Belfast City Story

Ben Grubb, Laura Lane and Anne Power

Published 8 June 2016

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La Fabrique de la Cité, a French foundation sponsored by Vinci, funded LSE Housing and Communities to produce seven updated city reports on Leipzig and six other European cities, following our initial reports in 2007. The financial crisis, Eurozone troubles and six-year recession have changed the fortunes of these hard-hit, former industrial cities yet again. These seven stories are up-to-the-minute, grounded evidence of the capacity of cities to recreate themselves as the Phoenix. Each city story is unusual in focussing on a single city and looking in depth at how it survives and thrives, or struggles.

The reports draw on the earlier work of Jörg Plöger and Astrid Winkler who wrote the original city reports published in 2007, and we owe a deep debt of gratitude to them for their outstanding research, their meticulous evidence and their direct accounts of visits to the sites. We revisited all the cities several times since 2008, and this report is based on visits to Leipzig and interviews with city stakeholders. It also draws on previous research, city reports and wider evidence. We want to thank all those we met and interviewed, the projects we spent time in, all the residents, officials and programme leaders who shared their insights. In particular we thank Isabella Kohlass-Webber, Jan Richert and Ilke Rzymann. Without their input, the reports would not reflect the dynamic reality of changing cities.