Senior officials of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive have defended the planned demolition of Clonard, in west Belfast, on the basis that its back-to-back terraced houses were "not worth rehabilitating, in terms of energy efficiency or space standards".

Mr Colm McCaughley, the NIHE's director of client services, said Clonard was an area of high housing demand, yet it also had a high level of vacancies. This indicated that it was "entering a spiral of decline" and it was "better to intervene sooner rather than later".

Though he conceded that many of the houses in the area had been improved since the mid-1980s, with the addition of extra bedrooms, proper bathrooms and fitted kitchens, there was still a large number of mediocre houses which were "bringing the whole area down".

When the area was "vested" (compulsorily acquired) by the Housing Executive in September 1994, it contained 535 houses. Not all will be replaced; under the redevelopment plan, 167 new homes are being provided in nearby Springvale and a further 147 in Clonard itself.

In its brief for developers tendering for the scheme, the executive specified that 26 of the new units in Clonard must be social housing; the rest will be private, with no restrictions imposed on its type or layout other than a wish that it should be "predominantly" terraced.

The executive is committed to demolishing all property within the area on a phased basis, with "total clearance" expected to be achieved by next spring. It will then transfer the entire 4.7 acres to the Oaklee Housing Association and the chosen developer "for a nil value".

One of the problems faced by the executive, according to Mr McCaughley, is that the local people "all want semi-detached houses with front and back gardens" - in other words, suburban-style housing in place of the tight urban grain of the streets being demolished.

Dr John McPeake, assistant director of the executive's development division, agreed that there was an element of tragedy in the demise of these streets. "A lot of community memory is visual, inspired by aspects of a view. And the memory is lost if the streets are gone," he said.

Though the NIHE favoured high-density new housing with defined street edges, Dr McPeake said private sector developers were coming in with suburban-style schemes, "which they think will meet public aspirations, as opposed to pursuing a design-led approach".

Three bids from developers are being considered, one more suburban than the next. Many of the new houses would be semi-detached, including some which would gable on to the street and, with the addition of gardens and/or car-parking bays, there is little sense of enclosure.

The proportional relationship between the height of the houses and the width of the space between them would be dramatically different to the existing hard edges. Some of the new streets would be up to three times as wide, measured from building line to building line.

Dr McPeake cited poor corner treatments as another reason why none of the three schemes submitted met the executive's requirements, though they had all provided a good frontage to Springfield Road, where a two-storey terrace is also to be demolished.

The competing developers and their architects have been requested to come back with revisions and there will be a further round of consultations with local people before a final decision is taken. But the plan for wholesale clearance of the area will not be changed.

But Mr McCaughley insisted that Clonard "has a great future ahead of it. It will be re-invented as an area with a new sense of community". Even Lanark Way, the bleak road crossing the "peace line", would become "a tree-lined avenue to the new university at Springvale". He also emphasised that at least some of Belfast's characteristic back-to-back houses would survive. In the Hamill Street area, not far from Clonard, local opposition had forced the NIHE to abandon a clearance scheme and rehabilitate the existing houses instead.

Mr Tom Hartley, a local Sinn Fein councillor, said this was a better solution because it preserved an essential part of Belfast's heritage while giving people decent housing conditions. What was happening in Clonard was "like throwing old furniture in the bin", he said.