The eastern side the road and the streets leading from it, are predominantly Protestant and include the well-known Sandy Row and The Village areas.

[2] The Greater Village Regeneration Trust extends the definition further to cover the entire Protestant part of the road as well as Sandy Row.

Across Broadway in West Belfast the demographics change as the road forms the southern border of the almost exclusively Roman Catholic St. James' area.

In 1984, Loyalist paramilitary figure Michael Stone killed milkman Paddy Brady, who served the area, leaving a nearby dairy.

Roy Butler, an off-duty member of the Ulster Defence Regiment was killed by the IRA, whilst he shopped at Park Centre on 2 August 1988.

On 10 August, Catholic civilian James Carson was shot and killed in his shop on the corner of the Donegall and Falls Roads, in an attack claimed by the "Loyalist Retaliation and Defence Group", actually a code name used by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

The Republican group struck again on 13 November, when they entered a house on Lecale Street in the Village and killed William Kingsberry and his stepson Samuel Mehaffey.

[14] On 7 September 1993, Stephen McKeag, and two other volunteers in C-Company of the UDA West Belfast Brigade, entered a hairdresser's shop on the upper Donegall Road and shot the proprietor Sean Hughes dead.

[15] The following year, the RHC killed 31-year-old Margaret Wright at a social club on Meridi Street and dumped her body in an empty house in the Village.

[20] Alex Kerr would later switch from the UDA to the Loyalist Volunteer Force and his move briefly gained some support in the Village, where graffiti attacking the UDA-linked Ulster Democratic Party appeared.

[22] Four members who were said to be behind the attacks were subsequently "arrested" by the UVF leadership, who issued claims that two of those held responsible had links to the far right British National Party.

21-year-old Peter Wilson, one of sixteen people believed or confirmed to have been abducted, killed and buried in unmarked graves by republicans, and known collectively as "the Disappeared", was a native of the St. James's area.

However the club left the Irish Football League in 1949, after a series of sectarian incidents at matches, notably at Windsor Park.

Like Higgins, Murray's ties to the area have been commemorated artistically, in this case by a photographic montage on the side of the Road's Credit Union.

[33] For representation on Belfast City Council the Donegall Road is split between the Balmoral District Electoral Area, currently represented by Claire Hanna and Bernie Kelly of Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Tom Ekin of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), Ruth Patterson of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Máirtín Ó Muilleoir of Sinn Féin and Bob Stoker of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP),[34] and the Laganbank District Electoral Area, an area currently represented by Kate Mullen and Pat McCarthy of the SDLP, Catherine Curran of the APNI, Deirdre Hargey of Sinn Féin and Christopher Stalford of the DUP.