Belfast, Northern Ireland

Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland. During the latter half of the twentieth century, Belfast was the site of a deadly conflict between Protestants and Catholics. Although a tenuous peace was established with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Belfast remained segregated along religious lines. The St. Andrews Agreement of 2006 marked the end of the decades long "Troubles." This is the term used to refer to the political and military conflict between Irish Protestants loyal to England and Irish Catholic Republicans seeking an independent Irish state. The agreement, praised worldwide as an example of political and cultural compromise, outlined the reformation of a united Northern Ireland Assembly in which both groups share power. In recent years, Belfast's economy has improved and has been able to finance large-scale redevelopment.

Landscape

Belfast is situated on the eastern edge of Northern Ireland on the southwest bank of the Belfast Lough, an inlet of the Irish Sea that feeds the River Lagan. The river flows south from the Belfast Lough, dividing East Belfast and the City Centre. Extending from the southwest to the northwest is a range of rolling hills called the Belfast Hills. To the north lies the Antrim Plateau.

Northern Ireland's largest city in terms of size, Belfast has an area of 114.9 square kilometers (44.3 square miles) including inland bodies of water. Belfast is divided into five parliamentary constituencies: the City Centre, North Belfast, South Belfast, East Belfast, and West Belfast. It is also divided into four cultural quarters: the Titanic Quarter in industrial East Belfast, where the luxury liner Titanic was built in 1909; the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht Quarter in West Belfast; the Cathedral Quarter by St. Anne's Cathedral to the north of the City Centre; and the Queen's Quarter in South Belfast, where Queen's University is located.

Greater Belfast is composed of the city proper and several of its surrounding towns, boroughs, and suburbs. This region is, in turn, part of the Belfast metropolitan area, a 960-square-kilometer (370.6-square-mile) expanse of even more surrounding boroughs, small towns and suburbs.

Belfast has a mild climate due to its proximity to the Gulf Stream–warmed Irish Sea. Summer temperatures range from average lows of around 11 degrees Celsius (52 degrees Fahrenheit) to average highs of around 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit). Winter temperatures range from average lows of around 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit) to average highs of 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit). There is considerable rainfall each month, resulting in a yearly average of 845 millimeters (33 inches). Belfast is far enough north of the equator that it experiences long summer days and long winter nights.

Climate change in Belfast has caused sea levels to rise 3mm per year. Throughout Northern Ireland, there is an increased risk of flooding. Heavy rains overtask drainage systems. Increased temperatures threaten agriculture.

People

The largest city in Northern Ireland in terms of population, Belfast has an estimated 342,560 residents within the city limits in 2022. The Belfast metropolitan area is the largest in Northern Ireland and one of the largest in the United Kingdom in terms of population. About one-third of all Northern Ireland inhabitants reside in the Belfast metropolitan area.

There is a very small percentage of ethnic minorities in Belfast—only 1.3 percent of the population—and most are of Chinese or eastern European descent. Roughly one-half of all ethnic minorities live in South Belfast. In 2022, Northern Ireland had more Catholics (46 percent) than Protestants (44 percent). By tradition, Catholics favor Irish independence, while Protestants want Ireland to remain part of Great Britain. The history of conflict between the two groups has led to religious segregation in Belfast, especially in poor areas. Over twenty "peace lines"—physical barriers intended to curb violence—separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods; Northern Ireland legislature is committed to the removal of all peace lines by 2023, and in 2016 it began the slow process of knocking down walls. West Belfast is composed mostly of Catholic neighborhoods; East Belfast of Protestant neighborhoods; and City Centre, South Belfast, and North Belfast an even mix of the two.

English is the de facto language of Northern Ireland and is spoken by all Belfast natives. A small percentage speaks Ulster Irish, the version of the Irish language spoken primarily in Northern Ireland. An effort to preserve the Irish language has resulted in the formation of an Irish-speaking quarter in West Belfast called the Gaeltacht Quarter. The use of the Irish language is politically contentious as it is identified with Catholicism.

Economy

During the Industrial Revolution and for a period afterward, Belfast was Europe's primary manufacturer of ships, ship parts, linen, and rope. Belfast's manufacturing industry deteriorated as the twentieth century progressed, partly due to a weakened British steel industry. Violence and political unrest in Belfast beginning in the 1970s further crippled its economy, already suffering from manufacturing sector losses.

Belfast's economy has been in a state of recovery since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Peace is attracting Northern Irish and international investors who had previously shied away from the city. This has resulted in more job opportunities—by 2013, Belfast saw a ten-year increase in jobs of 6 percent, and two-thirds of the top fifty companies in Northern Ireland are headquartered in Belfast.

Belfast's financial services, business services, information technology (IT) development, IT research, biotechnology, and tourism sectors, all traditionally underdeveloped, are growing considerably. In addition, Belfast's software engineering, cyber security, and aerospace industries also grew in the late 2010s. Belfast is Northern Ireland's commercial and financial hub, with 24 percent of employees in the business and financial services sectors and 16 percent in the health industry. The city had a survival rate of Indigenous firms of more than 50 percent in 2017.

The manufacturing sector, once the backbone of the Belfast economy, has declined, but the city is still home to half the manufacturing jobs in Northern Ireland. Service-oriented companies are replacing manufacturing companies as major employers. The factories that do remain manufacture ships, aircraft, textiles, carpet, tobacco goods, and packaged food products for export. Trade between Belfast and the rest of Europe is facilitated by Belfast's large port in Belfast Harbor and its two airports.

