Belfast Interregnum: walls, voids and forward to new ground and porous borders (original) (raw)

Walking the Streets: No More Motorways for Belfast

This article explores how the spatial qualities and diversity of one of Belfast’s main arteries, North Street/Peter’s Hill, was transformed by urban planning decisions throughout the twentieth century. It looks specifically at how a car-dominated planning system contributed to the deterioration of the street fabric. Predicated on ideas of plot- based urbanism, the analysis of historic maps and plans points to the ways in which the function and dimensions of the buildings have contributed to the vibrancy of North Street/Peter’s Hill and how the more recent transformation of those functions and dimensions damaged these streets. The article acknowledges that streets are made of the social and cultural context in which they exist, while their form and function is instrumental to their embedded public life.

Fracturing the Urban: Symbolic Visual Representations of Underlying Societal Themes in Belfast

2016

Belfast, Northern Ireland is a city permeated by structural divisions, echoing underlying and deeply rooted societal divisions, which no amount of architectural intervention, even Tabula Rasa, can completely eradicate. In a city where, from the late 1960s, civil unrest prescribed a solution of walls, these once temporary structures are now permanent, having increased in size and number since the signing of the Belfast Agreement of 1998. The duality of the walls ensures that on one side communities are isolated in social housing developments where the British Army historically approved planning measures dictated by security issues. On the other, a culturally neutral postmodern city centre, re-imagined as a global tourist destination, a free and inviting environment of consumption. This city’s built environment is further fractured by major roads initiatives. Without sufficient, organized or effective opposition, such as was seen in Manhattan, Belfast’s motorway planning has ensured d...

Networks of (Dis)connection: Mobility Practices, Tertiary Streets, and Sectarian Divisions in North Belfast

Annals of the American Association of Geographers. , 2019

Long-standing tensions between Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland have led to high levels of segregation. This article explores the spaces within which residents of north Belfast move within everyday life and the extent to which these are influenced by segregation. We focus in particular on the role that interconnecting tertiary streets have on patterns of mobility. We adapt Grannis’s (1998) concept to define T-communities from sets of interconnecting tertiary streets within north Belfast. These are combined with more than 6,000 Global Positioning System (GPS) tracks collected from local residents to assess the amount of time spent within different spaces. Spaces are divided into areas of residents’ own community affiliations (in-group), areas not clearly associated with either community (mixed), or areas of opposing community affiliation (out-group). We further differentiate space as being either within a T-community or along a section of main road. Our work extends research on T-communities by expanding their role beyond exploring residential preference, to explore, instead, networks of (dis)connection through which social divisions are expressed via everyday mobility practices. We conclude that residents are significantly less likely to move within mixed and out-group areas and that this is especially true within T-communities. It is also evident that residents are more likely to travel along out-group sections of a main road if they are in a vehicle and that women show no greater likelihood than men to move within out-group space. Evidence from GPS tracks also provides insights into some areas where mixing appears to occur.

Walking' with de Certeau in North Belfast: Agency and Resistance in a Conflicted City

2010

Peace-building involves a range of powerful strategies, including those of governance, securitization and development. These, in turn, are realized through policies and initiatives involving, amongst other things regeneration, development, surveillance and event or crowd control. Since 1998, North Belfast has been a focal point for many of these strategies, as it abuts the „epicentre‟ of redevelopment and the most visible manifestation of peace-building in the area: Belfast‟s city centre. Since the interfaces, deprived neighbourhoods and socio-economic patterns of this area disrupt, contrast with or even threaten the former, there has been a concerted attempt to extend the strategies of peace-building outwards from the city centre to encompass these contested spaces. This, however, has been greeted with various responses on the part of local actors, from simple disengagement to outright resistance. Drawing on the theories of Michel de Certeau, we examine how „tactics‟ of everyday li...

Sites of Social Centrality and Segregation: Lefebvre in Belfast, a “Divided City”

Antipode, 2009

This paper applies Henri Lefebvre's ideas on participatory democracy and spatial politics to the context of "divided cities", a milieu often overlooked by scholars of Lefebvre. It considers, via Lefebvre, how the heterogeneous and contradictory statist methods to deal with ethno-national violence in Belfast have in effect increased segregated space. State-led approaches to public space as part of conflict transformation strategies appear contradictory, including attempts to "normalize" the city through inward capital investment and cultural regeneration, encouraging cosmopolitan notions of inclusive "civic identity", and reinforcing segregation to contain violence. These processes have done little to challenge sectarianism. However, as Lefebvre suggests that dominant representations of space cannot be imposed without resistance, this paper considers the alternative strategies of a disparate range of groups in Belfast. These groups have formed cross-cleavage networks to develop ritualized street performances which challenge the programming of public space for segregation.

Healing a Fractured Public: Everyday Shared Spaces in East Belfast

Irish Studies in International Affairs, 2022

Over two decades since the Good Friday Agreement was signed, social spaces remain heavily contested in Northern Ireland. On the one hand, top-down approaches toward ushering in a new spatiality for a shared future have had limited success. On the other hand, there is increasing evidence that a 'shared future' disconnected from local historical and cultural contexts is unsustainable. By studying the debates surrounding three contemporary 'shared spaces' in East Belfast-the Titanic Quarter, the proposed Naíscoil na Seolta and East Belfast GAA Clubthis paper studies why some spaces are more acceptable to the general public compared to others. At a time when recent elections suggest that the region is at the cusp of political change, this paper argues that a new spatiality with grassroots community initiatives at its core must be simultaneously imagined in Belfast.

Belfast – between sectarian and cosmopolitan

Belfast – between sectarian and cosmopolitan, 2021

This article investigates social boundaries that increased massively in 1969 – together with physical barricades and partitions – as a direct consequence of the violence and physical division in Belfast.

For PLANUM 1. Belfast: regenerate the city to rebuild divided identity

The urban regeneration in Belfast in Europe that looks ahead" comprises contributions of international experts, that have worked together on the Belfast transformation experiences, producing systematic reflections on the role of urban design and planning in Belfast and promoting the dissemination of those experiences. The goal of the research process has been to identify, through a comparative approach between insiders and outsiders, possible solutions that could be transferable to other European countries.