IRISH ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2001 RAMADA HOTEL, BELFAST

'The New Belfast: The Best of Both Worlds?' - Brendan O'Connell

Travelling along York Street in the late 1970s my eyes would often seek out a message on a gable end that had been done in true Joycean rather true blue or green fashion: 'Who Would Have Thought It' it read in large black letters. I recalled that sentiment, when faced with the impressive line up of contributors at the Irish Association special weekend conference on The New Belfast: The Best of Both Worlds?' and their allotted task - to distil the essential elements of the city's history and its possible futures.

In his opening address the author of Lost Lives, Brian Feeney, set down what he thought was the problem that other 'frontier' cities had managed to resolve. He demonstrated how as a consequence of rural immigration, political resistance and violence became the norm in response to the arrival in large numbers of minority populations.

While anxious to stress that tensions still existed, he ended by saying that Belfast has still to achieve a similar status to that of Trieste and Brussels today - cities that are divided but that do work well. The implication that Belfast was still a city of 19th century conflicts that it, in a sense has refused to grow up and that it had gotten the polity it deserved, was answered form the floor by a number of speakers.

Jeff Dudgeon (secretary of the Irish Association) pointed out that as cities go, Belfast is a surprisingly good place to live compared to the urban reality of most UK cities. This theme of how modern cities first tended to organise and then dissipate division was also the main theme of Professor Fred Boal's contribution in which he gave the example of how the inhabitants of New York's ethnic neighbourhoods were dispersed as their populations gradually integrated over time.

However he ended with a chilling illustration of how far Belfast had to travel in order to enter this desired state. 'We are here' he said pointing to a place on his graph between the headings 'Segregation and Separation' -just one and a half places above 'Ethnic Cleansing'. Following this Chris McGimpsey spoke without notes about working with opponents in city government and the challenge of bringing a divided city together. This was not without its ironies as he recalled when the chairman of the Cleansing Department had to attend to staff that had just been attacked by the organisation of which he was a leading member. He also spoke of how the level of enmity was still (needlessly) high. It was unfortunate yet understandable, given the recent history of the Shankill that he did not speak or was not asked about his involvement in the successful rebuilding of the Shankill.

Previous to this Bill Morrison, formerly head of the DOE's Belfast Planning Office gave an account, illustrated with slides, of how the city had been developed in the last 100 plus years. Looking at the Victorian building of Royal Avenue and the rebuilding of Corn Market, the delegates took a good deal of pleasure from recognising what is now the underlying fabric of the city. The familiar high highs and low points of pre and post WW II planning got an understandably rapid treatment, the establishment of the Green Belt, the 1963 Ring Road Plan, the 1960s high rises, the 80s housing schemes. Morrison then ended his history rather optimistically illustrating Messieurs Trimble and Hume in their triumbarate handshake with Bono at the Waterfront Hall peace concert in 1998.

At this point it would have been appropriate for the delegates to get on the bus and take the planned tour of the cities new developments. Instead Arthur Acheson of the Boyd Partnership delivered an illustrated critique of the various recent developments which Morrison saw as proud achievements -but were, in important instances too fragmented and contradictory to make sense at street level. He demonstrated how in particular the Connswater Holywood Arches scheme had simply abolished the old streets and installed a blank business park which was depopulated and through which only the occasional, confused delivery driver crawled.

Similarly the BT tower section of Laganside walk had been allowed to crowd out pedestrians who wanted to approach the river with a large anonymous wall. Even if you ignored this and attempted to walk along the water front walkway it came to a very badly planned dead end.

Opprobrium was also heaped on how the planners had isolated rather than integrated the Customs House site from the riverfront - it being one of a number of isolated 'islands' that did not connect to the fabric that Laganside was attempting to establish.

Perhaps the worst example of this was how the planned cultural quarter next to St Anne's Cathedral had been delayed and reworked by the planners to the extent that very little of it seemed to make any sense. Where Dublin's Temple Bar had developed either side of a small accessible pedestrianised street, the Cathedral Quarter is on different sides of three large city blocks and thus, in practical terms is not a quarter at all.

The next session appropriately enough dealt with the cultural representations of Belfast and its presentation of the arts. Mark Carruthers and Stephen Douds both of BBC Northern Ireland launched their book Stepping Stones on the last thirty years of 'the highs and lows of northern theatre, poetry, fiction, visual arts and music.' Rather oddly it was claimed that Belfast as a subject had been largely ignored in recent art and literature. Although Mark recognised the work of the playwright Gary Mitchell his plays were mostly about Rathcoole which was one of the city's remoter parts. During the question and answer cession it emerged that Mark Carruthers was also personally concerned about how political problems had now taken a 'culturalist' turn. Those who had formerly insisted that something was part of a political tradition were now defending it in terms of it being part of a 'cultural identity'.

Dealing directly with Carruthers claim about the representation of Belfast, the next contributor the poet and critic Patricia Craig referred to the success of the novelist Ciaran Carson whose two novels about Belfast, the Star Factory and Shamrock Tea had marked out a new place in the city's cultural history for those who lived in it. Ending with one of her own poems about Belfast she managed to convey the atmosphere it tends to instil in its inhabitants - a strange combination of disquiet and urban unease which is projected outwards and on to the surrounding hills which they in turn appear to homoeopathically absorb.

The last guest contribution from Lance Pettit, author of Screening Ireland started by showing how by contrast the standard cinematic overview of Belfast was that of a heavily industrialised town dominated by the shipyards and docks (As in Odd Man Out). Rarely, was there a sense that Belfast exists in close proximity to its rural surroundings. Rather, it has often been portrayed as a threatening alien nighttown (most recently in Resurrection Man). However, some greenery has begun to appear which he illustrated with a clip from Divorcing Jack which featured the trees in Botanic Avenue in full bloom. In the question and answer session the now common observation was made that most films about Northern Ireland and Belfast tended to be constructed on Republican versus British, Loyalist versus Nationalist lines and that representations of Protestants as a result left a lot to be desired. It was then cordially pointed out that he was presenting a talk on that very same subject later that evening at the Ormeau Bath gallery followed by a special screening of December Bride and that all were invited.

After some pointed remarks about the dangers of focusing on ethnicity and the sectarian divide from the former president of the Irish Association, Dennis Kennedy, the delegates departed for their tour of the Laganside developments. As they did so, I arranged to meet someone near York Street, not to see if my gable wall was still there, but to enjoy some lively company at one of the few places that has recently been constructed in the spirit of radical-nature loving-non-sectarian-poetry: The John Hewitt.