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201 Belfast through the Troubles: Socioeconomic Change, Segregation, and Violence The city of Belfast provides an illustration of much of the division and interdependence that have taken place in Ireland over the last two centuries. Belfast’s success as an industrial city did much to separate the economy and outlook of the Protestant northeast of Ulster from the rest of Ireland. That success had much to do with developing strong links between this part of Ireland and Britain, but it also brought many Catholics from elsewhere in Ireland to the city in search of jobs. This left Belfast with complex spatioreligious patterns that, when the Troubles started in the late 1960s, were particularly contested, resulting, as chapter 10 identified, in the city being the focus for much of the ensuing violence. Over the same period, as described in chapter 9, Belfast went through a period of rapid deindustrialization. Against this background, this chapter first examines the evolving religious geography of the city and related developments in residential segregation. Second, it considers how Belfast has changed socially and economically over the thirty-year period between 1971 and 2001. Third, it looks at the patterns of violence within the city. Finally, the chapter draws these themes together to show how changing spatioreligious patterns and levels of residential segregation are related to wider socioeconomic trends, thereby trying to set Belfast’s experience within the broader context of urban change as observed in other societies. Defining the boundaries of Belfast is not as easy as it might at first appear. There is no government authority that covers the whole metropolitan area or conurbation, and, indeed, the drawing of local government boundaries and decisions about the numbers and shapes of these units are highly controversial. The fifty-one electoral wards that make up the Belfast District Council provide a very tight definition of Belfast that excludes neighborhoods that should be considered to be part of “the city.” Analyses that focus on the Belfast District Council therefore only deal with the core of the city, ignoring most of the urban fringe and suburbs. Because of this, we use the Belfast Urban Area (BUA) to delimit the city. Although this was originally developed for use in the 1991 census—and was not used in 1971 and 2001—it is appropriate because it covers most of the built-up area that can be considered to be part of late twentieth-century Belfast and escapes the geographical confines of the Belfast District Council area. The BUA incorporates parts of Lisburn, Newtownabbey, Castlereagh, and north Down, thereby allowing us to examine changes in the urban core and in the outer suburbs together. The BUA is shown in figure 11.1, which also locates many of the places described below. In this chapter we use the 100 m grid square product for 1971 to 2001 for our analysis. This permits demographic, social, and economic profiles 1 1 Troubled Geographies 202 to be constructed at a very small spatial scale, equivalent to two American football fields. This finely meshed analysis is useful in urban areas where populations are dense and where large social or demographic changes can occur over short distances. The use of these data also allows detailed comparisons of how places changed through time. Religious and Residential Segregation: The “Exceptional City” Figure 11.2 shows Belfast’s religious geographies in 1971 and 2001. Moving clockwise from the south shore of Belfast Lough, the basic pattern is of Protestants in the east and a relatively mixed area in the more middle-class south. West of this, the Catholic heartland runs southwest from the city center through the Falls to Andersonstown. North of this is the Protestant Shankill, which runs due west from the city center. North of this again is a more complex part of the city that comprises both Catholic and Protestant areas, including the Ardoyne and New Lodge. Moving north away from the city center, the city again becomes dominated by Protestants. Figure 11.2 suggests that by 2001 Belfast was more Catholic and more segregated than it was in 1971, and this is backed up by the figures. In 1971 Belfast’s population was 24.8 percent Catholic. This rose to 31.6 percent in 1991 and to 35.2 percent or 39.5 percent by religious affiliation and community background, respectively, in 2001. While these observations are simple, the path by which Belfast reached this endpoint in 2001 is complicated , involving absolute and relative shifts in population...

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