Opinion

Newton Emerson: Time to make the areas around major roads less soul-destroying

Infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon at the site of the proposed York Street Interchange project.
Infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon at the site of the proposed York Street Interchange project. Infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon at the site of the proposed York Street Interchange project.

Cities around the world are ripping up or burying major roads to build linear parks and human-scale streets and to reconnect communities. It is the height of urban planning fashion.

The obvious Belfast equivalent of these landmark projects would be roofing over the Westlink, which is never going to happen - but Stormont has a realistic chance to bring a little of that vision to the York Street interchange.

Belfast City Council has withdrawn support for the new motorway junction unless it is redesigned to meet air quality, housing, environment and “place making” objectives. The council does not have final say but its withdrawal was backed by the SDLP, whose infrastructure minister, Nichola Mallon, had already paused the scheme for an independent review into identical concerns.

‘Place making’ refers to reviving the parts of Belfast interred or cut off by the existing tangle of motorways, ramps and junctions. The whole inner north of the city, once its commercial heart, is a tarmac wasteland. This has only been highlighted by plonking the new Ulster University campus and its student accommodation blocks on the islands marooned between eight-lane roads.

There is increasing interest in restoring the lost neighbourhood of Sailortown, which would help address housing need.

Business groups say a free-flowing motorway junction remains essential. Although that still looks likely to be built, there could be far fewer ramps and surface streets connecting it to the city centre. Last week, Mallon raised the possibility of congestion charging in Belfast, to predictable outrage. The same aims could be met with less controversy by quietly removing superfluous roads.

The current plan would see the motorway dropped into a cutting below York Street. Better landscaping and development could make the area less soul-destroying and create a walking route in people’s minds that begins knitting the centre and north of the city back together. This is believed to be the minimum recommendation of the independent review, which was kept confidential to encourage forthright contributions.

Funding for the interchange is already presumed in Stormont’s finances. A more humane design could come in cheaper, or at least less over-budget, while any land this freed up for development would potentially be worth a fortune.

Shrinking the roads around inner north Belfast is part of the ‘Bolder Vision’ plan for the city, being developed by the council and Stormont, and which Mallon wants to tie into the interchange plan. One of its key proposals is turning the eight-lane inner ring road into a more normal city street, hopefully before thousands of students start staggering across it between their halls and the Cathedral Quarter.

This could have been paid for by the developers of the student accommodation. Stormont and councils have near-limitless powers to make ‘planning agreements’ requiring developers to build or fund road improvements, landscaping and civic amenities. It is lamentable that not a single penny appears to have been extracted from developers investing hundreds of millions of pounds. But it is never too late to start: the latest wave of investment in inner north Belfast is for build-to-rent apartments.

In 2013, an independent report commissioned by the mayor of London recommended building above the city’s roads to create space for housing, reconnect communities and raise revenue from developers.

Obviously, given land prices, this is more viable in London than in Belfast but it can still work occasionally in small cities. Portsmouth is considered to have a groundbreaking example, with a community centre built over a dual-carriageway. Belfast also has an example, although not over a road. Two decades ago, Northern Ireland Railways - part of Mallon’s empire - put a concrete roof on a stretch of line in south Belfast, between Botanic and City Hospital stations. The original plan for apartments on top came to nothing but a student accommodation block is now nearing completion.

There is always going to be a motorway around inner north Belfast and large parts of it will always have to be elevated to get over the Lagan. However, putting just one or two Botanic-type structures above it as it passes beneath York Road could conceal it completely from pedestrians, transforming the psychology of walking, working and living in the area.

All these lessons could then be applied to the tangle of roads cutting off inner east Belfast, and the Broadway roundabout dividing south and west Belfast, and the ludicrous spaghetti junction surrounding the lost village of Greencastle, where some of Sailortown’s residents were relocated.

That would be a bold enough vision for Belfast.