Planning in Divided Cities (Real Estate Issues)

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space By Frank Gaffikin Institute of Spatial and Environmental Planning, School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Queen’s University, Belfast Mike Morrissey Community Consultant

This edition first published 2011 Ó2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered office: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial offices: 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK 2121 State Avenue, Ames, Iowa 50014-8300, USA For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gaffikin, Frank. Planning in divided cities : collaborative shaping of contested space / by Frank Gaffikin, Mike Morrissey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-9218-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. City planning–United States. 2. City planning–Northern Ireland–Belfast. 3. Urbanization–United States. 4. Urbanization–Northern Ireland–Belfast. 5. Belfast (Northern Ireland)–Ethnic relations. 6. United States–Ethnic relations. I. Morrissey, Mike, 1946- II. Title. HT169.U5G34 2011 307.1’216–dc22 2010049557 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDF [9781444393187]; Wiley Online Library [9781444393200]; ePub [9781444393194] Set in 10/13 TrumpMediaeval-Roman by Thomson Digital, Noida, India

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Contents Preface and Acknowledgements PART I

INTRODUCTION

1 Introduction Setting the Scene Outline of Structure and Argument

vii 1 3 3 5

2 Conflict in the Changing City Forms of Urban Division

13 19

3 Understanding the Urban Farewell to Keynesian–Fordist Industrialism and Welfarism? Globalisation and Neo-Liberalism Urban Regime Theory Beyond the First World lens Making Sense of the Debate

23 33 37 40 43 45

4 The Divided City Introduction Explanations of Division Ethnicity and Urban Conflict Ethno-Nationalist Contest The State of Conflict and Conflict in the State

53 53 58 66 79 82

5 Identity, Space, and Urban Planning Identity and Diversity Multiculturalism and Cosmopolitanism Space and its Contestations Policy and Planning Responses to Diversity

85 85 89 96 105

6 Collaborative Planning and the Divided City Shifts in Planning The Role of Collaborative Planning Development and Division

115 115 118 132

PART II

141

CASE STUDIES

7 Development Amid Division in US Cities: The Cases of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago Introduction Pittsburgh: History of Partnership?

143 143 146

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Contents

Cleveland—‘mistake on the lake’? Chicago: the ‘spectacular’ City Race and Division Divided City: Whose Regeneration?

158 168 170 181

8 Contested Space, Contested Sovereignty: The Case of Belfast Introduction: An Unresolved Sovereignty Contest Space and Political Violence Residential Segregation and Spatial Deprivation After the Conflict Profiling Segregated Spaces Segregation and Deprivation Summarising the Divided City Tackling Division and Deprivation: A Difficult Agenda Community Cohesion and Economic Austerity Moving Forward: The Role of Planning Facing the Future

197 197 203 209 212 215 219 220 222 224 228

9 Between Sovereignty and Pluralism: Other Divided Cities Divided Country—Divided City: Nicosia Divided Cities in Britain: Oldham and Bradford Promoting Community Cohesion in Oldham Bradford: From Ethnic to Shared Space? Conclusions

231 233 240 242 246 252

PART III CONCLUSION

255

10 Planning Amid Division: A Way Forward? Introduction: The Formidable Task The Paradoxes of Peace Building Planning Shared Futures in Divided Cities The Paradoxes of Planning in Divided Cities The Problem of Community From Community Development to Community Capacity The Role of Planning in Narrowing Contest Implications for Planning, Governance, and Capacity Final Considerations

257 257 258 260 263 265 266 270 272 275

Bibliography Appendix: Methodology Index

279 315 319

Preface and Acknowledgements Certain terms dominate contemporary social discourse. Among these are: globalization, diversity, governance, inequality and sustainability, concepts that are central to our concerns in this book. Both the pace and scale of social change across the world are pronounced, as is their spatial imprint on place and community. This is most evident in large urban settlements. When it comes to reversing the debilities of de-industrializing western cities, there has been much debate about the efficacy of not only economic agglomerations, flexibilities, and creative milieu, but also of social capital, networking, and inclusive and integrated partnership governance. The relationship among these factors in the Global North’s resurgent urbanism is more complicated and differentiated than usually acknowledged. Similarly, the massive urban change occurring in the Global South, and the related parlous state of many impoverished slum inhabitants, demand multifaceted appraisal. In both cases, socio-spatial transformations have generated new inequalities and dislocations, and these have often intersected with old animosities centred on ethnicity, religion, and nationality. Particularly when combined, the combustible impact of such visceral forces tests the resilience of many cities in today’s world. A central argument in this book is that urban planning and policy are concerned with the shaping of social space, and such space is at the heart of many urban conflicts, particularly those that connect issues of territory and identity. Thus, since these public interventions cannot be de-coupled from those related to conflict resolution, they have to demonstrate their relevance to deeply contested urbanism. As they grapple with the difficult links among inclusion, cohesion, and socio-economic well-being, their agenda has to prioritise the building of community capacity and connectivity. But, it has to start with a candid recognition of the significance of space in divided cities, and of the imperative to knit regeneration and reconciliation in the search for non-violent responses to grievance and contest. Knowledge production is a collaborative rather than solo project, and this book owes much to the ideas and arguments of many colleagues in both casual conversation and formal seminar. Included in these influences are the stimulating thoughts of friends in the Planning cluster at Queen’s University Belfast. In particular, Malachy McEldowney, Ken Sterrett, and Brendan Murtagh have been both informative and provocative guides over many years. Other colleagues at Queen’s University have also contributed their appreciable scholarship, including Liam O’Dowd, James Anderson, and Dominic Bryan. Wider afield, Ralf Brand in Manchester University and David Perry in the University of Illinois, Chicago, have both inspired us, and perspired with us, in many joint research tasks. Beyond academia, many accomplished

