The place is Northern Ireland, inside Belfast's historic Titanic Quarter.

I'm on the movie set of City of Ember, and the thought strikes me:

The Tom Hanks-produced sci-fi film with Bill Murray and Tim Robbins - scheduled for release in 2008 - is about the transcendence of a post-apocalyptic society from a cave world beneath the earth to a renewed world of sun and air.

Maybe it's also an allegory for how this once war-torn city is finding its way back to the mainstream of the global economy.

Like the subterranean society in the feature film, a roadmap to rediscovery and reclamation is needed.

And the irony is, the massive sound stage at the edge of the Port of Belfast is actually on that map.

It's an eerie, almost mystical, kind of place, because it sits on the dry dock where the fabled ocean liner, The Titanic, was built in the early 1900's.

The film's story line is about redeeming the sins the world thrust fictionally on our children. Only for Belfast, the sins - war and conflict, the misuse of land and community - are all too real. They are in fact being redeemed through a 21st Century location strategy begun a decade ago. A major part of that plan today involves reclaiming the abandoned brownfields of the city's long-departed ship-building industry.

Take the sound stage itself. The so-called "Paint Hall" is a good example of responsible reuse of existing stock. It was where the oversized hulls of vessels like Titanic were painted. Now it's used to paint screenplays, thanks in part to the studio facility blending with economic incentives to attract and keep production companies in the U.K.

More than that, it's part of a growing critical mass surrounding the $2.2-billion (£1-billion) mixed used redevelopment initiative known as the Titanic Quarter, or TQ. At 2,000 acres, it's one of Europe's largest current mega-projects and sustainable developments. "It will be the next economic renaissance of the United Kingdom," as the Duke of Abercorn predicted during a recent visit to the TQ offices. Northern Ireland realized self-governance in recent years and the political climate has stabilized, so the claim - in this case by a cousin of the Queen - is a realistic one.

The Duke's involvement in the project is mainly from a historical perspective dating back to Queen Victoria, for whom Queen's Island in the harbor was named. Now the focus - which is being driven by a public-private partnership (PPP) between the TQ and the Port of Belfast - extends to 185 acres representing Phases 1 and 2 of the new development project, according to Michael Graham, MRICS, Director of Corporate Real Estate for the Titanic Quarter LTD.

Major investment support is coming to the site from big corporate interests including Prudential, which is spent a reported $80-million on the adjoining Hollywood Exchange retail center. IKEA has opened its largest store in the U.K. there. CitiGroup is already operating with a global data and support center inside the Northern Ireland Science Park at one end of the development.

The 25-acre bio-tech and software incubator sits on the far end of the site. It is a component of TQ that also anchors the prospects for full redevelopment of the area as spelled out in a 25-year master plan to redefine the old ship yards. (It's built over a state-of-the-art chemical waste remediation system designed by Queens University. The innovation allowed for the new facilities to be insured so the science park could be developed.)

At the front edge, a new Public Records facility to help families trace their Irish lineages and two new office buildings are also under construction, so the development is already bracketed for infill.

"Yesterday we built ships," recalls Graham. "Today we build cities."

Indeed, the project's span is so wide in impact that it represents adding another 25% to the contiguous central business district of Belfast itself, not to overlook the TQ's doorway, the Odyssey professional hockey arena that stands as one of the few successful so-called Millennium projects sponsored by the U.K at the century's turn.

"Where do you get a city that adds 25% more to itself today?" asks Graeme Johnston, Property Director for Harbor Office of the Port of Belfast, which is a logistics, shipping and economic engine accounting for 31% of the Northern Irish economy's gross added value, according to the Centre for Economics & Business Research.

The waterfront tracts fronting Belfast's Lagan River may have otherwise stood long neglected, but lessons were learned, as was the case in Barcelona with its waterfront redevelopment, or Boston and Baltimore, for that matter.

"We turned our backs on the River, and we then realized it's our heritage," Johnston adds.

"We are bringing our heritage to life by building for the future," Graham echoes.

Beyond the physical side, site, buildings and infrastructure, there's an appreciable 'soft' dimension to TQ that also makes it an ideal example of how communities can attain sustainability through the broad, continuous social impact that development can have. In much the same way that Atlanta's storied East Lake Development managed to combined physical improvement with social enhancements surrounding safety, health, housing and education, TQ is also weaving a sort of social fabric to help Belfast continue its recovery.

It's part of what the Industry Tracker termed last year as "The New Über-Sustainability," or the integrated application of a broad set of practices across the sustainability spectrum.

One aspect of this integration is the construction of Belfast Metro College in the heart of TQ. By 2010, a total of 14,000 full- and part-time students will be going to school there. Affordable housing is also an important part of the emerging mix, as retail and entertainment will also be. Employment linkages will include the nearby back office and support operations of companies like CitiGroup.

It all adds up to what is expected to become a 24 X 7 urban environment that attracts a healthy chunk of the youth-laden populations of both Irelands. These educated and trainable talent pools have already paid dividends in other parts of Belfast's earlier pre-Millennium redevelopment, as reported by Industry Tracker in October of 2000.

"We will compete in the global market so it has to be world class public realm," Graham contends. He thinks of TQ's transformation as a vision tied to responsibility. "In dreams, begin responsibilities," he says, quoting from William Butler Yeats.

Part of that evolution has been the city's embrace of the Titanic. Belfast's link to the ship is less tragic than legendary. "It was OK when it left here," Graham quips. So much so, that TQ is marketed as "A 21st Century Icon," afforded an element of global identity by a ship's fabled misfortune.

Titanic's cinematic fortunes return the favor, as if gifted to a city in need of hope and a better future. The lore of the ship came through cinema, and today the same industry returns to play another leading role. It's almost like the ending of City of Ember itself, a place where the Titanic will never get to: The emergence into a bright new world from a much darker place.

So the image of the star-crossed ocean liner lying submerged for eternity on the floor of the North Atlantic, along with the long-running conflicts and instability of the city that launched her, stand in contrast to a different version of Belfast today - a "forward facing city," as Johnston describes it.

Shadows turn to light. The city's new image is beginning to resonate. In a fashion reminiscent of City of Ember and its mostly-kids society's reemergence to life above ground, Belfast has found a new day and a different world enabled by its past self.

It's an edgy place with what urban development experts like Dr. Linda Lees of Creative Cities refer to as having "a good messiness," or a sort of tension based on the history, culture and feel of a neighborhood or community.

Those attributes define what Lees calls her "Vitality Index" for cities. Belfast should be scoring high, especially when the demand for young talent is so much greater than its supply tends to be globally and the city is positioned to deliver on that demographic.

"A sense of possibility and a sense of place are two qualities that are too easily overlooked in the rush to revitalize," Lees explains. "Allowing for a sense of possibility in a city, ironically, only comes out of a clear sense of place. What is distinctive and special?"

In the Titanic Quarter's case, it's a sense of heritage, as TQ's Michael Graham emphasizes. "There's no better way to guarantee the preservation of heritage assets than by finding a new economic use for them."

"We're building the future from the past," as Johnston puts it. "You don't turn your back on your heritage."

More information is available at www.titanicquarter.com