Sustainability

Titanic Quarter is very conscious of the fact that the sustainable development agenda represents big challenges and big opportunities for everyone in Northern Ireland, particularly the business community.  Those challenges are expressed within the Government's Sustainable Development Strategy for Northern Ireland, "First Steps Towards Sustainability", published in May 2006.  Titanic Quarter aims to play its part in supporting that Strategy.

That is why the principles of Sustainable Development underpin the regeneration of Titanic Quarter, to transform it from a derelict site that was once the heart of industrial Belfast, into an exciting, thriving and vibrant development that builds on its heritage to create an asset that benefits the people of Belfast and the wider community in Northern Ireland. 

By integrating the principles of sustainability into its approach, Titanic Quarter Ltd is committed to working together with its partners to maximise the social, economic and environmental benefits that the redevelopment brings.

Whilst seeking to address the full range of issues that contribute to sustainability, Titanic Quarter Ltd had identified six ‘headline' themes that can deliver the most significant beneficial impacts and outcomes at the current stage of the development.  These include:

• Regeneration:  To bring the former derelict shipbuilding site back into beneficial use, reducing pressures on greenfield sites elsewhere, and creating a range of employment, living and leisure opportunities through a mixed use development based on sustainable development principles.
  
• Accessibility and Transportation:  To ensure that Titanic Quarter becomes an integral part of Belfast city centre and is easily accessible for work, living and leisure to all sections of the community, supported by both a good public transport system and the provision of facilities for both cyclists and pedestrians.
  
• Heritage, Education and Leisure:  To recognize and build upon the rich heritage of the site, protecting significant buildings, infrastructure and artefacts, and to develop educational and interpretive facilities that combine to create a premiere learning and leisure environment, an educational resource for future generations and a centre of excellence for research and development activities.
  
• Environmental protection:  To address the environmental legacy of the site caused by its heavy industrial past, through the seamless integration of measures based on environmental and human health risk assessments into the design, specification and construction of building and infrastructure works and by encouraging sustainable procurement; to minimise off-site impacts by treating contaminated soil on site, where practical, to produce secondary construction materials thereby reducing the demand for virgin materials; and to specify and source locally available, recyclable and environmentally responsible materials.
  
• Energy and Climate Change:  To mimimise carbon dioxide emissions by reducing energy demand through careful design, siting and construction of buildings which incorporate energy conservation measures, including passive solar gain, high standards of insulation, and the use of combined heat and power; to support renewable forms of energy particularly in community heating systems; and to ensure buildings are not at risk from flooding due to predicted sea level rises likely to occur as a result of climate change.
  
• Biodiversity: Recognising that Titanic Quarter is situated within the Belfast Harbour Estate at the entrance to Belfast Lough and is therefore a significant coastal/estuarine site, to support and improve biodiversity particularly through the creation of landscaped areas and habitats on the site.  This will be in line with the Northern Ireland Biodiversity Strategy published by the Department of the Environment in 2002.

Titanic Quarter Ltd, in implementing its Sustainability Strategy, will review these issues on an ongoing basis, to ensure that its approach to sustainability is flexible and responsive, adjusting to the priorities, needs and expectations of the development, the stakeholders and the wider community and in line with the implementation of the Northern Ireland Sustainable Development Strategy.