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Preface and Acknowledgements

people, with whom we have worked in the community, voluntary and public sectors over many decades, have helped shape our analysis, while anchoring our theoretical and conceptual edifices to ‘real world’ problems: Paul Sweeney, Brendan Boyle, Duncan Morrow, and Jackie Redpath, to name but some. Finally, the support and forbearance of our families have been invaluable.

Part I Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction Outlines the core objective and key arguments, and summarises the key points in each of the chapters.

Chapters 2–6 These chapters form the conceptual and theoretical framework: understanding the contemporary city and the nature of its conflicts, and the specific role that urban planning and policy can play in addressing problems of division.

Chapter 2: Conflict in the Changing City Explains how the urban is changing—essentially how the global is becoming more urban and the urban more global, and the implication of these changes for conflict in cities.

Chapter 3: Understanding the Urban The key conceptual and theoretical debates in urban studies over recent decades, and where this leaves our understanding of what is happening in the urban arena at a global level.

Chapter 4: The Divided City Various theories and interpretations about the nature of ’the divided city’ and why there may be a proliferation of such contested cities in the future.

Chapter 5: Identity, Space, and Urban Planning A more detailed look at the links between identity formation, cultural collision, protectionist views of territory, and urban space in a transnational and cosmopolitan context. Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

Chapter 6: Collaborative Planning and the Divided City Given this spread of the urban, and growth of city conflicts, what is the role of planning and policy in addressing these divisions?

1 Introduction

Setting the scene The spatial focus of this book is on the urban, the settlement form which most of humanity now inhabits. While the conceptual focus is on ‘divided cities’, it acknowledges that in one sense all cities are divided, in that their ‘publics’ and stakeholders have differential access and vested interest, marked by distinctions of class, ethnicity, and gender. Accordingly, it distinguishes between two main forms of urban contested space. One is where dispute and antagonism relate to issues of pluralism, and concern rivalries about imbalances in power, welfare and status among distinctive social groups. The other kind is about sovereignty, where there are similar pluralist disputes about equity, rights, and social entitlement, but these are interwoven with an ethno-nationalist conflict about the legitimacy of the state itself. An example of the former explored here is Chicago, a deeply segregated city, where race is a stark fault line in both the city’s historical narrative and contemporary discourses, and has been persistently seminal in the configuration of its social space. So, for instance, when people think of the black American ghetto, Chicago comes readily to mind as the home of its epitome. By contrast, Belfast typifies the second form of divided city. In a strange contortion, they are both crucibles and instruments in the overall contest about nationality in these troubled lands. Here, the manifesto of the combatant group that claims to be subject to suppression and conquest (Catholics/ Nationalists/Republicans in Belfast) is not merely concerned about equity and security with regard to the dominant group (Protestants/Unionists in Belfast). Rather, their immediate equality agenda can be interpreted as a transitional ‘Trojan horse’ politics unfolding over time into the fundamental objective of what they proclaim as a liberated homeland. In short, particular conflicts in Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

