BELFAST CASE STUDY

Belfast Case Study



Belfast Case Study

Introduction Belfast is located on the northeast coast of the island of Ireland, within the region of Northern Ireland which is a component part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The city evolved from a nucleus at the point where the River Lagan meets Belfast Lough, which is an inlet of the Irish Sea, and its settlement pattern since the beginning has been dictated by the physical constraints imposed by the sea on the one hand and the surrounding hills to the north-west and southeast on the other. These comprise the Antrim Plateau, with its steep, precipitous, basalt formations to the northwest, and the more undulating hills and drumlins of Co. Down to the southwest (Boal 1995).

Between these, towards the southwest, runs the River Lagan in its picturesque valley, focus of the eighteenth and nineteenth century linen industry which provided the economic base of the region until the twentieth century. It has traditionally provided a communication corridor from the inland plains of Northern Ireland to the sea, containing an eighteenth-century canal, a nineteenth century railway and, more recently, a twentieth-century motorway to supplement the original track and road systems. The growth of the city was dictated by this communication system and the enclosing hills - it followed the valley and skirted the Lough, ultimately climbing the hills until restricted by twentieth-century planning containment policies.

The beachfront Hall adopted the recommendations and its procedures Team, in conjunction with the Council's Energy agent, formed the "Energy activity assembly" and conceived an power activity Plan.

Meeting quarterly the assembly implemented many of the recommendations including a staff perception events with esteem to swapping off unnecessary lights and concluding thermal barriers. At the same time the energy supervisor was empowered to commence fine tweaking investigations on vegetation usage.

In the jump of 2004 the first plans to improve power effectiveness at the beachfront Hall begun to generate significant keepings. These initiatives encompassed supervising and control of overnight burdens and fine tweaking of vegetation procedure time span simultaneously with the installation of variable hasten drives on the major airhandling reduced Temperature Hot Water (LTHW) pumps.

Cost

Belfast's cost remained strong through the first part of the twentieth century, boosted by demand for its shipping and aircraft products during and after the second world war, but global economic shifts in the late twentieth century saw it facing the same problems as other manufacturing-based urban areas - declining markets for its relatively expensively- produced goods and the growing domination of a service-based economy for which the city (unlike Dublin, for example) was ill-prepared by its industrial tradition. Relative peripherality in European terms as well as internal community divisions exacerbated these problems, and the city experienced a slow decline through the 'seventies and 'eighties. The ceasefires of the mid-nineties and the growth of the neighbouring Republic of Ireland economy heralded a significant change in regional economic fortunes, and by the end of the decade the Economic Development Strategy Review (EDSRSG 1999) ...