Aaron Vennard

Whenever I visit a new city, I usually spend a fair bit of time scrolling through Instagram and doing countless web searches to find interesting things to see and do while I’m there. I’ll also have a look at Atlas Obscura, which is great for finding unusual places that don’t always feature in the usual tourist guides. I was looking at Belfast recently and noticed a couple of surprising omissions. One was the Second World War pillbox hidden inside The …

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There’s something slightly odd about the reaction to plans to pedestrianise parts of Belfast city centre during the Fleadh. On the face of it, the proposal is fairly simple. For a period in August, parts of the city centre will be restricted to traffic to safely accommodate what is expected to be one of the largest cultural events Belfast has ever hosted. And yet, even as the consultation process ran and closed, the debate hardened quickly, settling into a familiar …

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There is something deeply irritating about replacing something you already own. A bike lost or stolen and bought again. A carton of milk picked up at the shop, only to come home and find another hiding in the fridge behind last night’s takeaway. It’s that feeling of wasteful duplication. I get that same feeling as Belfast moves forward with its £100 million Belfast Stories project. Culture in Northern Ireland is almost everything. Once it enters the conversation, positions tend to harden. …

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Every vision of the future seems to share a common theme: high-speed rail. Look at any sci-fi film. Flick through a glossy government brochure. Read any serious attempt to imagine how cities function in 30 or 40 years’ time. The image is always the same: fast rail collapsing distances into minutes, regions becoming single labour markets, cities functioning together rather than competing. What you don’t see is a future held together by clogged roads, weather-dependent ferries, or the promise of …

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January is usually the month for resolutions and for quietly taking stock of how last year’s good intentions actually turned out. If 2025 was meant to be the year Belfast finally began to reduce car traffic, then it hasn’t gone to plan. Grand Central Station has now been operating for a full year, yet as the Belfast Telegraph reports, Belfast is the most congested city in the UK. For anyone who spends their mornings crawling along the Westlink, Ormeau Road or …

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Belfast has a long and complicated history of building walls. So it feels quietly refreshing to see the city beginning at long last to talk about bridges. Just before Christmas, some news that may have slipped under the radar was announced: Belfast City Council appointed a design team to progress plans for a new pedestrian and cycle bridge linking Sailortown with the Titanic Quarter. It doesn’t arrive with much fanfare, but few infrastructure ideas in Belfast feel as straightforward or overdue. The …

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The great infrastructure races of the twentieth century were loud and vertical. Rockets, orbits, flags planted on distant surfaces. Today’s race is less dramatic, running from city centres to airport terminals. That race may have been quietly triggered in Northern Ireland by Translink’s recent publication of Shaping the Future, which set out the findings of long-awaited rail feasibility studies and, for the first time in years, placed airport rail connectivity firmly back on the policy agenda. Airport rail connections have become …

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