such cities about equality and development get wrapped up in the more general conflict about the legitimacy of state ‘ownership’ and prerogative. The question of ‘whose city’ is inextricably part of a bigger quarrel about ‘whose country’. This significant distinction between cities divided on a socio-economic or ethno-religious basis, and those conflicted around sovereignty contests is often under-observed. Of course, the distinction makes a big difference. Often, advocates of city peace-building will speak about fostering a sense of common belonging, rooted in a politico-legal concept of citizenship. Yet, in the case of sovereignty disputes, citizenship is itself at the very source of the conflict. Thus, although both kinds of urban division tend to promote territorial segregation, each type demands its own understanding and intervention. Specifically, as illustrated in this book, the intricacies of sovereignty contests require a sophisticated synchronization of planning and policy around social inclusion, community cohesion, and conflict resolution. The challenge of this integrated approach is that pursuit of one strategy can amplify the difficulty in another. For instance, social inclusion programmes that attempt to redress inequities between contending groups can inadvertently provoke antagonism from one side that believes such redistribution is designed to disadvantage them. In turn, this perception that ‘the other side’ gets more can deepen the acrimony, thereby frustrating the promotion of inter-community cohesion. Yet, a durable peace demands that inclusion and cohesion are not mutually exclusive. Faced with such entanglement, it is tempting for planners and those charged with urban development to disclaim its relevance for their remit. It is easier for them to don the mantle of apolitical technical professionals, who are obliged to deliberately disregard these contexts in order to protect their detached impartiality. But, in this book, it is argued that such apparent ‘neutrality’ in the midst of urban conflict is a delusion. Moreover, without a conscious concern about its impact on the divisions, planning and policy can inadvertently accentuate rather than ameliorate such conflict. Indeed, many aspects of these disputes come down to sensitive issues of territory and space— particularly in cities caught up in sovereignty contests—and since planning is fundamentally about the shaping of social space, it is inevitably intertwined with these awkward dilemmas. Addressed more positively, it is argued here that planning can provide the spatial underpinning of all the relevant interventions to resolve such conflicts. But, to achieve such a mission, it has to be reconceptualised beyond the narrow ambitions of physical land-use planning. New forms of spatial planning offer a paradigm for the kind of sustainable, comprehensive, inclusive, and participatory approaches to city development that may open up this conceptual and operational transformation. While this is much easier said than done, there is urgency about this recasting, if only because there are portents of proliferation of urban contests in the context of a globalising and

Introduction

5

urbanising world that accommodates substantial social segmentation, new geo-political antagonisms, environmental degradation, and related resource rivalry. In extreme conditions, such features risk the partitioning of many cities into the fortified enclaves of the rich and powerful alongside the settlements of the economically precarious and the ghettos of the excluded. Any such stark socio-spatial separation threatens to promote deepening inequalities, create separate social universes, and foment violence—all of which can serve to not only impede solidarity of common citizenship, but also to inhibit democratic politics. The very sustainability of cities in such circumstances is suspect. Even short of this forbidding scenario, there is an imperative for a new planning that proactively addresses the challenges of the divided city. Given this central argument, the book attends to the case through the following structure.

Outline of structure and argument The book is divided into three main sections: the opening section, covering Chapters 2 to 6, addresses the conceptual and theoretical frameworks and the dilemmas for planning and policy in their interventions in this problematic terrain; the second section comprises three empirical chapters that offer analysis of case study cities (Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Belfast, Nicosia, Oldham, and Bradford); and the final section consists of a concluding chapter that connects the issues and arguments with the earlier theoretical considerations, and offers a paradigm for effective planning and policy in contested cities. Specifically, Chapter 2 deals with the nature of the changing city, within which the problems of division fester. Essentially, it emphasises that we live in an urban world. Since there is no longer a simple urban–rural dichotomy, the ambiguity of territorial identities and boundaries means that ‘the city’ cannot be articulated in definitive spatial terms. Rather, it is an arena that is being continuously reshaped through social construction and relations within a spatial form of peri-urbanised city-regions (Knapp et al., 2006). Many urban areas are seeking amalgamations and networks with proximate city neighbours to achieve a more potent development axis, based on scale, synergy, and other forms of collaborative advantage. However, the inflated rhetoric of such territorial cohesion still tends to exceed the reality. Importantly, the new Urban Age is not simply the rolling out of the Western urban experience over the last two centuries, which, for instance, featured a close link between urbanisation, industrialisation, and modernisation. Many current city expansions in the poorest parts of the world are unattended by economic opportunity and growth, thereby generating pronounced social inequities and tensions. As expressed by Soja (2000), just as the global is urbanising, the urban is globalising, and both the development and conflictive potential of contemporary

