Belfast has been described as the most car-oriented city in the United Kingdom. More than most cities, extensive swathes of public space are given over to traffic circulation, much of this configured as one-way multi-lane trunk arteries. These spaces are highly repellent for pedestrians and cyclists. How useful are they really?

This accordingly has a severe impact on the amount of retail and other uses that will be attracted to such streets. Multi-lane roads and flyovers make it difficult to reach certain parts of the city except by car. A tangle of road and rail infrastructure cuts off the riverside, and, when there, make it unpleasant to stay.

These characteristics of infrastructure have also been used as an instrument of urban spatial control, separating and segregating different parts of the city. The construction of trunk roads surrounding the city centre facilitated its management as a separate ‘control zone’. But they also cut it off from its hinterland, leading to the loss of business, the duplication of services, and ‘building in’ the separation of communities.

The Westlink most notably was used to separate the two communities in West Belfast from the city centre. Interestingly, however, the issue of further Westlink expansion has recently brought together the two communities in united, if rather uneasy, opposition. The two halves of Roden Street cooperated in protest on environmental grounds against a wider, higher capacity ‘Westlink’. Might they take this idea further, reimagine their environment, reinvent infrastructure as connective rather than divisive?