The Tribeca Belfast redevelopment proposed by Castlebrooke for the Cathedral Quarter since 2017 was sold as a bold step toward urban regeneration. In glossy brochures, flashy statements and city council partnerships, it promised revitalisation, new opportunities, and a modernised city centre based on ‘heritage led’ redevelopment.
But eight years on, the reality is far from the promised vision. The site has become a case study in how neoliberal urban development (investment-led, for profit regeneration) can hollow out a city’s heritage, community, and economic diversity.
At the heart of this model is speculative urbanism: the treatment of city space as a financial asset rather than a living environment.
Decisions are guided by property values, investor returns, and market trends, not by the needs of residents or the preservation of place. As urban theorist David Harvey argues, cities increasingly compete like businesses, packaging themselves for global capital. In this race, culture, social ties, and history are often the first casualties.
Tribeca’s long delays have produced what is known as ‘planning blight’, a situation where land earmarked for redevelopment is left to decay, sometimes intentionally. This neglect drives down value, weakens community resistance, and builds a narrative of decline that makes drastic redevelopment seem inevitable.
Similar tactics have played out in parts of Detroit and Berlin, where stalled projects became tools for reshaping neighbourhoods in favour of private investors.
Meanwhile, the everyday life of the area has suffered. Small, locally owned businesses in the Cathedral Quarter have been displaced, and very few of them are left in operation.
These are not just shops; they are informal community hubs, economic lifelines, and keepers of local culture. Their loss strips away not only jobs, but the sense of place that makes a city feel like itself.
Developers often market projects by celebrating the ‘authentic’ character of the very neighbourhoods that their plans will dismantle.
But once these small businesses are gone, they are rarely replaced with anything that serves the same social role. Instead, what emerges is a sanitised, consumption-focused environment, what some critics call ‘pacification by cappuccino’. Public space becomes somewhere to spend money, not to gather, create, or participate.
Yet resistance exists. Grassroots campaigns like Let’s Get It Right (2004) and SaveCQ (since 2017) and many other small arts, community and heritage groups have objected to the developer’s proposals.
The groups have simplified the messages of the developers so the public could understand what those large planning documents and flashy images really mean.
The Save CQ campaign, with its motto ‘develop, not demolish’ gained public support by putting forward alternative visions grounded in heritage, inclusivity, and genuine public use.
They showed that development can be done differently, if policy frameworks protect communities from being sidelined and if heritage is treated as a living asset rather than an obstacle to profit.
The way in which Tribeca is deployed reflects a wider trend: public authorities acting as facilitators for private capital.
In Belfast, planning policies have often prioritised short-term economic boosts over heritage protection, social cohesion, or sustainable growth. The public interest is reframed as financial growth, measured in investor confidence rather than in community wellbeing.
But now the narrative of Belfast City Council has changed, providing a sliver of hope. Councillors have proposed using vesting powers to take control of the site, initially as a large vesting operation and more recently, and pragmatically, through the vesting of two listed buildings on the site.
This is a positive development, but without deeper reforms to rebalance power between public and private interests, such a move risks being symbolic.
Tribeca is more than a single stalled project. It’s a warning about what happens when cities are redesigned to serve global capital before local life. Belfast still has a choice – continue down a path of speculative, neoliberal urban development, or create a future where regeneration means building on community strength, not erasing it.
- Dr Agustina Martire is reader at the School of Natural and Built Environment and vice-chair of the Save Cathedral Quarter campaign