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

urbanism lies in the interplay of these twin processes. The big urban changes are evident in the Global South. Accordingly, the proclivity for urban theorists to assume the urban experience of the developed world as normative is inappropriate. Rather, a new urban scholarship is demanded, one that acknowledges the dramatic demographics in the Global South, and which seeks an explanatory synthesis, based on what urban study in both first and third worlds can learn from each other. For instance, a notable condition of urbanism in the developing world—informality—contains relevance not only for our insight into places registering the most acute urban change, but also for ways in which such features find contested manifestation in first world cities. Urban conflict is not reducible to singular cause or type, and thus distinctions of divisions need to be drawn that respect the complexity and variation, while acknowledging that specific case studies contain permutations of these different types that inter-penetrate in unique ways. So, while the case studies focus mostly on the familiar urban milieu in advanced Western countries, they are framed in an appreciation of the changing global context and the dynamics generating potential conflict in areas like the Global South. Trying to understand these significant changes in the urban, Chapter 3 considers the key theoretical and conceptual constructs employed to understand urban change and development for around a half a century. The era in urban policy, in which they held sway, was concerned about a rational planning system, framed to decentralise jobs, investment and people from concentrated metropolitan areas, while providing incremental improvements to the built environment in the old cities. By the 1980s, the urban issue had changed. More fundamental questions were raised about the very viability of the city in mature economies, in the context of a radical shift in their political economies, and about the increased significance of expanding cities in the emergent economies in the context of greater globalization and urbanization. Thus, Chapter 3 explores the tentative remaking of urban and social theory to make sense of these ‘New Times’. Over recent decades, urban theory has sought sanctuary from both the positivism of nomothetic spatial science and the over-determinism of Marxist structuralism. Alongside general discourses such as post-modernism, and more specific explanatory schemas such as urban regime theory, there has been since the 1980s, a set of ideas such as structuration and post-structuralism. These accord human consciousness a more central role, while conceding that the latitude for human agency is constrained by both structural context and social contingency. One theoretical framework, accommodating the realist and complex dimensions of context and contingency, offers interpretation of the singularity and inimitability of a particular place within a broader causal analysis of a globalised social world. A central problem underlying all of this debate is its emphasis on the first world city, to the neglect of the significant ramification for an urban world of the emergence of intensive urbanization in the Global South, and of the increasing transnational character of urbanism almost

Introduction

7

everywhere. Such reconstituted urbanism exemplifies the interaction of the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ city, an interface that holds the promise of opportunity and cultural hybridity, but also contains the threat of accentuated conflict, and thereby reveals a great deal about the contemporary city. Within this theoretical understanding, Chapter 4 explores the nature of the divided city. Cities today are shaped by rapid global processes of unsettling socio-economic change, within a largely de-regulated market-driven environment and an exploitative system of unfair ‘free trade’: the de-industrialization of the West; the transnationalisation of a big slice of manufacturing to the Global South; the role of hypermobile capital; increasing migrant flows; the diffusion of an acquisitive materialist culture; and degenerated urban enclaves of concentrated poverty alongside the cosmopolitan spaces enjoyed by the beneficiaries of neo-liberal globalisation. In turn, such divisive patterns have provoked urban contest, and alternative forms of globalisation from below, expressed often in ‘the informal city’. In just under a 60-year period since the Second World War, across the globe, five times more fatalities have resulted from civil wars (16.2 million) compared with interstate wars (3.3 million) (Fearon and Laitin, 2003). Many of these have had, at their root, a protracted contest around ethnic identity, since over 90% of the world’s nations are multi-ethnic with the majority, over 60%, of all conflicts since 1945 involving intrastate group clashes (Bollens, 1999). Moreover, many such conflicts have a strong urban component. As presaged earlier, two main types of divided city are distinguished: the first where the conflict is centred on cleavage of class, race, religious affiliation and ethnicity; and the second, where these fractures and frissons and the state’s role in addressing related issues of pluralism and equity, are interpenetrated with durable disputes about sovereignty and the legitimacy of the state itself. In both cases, the concept of identity is assuming greater prominence in a period that encompasses what appears to be contradictory dynamics of uniformization and differentiation, reflected in both the extension of globalism and the resurgence of tribalism. The former offers the potential of multiple identities, but within a power structure that mostly privileges the images, artefacts, and idioms of neo-liberal capitalism. The latter offers retreat to forms of local bonding and cultural purity that contrast the intimacy and safety of familiar solidarities with the distance and dominance attached to global determinations. Identity finds spatial expression in territory, which itself is socially shaped. While in many instances, territory will be accepted as natural and authentic, it is when its legitimacy, meaning, and ownership are contested that the role of power in its determination is most clearly exposed. Chapter 5 examines the issues of identity, territory, and space further. While for many identity is more a state of on-going re-definition, in ancestral struggles, such as those of an ethno-nationalist kind, it can be fixed, singular, and primal. In a world marked by cultural relativism and collision, there is

