The Urban Villages initiative, one of Stormont’s flagship community relations projects, has barely got off the ground since its high-profile launch six years ago due to the complexity of dealing with scrappy little patches of land.
Five residential areas of Belfast and Derry are meant to have their physical environments transformed, mainly by regenerating vacant sites and derelict buildings.
The Belfast Telegraph reports only a fifth of the £108 million budget has been spent, mostly on minor works.
In Derry, what little progress has occurred has only created more of an eyesore: derelict buildings have been demolished but negotiations with the landowner drag on, leaving the middle of the Bogside looking like a bonfire collection site.
The commercial hearts of most of Northern Ireland’s towns and cities are also full of vacant sites and derelict buildings. Land-banking by developers has left large sections of Belfast falling down.
But developers and private landowners should not be pantomime villains in this issue. Public bodies cause at least as much of the problem through their possessiveness, inertia and infighting. They own many of the little sites and structures whose dereliction blights every type of urban area across Northern Ireland.
When communities take initiative over derelict private land, the first instinct of officials is to stop them. A celebrated example is Peas Park in Skegoneill, North Belfast, which the council has repeatedly tried to shut because its unauthorised existence is an affront to bureaucracy. Inspectors have been particular exercised by the threat of the park’s chickens wandering into the on-site shop.
When public bodies are not arguing with communities or landowners they argue with each other. The public right of way to Greenisland’s beach has been unlawfully blocked for years because NI Water and the council cannot agree how to split the tiny cost of maintaining a short access road.
These are the reasons we live in a built environment of random squalor, with effects that go far beyond unsightliness. Waste ground and dereliction are contagious, encouraging fly-tipping, anti-social behaviour and more importantly the sense of a lack of control over our surroundings that fosters apathy and helplessness.
Although the Urban Villages project recognised all these problems, its only approach to tackling them has been a conventional effort to untangle the knots of ownership and officialdom, to no avail.
Over the same period, the rest of the UK has sought to cut the knot with fresh thinking.
In 2018, Scottish government agencies set up a Vacant and Derelict Land Taskforce.
Its report, published two years later, found half Scotland’s population lives within 500m of a derelict site, with consequences for well-being so “enormous” it contributes to Scotland’s poor public health.
The report made 13 recommendations that are now guiding policy. The first was to compile a publicly available register of vacant and derelict land. Merely establishing ownership of such sites can obstruct improvement for decades.
A fund should then be established to help communities buy and redevelop small sites “that are causing harm in their local area”.
Government should use the tax system to discourage dereliction, while public funding should only be given to “responsible landowners”. This would be part of creating a new corporate culture of social responsibility, where there is “an understanding that it is unacceptable to let land become derelict or left vacant indefinitely.”
In England, the UK government has made a simpler and more radical proposal: any unused publicly-owned land or buildings would have to be sold to any individual or community group who requests it. Known as “right to develop”, the examples usually cited by the government are buying a derelict patch of land behind your house or acquiring one of England’s 100,000 abandoned council-owned garages. Individuals or communities could also order unused public land to be put on the market, even if they do not want to buy it themselves. The proposals completed public consultation last year, although promised legislation has so far failed to materialise.
The Urban Villages project is described by Stormont’s executive office as empowering communities through regeneration. Perhaps that puts the cart before the horse. Giving communities power over their surroundings is the essential first step to regeneration. There could be rapid progress against vacancy and dereliction if Northern Ireland’s large community and voluntary sector was able to take the lead.
It is tempting to ask if some of our more muscular community activism might be steered in this direction.
Murals and memorials are tolerated on public property. Why not flowerbeds, benches, ‘parklets’ and more?