The dynamic Authenticity of local mixed streets

Local mixed streets are significant elements of the historic urban landscape. Their slow and incremental development has made their buildings and uses adaptable, flexible and authentic. In this context, heritage is encompassed not only in the street’s built environment but also in the activities, uses and people who inhabit them. This process-based understanding of heritage is what we call dynamic authenticity: the ability of a place to slowly change its tangible and intangible qualities through time, adapting to conditions, without losing its character.By demolishing and rebuilding complete streets, commercial redevelopment increasingly threatens their complex heritage. Certain streets in Belfast city centre reflect the gradual and incremental transformation of the built environment, their uses through time, and the people that inhabit them. However, they are in danger of losing their dynamic authenticity if current development plans were to be carried out. In this chapter, we will discuss North Street, a local mixed street in Belfast that is at risk of demolition and redevelopment. We will present the role that the SaveCQ campaign and the StreetSpace project have in disrupting and transforming this process of placeless retail redevelopment.