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

deep argument about the respective merits of universalist cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and cultural particularism in achieving social cohesion amid increasing diversity. Far from the anticipated de-territorialising impact of globalization, territorial sensibility remains potent, and plays an emblematic role in constituting a sense of identity, attachment, and rootedness in a world given more to impermanence and spatial–temporal compression (Kahler and Walter, 2006). Summarising the argument about space and its inherent contestedness in the ‘divided city’, it can be said that space has little or no inherent meaning. Rather, its meaning is socially constructed. Accordingly, specific spaces can be subject to diverse and contested readings. Moreover, social space is relational, in the sense that social interaction composes its content and image. Yet, space is not itself some kind of passive stage on which is played out the ‘theatre’ of social life. Rather, it is an active agent in the social formation of human settlement. It both reflects and changes the multiplicities of its users. In this way, it is largely dynamic, continuously being re-made and re-defined. Thus, its ‘meaning’ can change over time (Massey, 2005). Chapter 6 addresses the role of planning in contested space, highlighting that one crucial difference between cities partitioned on socio-economic or ethno-religious bases and those divided as a consequence of sovereignty contests, is that the latter typically contain more problematic features of contested space since the idea of indivisible territory minimises the scope for peaceful negotiation and compromise. Different models of urban planning and policy can operate in contested cities. But even ones designed to promote equity and conflict resolution can be entrapped in the complexity and contradictions of deep-seated struggles. Potentially, the new shift to spatial planning and the engaged and dialogic nature of collaborative planning offer pathways to a more productive role for such public intervention in cities marked by ultra-stratified identity politics and ethno-nationalist contest. Nevertheless, there are limits to a proceduralist view of collaborative planning, particularly in the highly fragmented circumstance of uncollaborative parties locked in mutual hostility and subject to power differentials. This suggests that a more agonistic model of planning is demanded. These theoretical, conceptual, and discursive chapters are followed by three empirical ones that scope across the sovereignty–pluralist distinction drawn earlier. Chapter 7 looks at three US cities, located in the Mid-West region, which have been subject to significant economic restructuring: Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. In exploring the divisions of these cities, largely rooted in the pluralist fractures around race, ethnicity, and class, the extent to which planning interventions pay heed to, and impact on, these conditions is addressed. While all three cities have pursued a development-led form of renaissance within at least a nominal framework of public–private partnership, the emphasis attached to a market-driven approach has been notable. Moreover, the form and role of the racial divide in each city has been

Introduction

9

different, and arguably has impacted on the outcome of their regeneration drive. One spatial rivalry that has featured in all three cases concerns the relative priority attached to the development of the Downtown over the neighbourhoods, particularly those communities where the concentration of race and poverty is most acute. Within this kind of common political–economic framework, what differences in strategy and outcome are apparent, and how do these relate to city divisions, particularly around the category of race? Chapter 8 deals with the sovereignty-contested city of Belfast. It argues that this ethno-nationalist dispute has seen a close correspondence between the spaces of the most acute deprivation and the spaces where conflict around identity and belonging has been most trenchantly fought. Accordingly, policies of community cohesion and social inclusion are both relevant interventions within a participatory spatial planning framework. But they have to be closely aligned and under-pinned by a deliberate conflict-resolution strategy. Specifically, programmes for compensatory regeneration and wider city-region development and those for inter-communal reconciliation need to operate as twin processes that are mutually reinforcing. Yet, it is acknowledged that the re-distributive attributes of social inclusion initiatives can unintentionally intensify divisions, thereby making the objectives of community cohesion even more intractable. Some of this conundrum is evident in the limited success of both conventional and innovative approaches to planning and development in the city in recent decades. The final empirical chapter covers both sovereignty and pluralist examples— Nicosia in Cyprus in the case of the former, and Oldham and Bradford in Britain, in the case of the latter. It attempts to highlight the different agendas that derive from this distinction—incremental political accommodation in the case of the former, manifested in gradual physical and spatial transformations; and emphasis on community cohesion and social inclusion in the case of the UK cities. However, despite this different emphasis, and the conceptual demarcations in the nature of the division, it also acknowledges some of the interface between these two types of city strife. Both places have experienced sectarian violence centred on contested identity and territory. For instance, inter-communal riots in Oldham and Bradford prompted public engagement about the roots of this upheaval, with considerable focus on contentious links between identity and territory. While clearly the ethno-nationalist hostility in Nicosia is rooted in a visceral dispute about sovereignty, it may be considered that the genesis of the ethnic hostilities in Britain is totally different. The distinction between the two may seem to be reflected in the more absolute and physical divide that separates Greek and Turkish Cypriots in Nicosia. However, the contrast may not be so unadulterated. For some of the Islamic protagonists in Britain, there is also a ‘sovereignty’ dimension—if only in their conviction that sovereignty belongs ultimately with the divine rather than secular authority, and that it has a global writ rather than a specific national one. Similarly, for some of the white adversaries, relevance is attached to a facet

