A SCOTTISH academic has criticised the way in which Belfast is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic amid claims the city is cashing in on the disaster without respecting its memory.

Professor William Neill, professor of urban planning at Aberdeen University, said it was vital the role Belfast shipyards played in maritime history was acknowledged but he questioned whether that legacy should be linked with financial gain.

He was speaking days after Titanic Belfast, the world's largest tourist attraction dedicated to the doomed liner, opened right beside the slipway where the liner was floated in 1911. Around 100,000 people had already bought tickets for the museum, whose design is based on the bow of the Titanic.

Mr Neill, originally from Belfast, will deliver the keynote paper at a conference in Berlin which will discuss how cities should deal with heritage when it involves death and tragedy.

He said: "Belfast is unique in terms of the significance of the Titanic but the question must be raised as to whether that memory has been treated with enough respect.

"I am dismayed to see how my own home city has branded a Titanic Quarter where tacky souvenirs are plentiful but where one of the most important physical legacies of the Titanic story, the womb of the ship of imagination, has been side-lined and neglected."

Belfast is holding a Titanic Festival which will run until April 22, including an open-air MTV concert on the slipway.

Mr Neill said this "begs some questions of taste, respect and dignity".