It’s grim up north. The architectural despair of the North Coast…

David Michell is Assistant Professor in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast. You can follow him on Twitter. I’d always assumed it was the weather, or the fact that for large parts of the year in Portstewart and Portrush, there are simply no people. But the truth was staring me in the face: it’s the buildings. I began to suspect this, funnily enough, not in one of the Ports, but in Iceland, where I discovered terrible …

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The Downside of Success – Coping with our increasing tourist numbers…

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Over the past number of years, Northern Ireland’s tourism industry has maintained a steady growth and our visitor attractions have continued to become more popular than ever. These high levels of tourism are a relatively new phenomenon for the region and perhaps not one we have yet learnt how to deal with properly. In 2017 there were an estimated 4.9 million overnight trips in Northern Ireland, the highest estimates on record. Many of our most popular visitor attractions are purpose-built …

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