Remaking the City: the Role of Culture in Belfast

Abstract

This chapter explores the diverse contribution of culture in regenerating a city like Belfast, badly divided both in social and sectarian terms. Beginning with a brief historical account of Belfast’s industrial development, it identifies the sequence of planning initiatives in more recent decades in order to reshape the city in a more post-industrial period. It notes the emphasis accorded the city centre as an assumed neutral space capable of accommodating new growth in the service sector, and the relationship between this revitalisation and the prospects of the city’s most deprived communities. At this point, the chapter considers the potential of the cultural industries in the city as a whole, and in particular in those communities, such as West Belfast, most scarred by economic restructuring and political violence. There is a problem here. The very term ‘cultural industries’ is ill-defined. Clearly, this sector is significant and growing. But, at the most generous interpretation, it can include every barman and waiter working at the interface between tourism and the cultural sector. However, whatever the problem with precision in this regard, the chapter considers the capacity of Belfast to deploy the sector as a contribution to regeneration (especially through the notion of a ‘cultural corridor’) while coping with deep social and sectarian division. Outlining the difference between ethnic, neutral, transcendent and shared cultural space, it examines the possibility of a city whose international appeal could rest with a more multicultural future, where diversity is prized as a social and economic asset. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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