Belfast is growing. The question is whether our infrastructure is ready to grow with it.
There is no shortage of ambition for the city, but we need to have an honest conversation about how we develop infrastructure for today and invest in the city we want to become.
Infrastructure is an economic asset – the bedrock of successful, growing economies. It enables regeneration, housing development, the movement of goods and people, business expansion, investor confidence, resilience and connectivity, creating opportunities across housing, employment and education.
It is also a productivity issue. The Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard, produced by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast, identifies investment, infrastructure and connectivity as key drivers of long-term productivity. Its 2025 findings show that Northern Ireland’s productivity remains 12.4% below the UK average.
This matters because productivity is ultimately about more than economic statistics. It is about generating higher-value jobs, better wages and the resources needed to support public services.
Major investment planned across the city demonstrates confidence in Belfast’s future. Belfast Harbour’s new masterplan represents a significant commitment to expanding capacity and strengthening trade connectivity, while Belfast City Airport’s Master Plan sets out opportunities for further investment and improved connectivity.
These are positive signals about Belfast’s prospects, but they also underline the scale of the challenge. Some of our most important infrastructure systems are already under pressure, meaning we need to prioritise critical infrastructure across the city and Northern Ireland.
There is now fatigue around the continued discussion of wastewater infrastructure. Despite assurances that it remains a priority, we have yet to see meaningful solutions. It was once constraining development – now it is preventing it altogether.
Congestion continues to increase journey times and place additional costs on businesses and commuters. The long-awaited Eastern Transport Plan will have far-reaching implications for how people and vehicles move around the city.
However, we also need to reignite the stalled and largely forgotten York Street Interchange if we are serious about supporting the growth of our ports and airports.
Added to this are the increasing weather events associated with climate change. Belfast, along with many other parts of the region, faces significant exposure to flooding, making continued investment in resilience increasingly important.
All of these challenges carry an economic cost, and the cost of doing nothing will only increase as Belfast grows.
We need to change how we think about infrastructure: planning ahead, understanding how systems interact, and aligning investment with the city’s long-term economic and population ambitions.
We cannot tie long-term critical infrastructure to annual budget cycles and political mandates. Multi-year funding would help, but even that may be too short to deliver the step change required.
We also need to strengthen our capacity to turn plans into delivery. The establishment of a Critical Infrastructure Commission could be one of the most important recommendations to emerge from this conversation, providing a focused mechanism to identify and tackle the infrastructure barriers restraining Belfast’s growth.
Its purpose would be to bring together evidence of the constraints affecting Belfast’s growth locations, identify priority interventions, establish the cost, funding route, delivery lead and decisions required, and secure coordinated action.
This would not be about creating another body to duplicate the work of organisations that already exist. Rather, it would bring decisions into a single, prioritised programme and make progress visible.
That matters to many businesses, city institutions and the tertiary education sector, particularly Queen’s University Belfast and the wider research economy. Connecting the city’s research strengths to an investable infrastructure pipeline would give the Critical Infrastructure Commission a clear economic purpose – ensuring that major investments already under way can generate their full benefit.
Oxford provides a precedent, with its Growth Commission examining the relationship between housing, infrastructure, transport and economic growth around the city’s universities.
For Belfast, the priority should be a model that works for our circumstances and focuses squarely on delivery.
No single organisation can resolve Belfast’s infrastructure challenges. Government, local government, infrastructure providers, businesses, developers and communities all have a role to play.
Importantly, this is not simply about building more infrastructure – it is about building the right infrastructure, in the right places, at the right time.
Getting this right would deliver benefits well beyond individual infrastructure projects. It would help unlock land for development, improve productivity, strengthen connectivity, support investment and make Belfast a more attractive place to live, work and invest.
The challenge is to match the confidence we have in Belfast’s future with the infrastructure, leadership and long-term mechanisms needed to make that future possible.