The streets that were there are gone … but Sailortown’s stories remain

The demolition of Sailortown in the 1970s erased the neighbourhood’s everyday streets – displacing over 1,000 families and 300 businesses – to make way for the Belfast Urban Motorway. Despite this displacement, the scattered Sailortown community remains resilient, with a sustained sense of belonging to the place. Aware of the class-driven segregation of Belfast, this chapter contrasts the view of this motorway as ‘progress’ with the loss of the complex everyday experiences of Sailortown. By making people’s stories visible, this chapter presents a methodology that enables a nuanced, thorough and people-focused understanding of the complexity of everyday streets. It shows the degree to which people’s stories are connected to the past urban grain and street fabric. We argue that a proper understanding of the complexity of these stories could prevent such large-scale planning mistakes from occurring in the future.