A War Metnoriat for Belfast. t 



some of the changes which, at any rate, ought to take place 

 before this century closes. But for this we need an ordered 

 scheme, a City Plan. 



Of necessity it must be a many-sided Plan. It must be 

 designed much in advance of the actual needs of the city at any 

 given moment. It must touch the life of the community at many 

 different points. Among its objects, it would provide for : — 



(a) Housing. There is at this moment hardly a vacant 

 house in the city. Since the collapse of the building ' boom " 

 about 1900, thei'e has been comparatively little increase in the 

 accommodation available either for rich or poor : yet our 

 population has been increasing, and, (quite apart from possible 

 further increase), there is immediate need for great numbers 

 of new houses. But there is also reason to believe that the 

 years immediately ahead will see a large increase in the local 

 demand for skilled labour, — and therefore for more houses and 

 more good houses. Messrs. Harland & Woltt' alone have told us 

 that they expect to be able to employ an extra 5,000 or 6,000 

 men : and the Harbour Commissioners have published their 

 costly and ambitious scheme of dock extensions. Including all 

 classes, I think it is fairly safe to say that we shall need at least 

 1,000 new houses per annum for the next 10 years to come, or, 

 say, three per day. We have been proud of the fact that our 

 Belfast housing conditions have been, on the average, good : and 

 yet we must admit that they are not yet, even , nearly, good 

 enough to satisfy the ambitions of the rising generation of 

 workers : and that, while our worst is certainly not as bad as the 

 worst elsewhere, our best falls very far short of what other cities 

 have recently been doing. Here, as elsewhere, artizans are going 

 to establish for themselves, during the next twenty years, not 

 merely a permanently higher scale of wages (out of which they 

 will be able to pay a higher rent), but, a permanently higher scale 

 of life : they demand, and will obtain, many opportunities for 

 reasonable enjoyment, which will, in turn, alter their whole out- 

 look on life, and which will disgust them with the prospect of 



