New Urban Tourism in the post-conflict city

Abstract

This chapter discusses neighbourhood tourism in West Belfast. After the end of the Northern Ireland conflict in 1998, Belfast underwent substantial spatial and image transformations, resulting in the creation of a range of visitor attractions and an upsurge in tourism numbers. Tourism has become one of the most important strategies of urban renewal. West Belfast is a nationalist stronghold and the only place in the city recognised as an important element of the city’s heritage that is worth sharing with visitors. In addition to that, it is seen as a remedy for the severe socioeconomic deprivation of the neighbourhood and an opportunity to tell the story of the conflict from the community’s point of view. I argue that not all characteristics of New Urban Tourism are met in West Belfast, but that memorial entrepreneurs in West Belfast use its most important feature—the immersion into local culture and the grasping of the ‘feel’ of a place—to emphasise their narrative of the conflict.