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

of English nationalism, whose sovereignty they perceive to have been compromised by the growing presence of ethnic groups with a presumed primary attachment to a foreign culture. This is not to infer that the two urban contexts replicate main aspects. Rather, without losing the important distinction between the sovereignty and pluralist disputes, it is to acknowledge that places from both kinds of contest can share some similar elements with respect to identity affiliation, inter-communal tension, and the linked issue of competitive access to urban space and resources. In conclusion, Chapter 10 draws the analysis of the case studies together with the earlier conceptual and theoretical considerations that frame the challenge of planning in divided cities. Beyond the main models of planning in contested space—the neutral, partisan, equity, and resolver approaches— there is a proposed new model that fits within creative versions of spatial planning and facilitates the kind of agonistic deliberation that may hold promise for conflictive cities. In this task, there is recognition of how incongruities among planning and policy agendas may derive from ontological, epistemological, ideological, and methodological disputes. Deep divisions in cities generate contest between protagonists about the reality of the context and content of the conflict; about the form and validation of knowledge that offers causal understanding; about the rival values and perspectives that inform the mission and behaviour of the adversaries; and about the methods of data collection and analysis designed to elucidate the actual situation. Thus, where cultural collision is acute and mutual trust is fragile, what can appear as rational and equitable to one side can appear as unreasonable and discriminatory to the other. Patently, we do not occupy an exclusively rational social universe. Even without endorsing the relativities of post-modernism, it can be said that emotion, intuition, and such like, also play their part. Thus it is that two very different world views can see ‘reality’ in very different ways, and this binary lens can become further entangled with a familiar pattern in city conflicts whereby one side’s expectation gives rise to the other’s enhanced insecurity and ‘bunker’ mentality. The closing chapter considers these dilemmas and offers an imperfect pathway to a more productive discourse. This book derives from the participatory action-research work of the authors over the last two decades, during which they have been intensively involved in the policy-making and evaluation component of urban/regional policy and planning, while also engaged at the meso and micro levels with regeneration and community agencies of various kinds. In particular, over the last five years, they have been involved with an international collaborative research project, known as Contested Cities and Urban Universities (CU2) that has sought to work through a strategic partnership between academy and various city stakeholders in co-producing knowledge about the nature of divided cities and efficacy of planning and policy responses. Other colleagues have contributed to this work and their ideas have helped us clarify our own thoughts in these pages. In particular, we would like to recognise Professor

Introduction

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David Perry, Director of the Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC); Ratoola Kunda (UIC); and Dr Ralf Brand, University of Manchester, UK. Within Queen’s University, Belfast, our team has included: Professor Malachy McEldowney, who particularly led our research in Nicosia, and whose reflections we draw upon for that case study; Dr Ken Sterrett and Maelosia Hardy, whose primary research in Oldham and Bradford has assisted our two case studies in the UK, and Gavan Rafferty, who has worked on the issue of governance in divided cities.

2 Conflict in the Changing City

In considering the complexion of urban division and conflict, it is helpful to set the context of the contemporary city. Urbanity is changing markedly, reflecting shifts in economy, polity, diversity and demography, while its divisive and fractal character is putatively accentuated by related social and ethnic polarities. Since the concept of the urban realm is increasingly complex (Healey, 2007), it is no longer feasible to define it simply as human settlement outside the rural, ‘an inhabited place of greater size, population or importance than a town or village’ to quote a dictionary description (Merriam-Webster, 2005, p. 226). Thus, we have the idea of ‘metropolis’ to acknowledge that urban built environments in advanced economies have tended over the last five decades to stretch out beyond original municipal boundaries in variegated manifestations of sprawl (Downs, 1994), sometimes connecting together economically interdependent metropolitan areas in forms such as conurbation and metroplex. While the prevailing narrative in the industrial city since the 1960s has been one of decline and even death (Jacobs, 1961), like Mark Twain’s, its demise has proved to be exaggerated. Rather than degenerate, it has mutated into a more amorphous form, whereby the effective spatial unit of urban analysis extends beyond central cities to at least encompass the hinterland of suburban and ex-urban human habitat. As expressed by Knapp (2006, p. 61): Old dichotomies between centre and periphery, urban and rural, settlements and open space, are fading . . .Cities, suburbs, towns and rural areas grow increasingly together into a new poly-nuclear and fragmented urban patchwork. Indeed, some have identified this perimeter settlement as a distinctive urban form, known as ‘edge city’ (Garreau, 1991), that, particularly in the US, has Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

