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"Peace Wall" in East Belfast

What do we discover when we [...] explore the impact of the ‘Troubles’ on the process of deindustrialisation? One might expect the ‘Troubles’ to have significantly damaged Northern Ireland’s already fragile economy, but this was not necessarily the case. In 1960, Northern Ireland’s GDP per capita was 63 per cent of the UK average. By 1980, it had actually risen to 80 per cent of the UK average (as of 2020, it has fallen back to about 75 per cent). This rise is partly due to much higher levels of government spending. Depending on how it is calculated, government spending per capita in Northern Ireland in 1980-81 was 30 to 35 per cent higher than the UK average. And this higher spending was a direct response to the ‘Troubles’. [...] And finally, modern redevelopment projects like the Titanic Quarter, designed to be physical manifestations of the ‘peace dividend’, are also the product of deindustrialisation. They often exploit the appeal of heritage nostalgia while excluding the working class from the very spaces that they helped to build. These sites are the perfect encapsulation of the complex ways in which the legacies of the ‘Troubles’ and deindustrialisation are intertwined in contemporary Belfast."

https://writingthetroublesweb.wordpress.com/2020/08/17/deindustrialisation/