Numerous redevelopment efforts have taken place in Belfast to further stimulate its economy. The Titanic Quarter, previously the shipyard that had built the RMS Titanic, has been turned into a suburban waterfront community interspersed with office buildings. The Cathedral Quarter and the City Centre are home to many newly constructed restaurants, bars, apartments, and hotels. These redevelopment efforts have led to an increase in tourism. In addition, filming of the HBO hit series Game of Thrones (2011–18) in Belfast and the surrounding areas helped drive film tourism to the area. Between 2010 and 2019, tourists visiting film sets in Northern Ireland contributed £251 million to the economy.

Landmarks

One of Belfast's most famous landmarks is its city hall located in Donegall Square, a public square in the middle of City Centre. City hall is an ornate, century-old building constructed of white Portland stone and Italian marble in the classical Renaissance style. On its grounds are gardens, a statue of Queen Victoria, and a memorial to the victims of the sinking of the Titanic.

Southwest of Donegall Square is the Grand Opera House, a Victorian theater opened in 1895. The Grand Opera House is still in use today, staging performances of everything from ballet to musicals. The historic Crown Liquor Saloon, Belfast's illustrious Victorian pub and tourist spot, is a few blocks away.

Other famous Victorian structures include the curved iron and glass Palm House in South Belfast's Botanic Gardens, St. George's Market east of Donegall Square, and Belfast Castle in West Belfast.

Cave Hill in the Belfast Hills is a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts. A series of Neolithic caves carved into a 360-meter (1,181-foot) basalt cliff, Cave Hill overlooks North Belfast. Black Mountain in West Belfast is one of the highest points in Belfast. Also part of the Belfast Hills, it is a popular hiking spot.

Sports fans flock to the Odyssey Complex, a massive ten-thousand-seat sports arena/entertainment venue in East Belfast where Belfast's ice hockey team, the Belfast Giants, play. In addition to an arena, the Odyssey has a science center, an IMAX movie theater, restaurants, clubs, bowling lanes, and video arcades. In 2012, Titanic Belfast, a monument to the city's maritime history and museum featuring Titanic artifacts, opened on the former Harland & Wolff shipyard.

History

The region that would become Belfast was inhabited as early as nine thousand years ago by Neolithic farmers. Celts from central Europe arrived in 800 BCE, bringing with them their knowledge of iron-working and a language that would evolve into Ulster Irish.

Catholic Normans under the leadership of English king Henry II invaded Ireland in 1169 CE. In 1172, Ireland was given to Henry II by the pope.

Catholicism flourished in Ireland in spite of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, during which England split from the Catholic Church. For the next hundred years, wars were fought on Irish soil between Irish Catholic descendents of the original Norman invaders and the newly-arrived Protestant English.

Belfast was formally colonized in the early seventeenth century by Protestant English and Scottish settlers who forcibly drove Irish Catholic landowners out of the Ulster region (where Belfast is located). By the end of the seventeenth century, Protestants dominated the Ulster region and many others. The remaining Catholics were subjugated under discriminatory Penal Laws, to prevent further Catholic uprisings.

Belfast's transformation from a small community into a major industrial center began in the eighteenth century with a linen manufacturing industry. The addition of mechanized flax spinners to cotton mills in the mid-1800s turned Belfast's insignificant linen industry into an internationally competitive one. Belfast's other industry, shipbuilding, grew considerably after engineering firm Harland & Wolff built a massive shipyard next to the River Lagan in 1853.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Belfast, which had been granted official city status by Queen Victoria in 1888, was the largest and most industrialized city in Ireland. Its population of 20,000 in 1800 had risen to nearly 400,000 in spite of a mid-nineteenth century potato famine that decimated the populations of many other Irish cities. It had also become the top manufacturer of linen in the world, and a leading manufacturer of ships.

The idea of Irish independence from England divided Ireland into pro-independence and anti-independence political camps around the beginning of the twentieth century. Residents of the northern region wanted to remain part of England, while those in the south wanted Ireland to be an independent country. Although the bid for independence was not necessarily motivated by religious sectarianism, the majority of Irish Catholics sided with the pro-independence nationalists and Protestants with the anti-independence unionists.

In 1920, England bowed to nationalist pressure. It partitioned Ireland into Northern Ireland with Belfast as its capital, and Southern Ireland. Although still part of England, each had its own parliament. In 1921, Southern Ireland was granted even more independence, and in 1949, it became the Republic of Ireland, a completely autonomous entity.

Belfast did not survive the partitioning unscathed. A Protestant Unionist city with a substantial Catholic Nationalist population, 450 people were killed there between 1920 and 1922 in sectarian violence. Many Catholics left, but those who remained were discriminated against and segregated into Catholic neighborhoods.

Belfast was ground zero for a massive outbreak of sectarian violence from the 1970s to the 1990s. During the "Troubles," paramilitary groups representing Nationalist Catholics and Unionist Protestants committed acts of terrorism against each other, often destroying public property and harming innocent civilians in the process. The mobilization of the British army as well as the establishment of peace line boundaries did little to stop the fighting. Excluding minor conflicts, sectarian violence ended in 1998 with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Both parties renounced violence and pledged cooperation in a unity government following the signing of the 2006 St. Andrews Agreement. Nonetheless, scattered incidents of violence have occurred in Belfast in the years following the agreement.

Ten years after the signing of the St. Andrews Agreement, in February 2016, the eight-foot peace wall in Ardoyne, north Belfast, was knocked down after dividing the area for thirty years. It was a significant development in the city's goal to remove all peace walls by 2023, however, many of the older generation still opposed their removal in 2019.

In 2018, Belfast announced a £500 million regeneration project, labeled Tribeca Belfast, to revitalize the city center.

Bibliography

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McKeown, Gareth. "First Phase of £500m Belfast Regeneration Project to be Delivered by 2021." The Irish News, 29 Nov. 2018, www.irishnews.com/business/2018/11/29/news/first-phase-of-500m-belfast-regeneration-project-to-be-delivered-by-2021-1496618/. Accessed 3 June 2019.

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