now configured to the final destination of a three-stage development: starting with the suburbanisation of people, largely involved in dormitory living and commuting to downtown; transforming further with the malling of America, which saw the re-siting of downtown retail and offices in satellite suburbs; and culminating with the relocation of substantial economic activity to the more autonomous ‘superburbia’ or ‘technoburbs’, where a sizeable share of metropolitans now reside, recreate, shop and work. Bloch (1994) refers to this ‘rise and shift to the periphery’ as the inversion of the metropolis, displacing the conventional centripetal and largely radial dynamics of development from the urban core outwards with a more tangled mosaic landscape. Linked to this concept is the description of that belt in the urban fringes just beyond ‘city limits’, where reside both farmers and households in a hybrid city-countryside known as the peri-urban (Cavailhes et al., 2004). Representing ‘the transitional zones between distinctly urban and unambiguously rural areas’ (Simon, 2008, p. 167), these diffuse interfaces manifest what some have labelled extended metropolitan regions. This pattern of low density urban expansion has also become evident in Europe, where urban compaction used to contrast favourably with the typical sprawl in the US. In Europe, growth in built-up locations peaked in the 1950s–1960s, since when the urban footprint has stretched into surrounding countryside, exemplified in the conglomerate development along the Rhone Valley down to the Mediterranean coast. In such formations, ‘development is patchy, scattered and strung out, with a tendency for discontinuity’ (European Environment Agency, 2006, p. 6). A mix of social circumstance and policy has spurred this dynamic, including: income growth, low commuting costs, low cost of agricultural land acquisition relative to brownfield development, and intractable inner city problems (ibid. 2006, p. 10–11): Indeed during the 10-year period between 1990 and 2000 the growth of urban areas and associated infrastructure throughout Europe consumed more than 8000 km2 (a 5.4% increase during the period). On a straight extrapolation, a 0.6% annual increase in urban areas, although apparently small, would lead to a doubling of the amount of urban area in little over a century. Historical trends since the mid-1950s show that European cities have expanded on average by 78%, whereas the population has grown by only 33%. A major consequence of this trend is that European cities have become less compact. These patterns are becoming evident also among the former ‘socialist’ cities of Eastern Europe. Though once spatially contained by a combination of centralised planning and mass use of public transit, they are experiencing acute pressure toward low density sprawl as incomes rise, new housing choices emerge, access to the private car extends, land markets are deregulated, and planning controls are eased.

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Others have characterised the new cityspace that combines dispersal and agglomeration as the post-metropolis (Soja, 2000, p. 250), expressed ‘as “the city turned inside-out”, as in the urbanisation of the suburbs and the rise of the Outer City. But it also represents “the city turned outside-in”, a globalisation of the Inner City that brings all the world’s peripheries into the center, . . .This redefines the Outer and the Inner City simultaneously, while making each of these terms more and more difficult to delineate and map with any clarity or confidence’. This explanation of reconstituted territoriality builds on Soja’s previous publication, Thirdspace (1996), in which he spoke of the exopolis, to capture a linked triple process of urban change—the demise of the traditional city, alongside the growth of outer cities, amid the growing influence of exogenous factors on all cities in a globalising world. Taking this spatial pattern further, the idea of ‘city-region’ suggests that individual cities have to be understood increasingly in their regional context. Thus, for example, European balanced development policies lean towards a polycentric network of urban areas in regional and sub-regional locales to optimise economies of scale and scope (Davoudi and Strange, 2009). Such multiscalar clustering raises questions about the ‘shifting territory’ of urban governance (Murdoch, 1997), and about how such composite urban areas can achieve smart connectivity in policy and planning. This is particularly so if the spatial unit is extended even further. For instance, Gottman’s concept (1957) of megalopolis originally referred to the 500 mile corridor in the northeastern US region, where a cluster of urban areas from Boston to Washington constituted a powerful economic and political zone in the country as a whole. Similar urbanised complexes have been identified in Europe, such as the ‘blue banana’ area that covers a vast tract of urbanisation and concentrated economy, stretching from Birmingham to Milan, and including London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Cologne, Frankfurt, Basel, Zurich, and Turin. Other less pre-eminent socio-spatial geometries in Europe include: the ‘golden banana’, a coastal ‘sun-belt’ corridor from Valencia to Genoa; the ‘Flemish diamond’, comprising an agglomeration of Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp and Leuven, with a total population of 5.5 million; and the Randstad in Holland, linking Amsterdam (finance, transport) to Utrecht (service sector), The Hague (government) and Rotterdam (port). This megalopolitan agglomeration, based on integrated strategic citynetworking, has been elaborated in the contemporary term, mega-region, to capture forms of urban settlements that grow beyond the metropolitan, noted not only for substantial population size, but also for significance in economic output and innovation. One study of these integrated sets of cities and surrounding suburban hinterlands identifies 40 mega-regions in the world, with output of more than $100 billion, that together produce two-thirds of world output, and 85% of global innovation (Florida et al., 2007, p. 4):

