spill over effects on the socio-demographic profile of South Belfast.  As the area was increasingly populated by small, young and primarily professional households new shops, bars, restaurants, gyms and speciality food outlets displaced the areas traditional retail structure. The re-imaging of Ballynafiegh also affected contiguous housing markets and one estate agent noted that the changing social and religious character of the area had impacted on the Ravenhill Road, with Catholic buyers now prepared to spot purchase in a traditionally Protestant neighbourhood.  This trend was also identfied in the Housing Executive’s study on Affordability in the Private Sector in Northern Ireland, which indicated wider search patterns for first time buyers in particular:

Estate agents also suggest that although there is a strong tendency for first time buyers to stay and buy in their own community, circumstances are changing due to house price inflation with an increasing willingness to shift beyond traditional locations (NIHE, 2001, p.85).

Policy and change

The encouragement of mixed tenure and affordable housing development and the creation of sustainable communities suggest an engagement with the idea that social diversity at the neighbourhood scale is an important aspect of long term success. However, these moves run counter to what has been viewed here as deeply embedded social requirements that are antagonistic to social integration between different social strata and identities (Atkinson, 2006, p.831).

In Belfast, these contrary policies are delivered in an increasingly confused and complex way. The proliferation of agencies and governance structures to mange spatial planning has, in particular, reduced the capacity for connected and concerted attempts to direct or extract some gain from the new economy (Tyler, 2004). Certainly, land use policy in the broadest sense, has tapped into the need to address ethno-segregation and its relationship to social need. The Northern Ireland Regional Development Strategy has set Strategic Planning Guideline (SPG) 3 with the twin aims of addressing the worst effects of segregation and interfacing whilst at the same time promoting neutral space and mixing where practicable (DRD, 2001). However, it is difficult to see where or how this objective is being translated into deliverable programmes or actions in area Development Plans. For instance, the Equality Impact Assessment for the current Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan (2015) identifies 408.97 hectares or one-third of all residential zonings that could support mixed religion housing, yet there is nothing in the Plan to suggest how this could be achieved or what planning regime might incentivise  integrated developments (DOE, 2004).

The region’s housing agency, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, also introduced a Community Cohesion policy aimed at removing sectarian graffiti from its estates, supporting community projects at interfaces and developing mixed religion housing (NIHE, 2005). One pilot mixed estate of 20 houses in Enniskillen has been built, although the agency failed to get derogation from Waiting List policy that operates on a strict needs based points system. The derogation would have allowed the Housing Executive to manage allocations and transfers to achieve and maintain a balance of Protestant and Catholic households. Northern Ireland’s main urban regeneration strategy in disadvantaged areas, Neighbourhood Renewal (DSD, 2003) targets integrated development programmes in the 30 most deprived places. It also acknowledges the role of segregation in deepening exclusion and the need to deal with the legacy of territoriality in the context of local development.

However, few of these commitments appear in District Housing Plans or Neighbourhood Renewal Action Plans, which guide financial resource allocations and programme management. Part of the reason is a lack of skills to translate high level commitments to operational practice but the shift in politics and policy toward the market has increasingly marginalised the priority attached to community relations and dependency programmes. The re-formed Northern Ireland Assembly’s Programme for Government and associated Budget signalled a fundamental shift from the public sector to the market as the main driver of growth (OFMDFM 2008a; 2008b). The new Executive, dominated by the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, drawing support mainly from working class Protestant and Catholic communities respectively, enthusiastically dispensed the neo-liberal medicine for a dysfunctional economy, too reliant on subvention, state jobs and complacency. Enterprise and innovation are at the heart of a modernising strategy in which infrastructure will play its role in making the region more globally competitive. This was underscored in the US Investment Conference, held in May 2008 as one of series to stimulate interest in corporate America in Northern Ireland as a ready, profitable investment opportunity, which was already well on the up:

When America’s corporate elite – in Belfast for the Northern Ireland-US investment conference – draw back the curtains of their hotel rooms they will see a city skyline dominated by cranes. Not the great yellow Samson and Goliath cranes of the shipyard, but the work-horses of the construction industry that is rebuilding the city. There is barely a street corner where there is not some concrete evidence of the peace dividend that the city, and indeed the whole province, has reaped in the past decade. From luxury riverside apartments to prime office space, from new retail outlets to leisure facilities this is a boom time Northern Ireland (White, 2008, p.25).

The Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan (2015) provides direction to this new spatial economy and has recommended that 70% of residential development should be located on Brownfield sites and that four new Major Employment Locations (MELS) in Lisburn West, Mallusk, Purdysburn and Titanic Quarter will dominate industrial zonings. Titanic Quarter is especially important in the city’s rehabilitation with a vision ‘as a high profile development firmly rooted in the history and character of Belfast acting as a driver for high quality investment and development in the city’ (http://www.titanic-quarter.com, accessed May 2008).  The project is presented as ‘Europe’s most exciting waterfront’ on a 185 acre site involving the construction of: over 5,000 apartments; 180,000 sq mts of business, education, office and Research and Development floor space; and a mix of bars hotels and leisure facilities totalling 40,000 sq mts. The private sector led development of £1billion is expected to create 20,000 new jobs in the next 15 years.
                                         
