The history of Belfast is inseparable from the history of the Hamill Street area, between the bottom of the Falls and the city centre.  Its streets are as old as the city itself and its parish church, St Mary's, was Belfast's first Catholic church.
But This Is Not A Car Park is not a history programme.  The history of Belfast and the history of these small streets part company with the redevelopment of the Falls and the construction of the Westlink, leaving Hamill St cut off from its Falls hinterland.  Hamill St is now a kind of fossil community, its small population retaining the traditions whose passing is mourned in the Twinbrooks and Rathcooles of the city.
But it is a community under threat.  The famous Barrack St Christian Brothers' school has been closed.  The authorities have decided to close St Mary's Primary School.  Housing Executive houses are being sold off to private investors.
While Hamill Street's uniquely central geography makes it pivotal to the history of Belfast, it is also where its problems stem from.  Every day the area is swamped by commuters seeking free car parking.  And it is this issue the residents have decided to gather around.

• They are fed up with the inconvenience of not being able to park outside their houses.  Any attempt to reserve a space outside their own doors is eventually met with verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse from commuters who feel they can park where they please.
  
• They are worried about accessibility for emergency services.  One disabled resident, who has lost count of the times cars have parked in his disabled bay, hopes that if there's a fire in his house it'll be between 6pm and 6am when the entrance to his house is not blocked by commuters.  Another tells of watching paramedics carrying a man from one end of the street to the other because cars blocked the path of the ambulance.
  
• They refuse to accept the culture of fear created by criminals attracted into the area by the cars.  Despite the problems commuters bring into the area, residents still come out to defend their property.  Criminals retaliate by smashing the windows of the houses.  Residents do not want to live behind closed doors while thieves rule the streets, but this is becoming increasingly the case.
  
• Their children are suffering from levels of asthma unmatched in the city, choked by exhaust fumes.  They cannot play in the street because of the constant traffic of commuters.  In the early seventies, the BBC made a film about children's street games called Dusty Bluebells.  Because of the survival of tradition in the area local children were chosen to star in it, filmed as they played in their streets.  In some ways This Is Not A Car Park is a sad sequel to that film.  That whole culture of street games has been destroyed.