ABSTRACT
The research reported in this chapter is part of a wider study concerned with developing a better understanding how residential decisions are made in a segregated urban housing market. The study is set in the Belfast Urban Area (BUA), an area recently described as one of the most highly segregated in Europe if not in the world (Keane, 1990). While perhaps a little overstated, Belfast undoubtedly experiences a high degree of segregation with the principal division being by religion. Religious residential segregation in Belfast is particularly entrenched and bound up with the wider issue of the ‘Troubles’, a polite euphemism for the sectarian conflict that has engulfed Northern Ireland for much of the past 30 years.