How these places fit with the broader economic geography of disadvantage is far from clear. The spatial and skills mismatch experienced by the most disadvantaged communities is accentuated by deeply structural segregation and the level of competence required in the high value service labour market. The accessibility of car borne, highly connected, educationally mobile classes is guaranteed, not least given the juxtaposition of two MELS to the wider south Belfast population. The case study highlighted the emergence of affordability in transitional housing markets and despite a wide ranging review of the issues (Semple Review, 2007) progress has been slow in delivering practical measures to secure balanced communities. There is no equivalent of Section 106 Agreements (which mandate a minimum proportion of social and affordable housing in new schemes) and despite a review of Planning Policy Statement 12 on residential development, planning gain is rarely used to lever affordable or social housing outcomes. Given a policy history in which any investment was prized, there seems to be a certain reluctance to intervene with risk adverse commercial and residential projects. Whilst this caution may be understood in the context of violence, it is less explicable in the contemporary growth economy. Whatever the rhetoric about neutral spaces and mixed religion housing, the local policy discourse is preoccupied with creating an enabling environment for growth and property renewal.

Conclusions

Yiftachel and Ghanem (2004) argued that ethnocratic cities are reproduced when the state deploys policy and resources, directs capital and maintains the hegemony of dominant political groups. In Belfast, governance, capital and ethnicity are dynamic and fluid but the relationship between them is becoming increasingly spatially differentiated. The British state traditionally sought to deploy capital as an instrument of crises management and normalisation during three decades violence. The post-conflict economy has grown selectively both sectorally and spatially. South Belfast in particular is shaped by a concentrated and connected set of processes as the property economy has responded to labour and housing market restructuring. This has brought with it new investment, jobs and wealth but its wider effects are problematic for conflict transformation in the city.

The DUP and Sinn Finn have distanced themselves from the more explicit sharing agenda introduced by Direct Rule Ministers. The latest Programme for Government and associated budget has downgraded the assault on sectarianism and segregation in education, work and residence proposed in the Shared Future approach. The political extremes have negotiated a consensus around the limits to cross-community investment; it is hardly in their political interests to do otherwise. But whole areas and communities have been left behind by a decade of modernity, creating new resentments about who paid most during the Troubles and benefited least during the peace (Aughey, 2005). The city is characterised by new forms of disconnections as social disadvantage and the frictional effects of segregation further exclude the west and north from the economic optimism of the south. Two-thirds of all deaths in Belfast during the Troubles occurred less than 500mts from a peace line and the most segregated wards are also the poorest (Shirlow and Murtagh, 2006, p.73). Immobility is a key index of disadvantage as those with the skills, purchasing power, transport and easy access to employment and consumption are differentiated from those trapped in the sink estates in the inner- and outer-city. This highlights three possible areas for policy development especially to capitalise on growth in a way that is more socially and spatially inclusive.

First, there needs to be a new approach to understanding the role and modes of public transport needed to open opportunity for areas with the highest rates of transport poverty and segregation. The city’s bus system operates along radial routes feeding the city centre but pays little attention to the way in which segregation mediates movement and creates distinctive mental maps that marginalise engagement with the wider city. Flexible and demand responsive transport has been difficult to develop because of financial and legal operating constraints but with devolution the resolution to build a genuinely shared society must find its way out of community relations programmes into mainstream policy domains. Desegregation in north, east and west Belfast is unlikely to happen quickly or easily, thus opening opportunity around access via forms of transport that respond to peoples lived experiences of the city, may help in the short term.

Second, connectivity relates to urban labour markets as well as spatial movement.  Northern Ireland benefited from considerable investment in the social economy with intermediate labour market interventions enjoying particular success with hard to reach groups (Morrissey, 2005). This investment has been dramatically reduced, especially as the EU PEACE funds have been depleted, undermining the start-up investment made in establishing schemes for the city. Traditional skills based programmes are unlikely, on their own, to attract the most marginal and interventions that combine training with patient community development approaches need to be recognised. Specific programmes aimed at interface areas might be one way of assisting in that process. The complex nature of exclusion experienced in these places might invite a generic spatial response in interface planning, matched with the policy enthusiasm and resources that have regenerated Laganside, the Gasworks, city centre and Titanic Quarter. The Belfast Interface Project provides training, support and funding for groups working in peaceline neighbourhoods and is one illustration of innovation and risk taking in difficult circumstances. However, the experience of the project and lessons for mainstream policy and practice has not been capitalised, especially in political circles.

Third, in Britain, the Egan Review redefined the skills set required to develop and maintain Sustainable Communities (Egan, 2004). There has been no equivalent in Northern Ireland but it is clear that a sharper set of competncies to do with managing segregation, connectivity and planning gain are urgently required. This needs to be located within a clearer and simpler policy framework that places the legacy of segregation and exclusion at the heart of urban planning and regeneration. Belfast’s renaissance will be put at risk if the city simply displaces one form of segregation with another. The lateness of these processes and an understanding of experience and practice in other places may provide an opportunity to rethink the purpose and nature of spatial planning in the post-conflict city.

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