Its worthwhile tracking the media story which unfolded immediately after the announcement. Beginning when the BBC's Political Editor for NI; Mark Davenport, asked if 'the devil was in the detail' given the lack of any specific details on housing units/ or their sectarian allocation based on the 90% Catholic/ Nationalist/ Republican imbalance on the 2,400 + waiting list for social housing in the North of the City. The following night Mandy McAuley's Spotlight investigation delved into how Minister McCausland justified his cancellation of the previous Social Development Minister's plan for 200 + housing units within months of taking over responsibility for Housing, Welfare and Regeneration and how the allegedly sectarian leaflets issued by the Housing Executive (which is a body funded by his Department) encouraged exclusively only those from the Protestant/ Unionist/ Loyalist community to move into the area as well as the exclusion of the NIHE itself from having an input into the current development.
Then on Thursday and, again, last Tuesday during two dedicated radio shows by Stephen Nolan (here and here) there was an attempt to shift the focus on to the Alliance Party's decision to walk out of Stormont's 'Shared Future' working group and the SDLP's intimation that a reduction in housing on the Girdwood site formed part of the PSF/ DUP deal on the Maze/ Long Kesh site's revised and reduced regeneration bid which saw the First Minister perform a volte face from describing the project initially as 'a shrine to terror' to 'a beacon for tourists' achieved (ironically) through the removal of a shared sports stadium.
The focus was kept mainly on the site in the coverage given by the Irish News with Allison Morris using her column on Wednesday to assert that 'the Hillview retail park [built nearby in 2003] has been held up as an example of how not to regenerate an interface area' and pointing to the site becoming a potential wasteland utilised solely by learner drivers and market traders for years to come. The following day, the normally quite incisive satirical commentator; Newton Emerson, descended into obfuscation when he closed his column with:
In general, any reluctance people have to live in mixed areas or even evolving interfaces comes down to fear of harassment. The response by the authorities to such incidents ranges from the useless to the cynically fatalistic, which fills nobody with the confidence to be an urban pioneer. By law, every individual has the right to live in peace, in whichever 'community' they choose to make their home. We should focus on upholding that right above all. From it, everything else can follow.
The particular sectarian geography at the interface around Clifton Park Avenue 'evolved' out of the violent cleansing of Catholics in 1996 and would most likely be further entrenched under the current proposals so how these supposedly pioneering urbanists (or the average citizen on a waiting list) can be filled with 'confidence' (or be provided with their human right to adequate housing) by an alternative arrangement to the current system of consociational indecision with it's attendant crumbling and corrupted public, community and voluntary sectors would be worthy of elaborating upon and striving towards rather than the inferred call to the gentrifiers or state forces to step in when things inevitably go awry.
Housing academic, Jenny Muir, gives a good run down on her blog of the run up, since 2006, to the point where it has been 'fudged again' but resigns herself to the status quo of the £9 million EU Peace III funded 'Community Hub' which is likely to house some schemes by the University of Ulster or Belfast Met as part of their campus relocations while house building is put off for an unspecified number of years. Nelson McCausland also sets out a chronology of failure in his blog while washing his hands of any responsibility from the current debacle primarily by blaming his predecessors.
Perhaps the best insight into the actual potential functions for the site took place during the Place Winter School in March by Mark Hackett and assorted architects and urbanists from the Forum for an Alternative Belfast during an evening presentation of their findings (which this blog participated in and surreptitiously recorded hence the poor audio):
Prior to the involving themselves in 'Occupy Belfast' protests and camp (and the spin off occupation of the former Bank of Ireland as part of a campaign to actively house the homeless and to raise the demand for citizens to 'Take back the City') this blog braved the elements to join with community groups in the local area, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the Irish Socialist Network, Republican Network for Unity, People Before Profit and independent activists as part of the North Belfast Civil Rights Association's three day camp on the Girdwood site that runs along Clifton Park Avenue and will not hide their interest in this issue nor the fact that they will continue to work with those active on the ground to ensure that this issue is not allowed to be parked up for another few years. Girdwood and the role of Gerrymandering and Gentrification in the denying of Civil and Human Rights for Belfast's Citizens is an issue which is not going to go away..