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As the distribution of economic activity has gone global, the city-system has also become global—meaning that cities compete now on global terrain. Urban mega-regions are beginning to relate to the global economy in much the same way that metropolitan regions relate to national economies. Thus, such mega-regions can network more together than to other parts of their own nation states. Indeed, for some like Ohmae (2000), these regionstates are almost replacing nation-states as the ‘natural’ business units, operating with modern telecommunication and transport, across political boundaries in what is supposedly an increasingly ‘flat’ and borderless world (Friedman, 2005). Such network power is seen as offering the synergy and nimble flexibility that can attend greater liberation from national polity. This is particularly so in the context of globalisation (Brenner, 1999), which has contributed to the reshaping of the city in many ways. One example is the emergence of ‘global cities’ (Sassen, 1991; Isin, 2000; Olds, 2001), marked not only by their role as command centres in the world economy, as nodal post-industrial production sites of global finance and business services, as concentrated sources of innovation, and as lucrative markets of elite consumption, but also by their mutual worldwide networking (Sassen, 2002). Critics of this tag (Huyssen, 2008, pp. 10–11) suggest that: the global city had become a slogan serving either to claim avant-garde status for certain, primarily Western centers of finance and services or to articulate ambitions elsewhere to join the urban upper crust. . .the conceit of the global city has itself become a way of reasserting Western notions of advanced modernity and urban developmentalism which ignores many vital aspects of urban life that fall outside its purview. Some insist that the current characteristics of the global city have been evident in embryonic form for around 150 years, and that their mature manifestation is simply a recently accelerated process layered on an existing integrative trajectory. As noted by Abu-Lughod (1999, p. 2) in respect of New York: ‘. . .even though the pace and scale of today’s globalized economy— and thus of the global cities that serve as its “command posts”—are faster and vaster, and the mechanisms of integration more thoroughgoing and quickly executed. . .the seeds from which the present “global city” grew were firmly planted in Manhattan during the middle decades of the nineteenth century’. Another aspect of this ‘global’ impact is the development of more mongrel cities (Sandercock, 2003), comprising greater diversity of ethnic populations due to factors like increasing migration patterns. In broad terms, this holds the prospect of either more pronounced conflict around the politics of identity and contested space, or the nurturing of cosmopolis, where pluralist engagement across crucial divides can fashion a creative combination of multiculturalism

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and cultural hybridity, within a framework of common citizenship (Kymlicka, 1995) and ‘a recognition of intertwined fates’ (Sandercock, 1998, p. 125). But, despite all the transformative re-patterning in the advanced economies, the most dramatic redefinition of the city is happening in the Global South. Since 1950, the human population has expanded from 2.5 billion to 6 billion, and 60% of this massive growth has occurred in urban areas, particularly in the developing world, where there has been over a sixfold increase in urban populace. As expressed by Gray (2002, p. 10): ‘People who are now over forty have lived through a doubling of the world’s population’. In 2007, an historic mark was reached, when 50% of humanity was designated as urban, compared with approximately 25% in 1950, and 10% in 1900. This epochal change augurs the Urban Age. Moreover, the projection is that by 2030, global urban population as a share of total population will reach around 60%, and a likely 75% by 2050. This accelerated urbanisation means that between 2001 and 2030, virtually all world population increase will happen in urban areas, and in the process, the world’s slum population will double to around 2 billion, thereby spiralling from 32% to 41% of the world’s urban population over this period (Tibaijuka, 2007). In 1975, only 27% of the developing world’s population was urban. By 2030, it will be 50% (Hinrichsen et al., 2002). Over a longer time frame, from 2007 to 2050, the world’s urban population will likely rise from 3.3 billion to 6.4 billion, an almost doubling increase that exceeds the expected increase of total world population over this period, reflecting substantial migration from rural to urban settlement (UN Population Division, 2007). One feature of this striking growth is the emergence of megacities, a phenomenon mostly concentrated in the Global South. Of course, large cities have existed for some time. Think of ancient Baghdad. But, in 2000, there were 388 cities in the world with 1 million plus residents. By 2015, the figure is estimated to rise to 554 such cities (Hinrichsen et al., 2002). Defining megacities as locations of 10 million inhabitants or more, of the top 10 such places in 2007, only two were in the advanced economies: Tokyo at 35.7 million and New York–Newark at 19 milllion. Moreover, by 2025, the big increases will have occurred in cities like Mumbai (from 18.9 million to 26.4 million), Delhi (from 15.9 million to 22.5 million), Dhaka (from 13.5 million to 22 million), and Kolkata (from 14.8 million to 20.6 million) (UN-Habitat, 2008a). Taking the case of Mexico City, its area has spread out from 9.1 to 1500 km2 from the start of the twentieth century to the present. Its populous, polluted, and multinodal form contributes to its reputed chaotic and dangerous cityscape. Hailed by some as a ‘monstropolis’, it ‘has grown in such a staggered and awkward manner that it seems to lack any sort of master plan, a city in which one can barely conceive one’s day-to-day survival’ (Canclini, 2008, p. 88). Such mammoth urban centres have been termed ‘primate cities’, referring to how their over-urbanisation reflects their society’s uneven development and locational inflexibility. For instance, the population of Thailand’s capital,

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Bangkok, was 6.7 million in 2000, 30 times larger than the next largest city (Gottdiener and Hutchinson, 2006). Given their size and diversity, their vulnerability to natural disasters associated with climate change, the immiseration of so many of their residents, and the resource rivalry involved in building physical and social infrastructure sustainably (UN-Habitat, 2008b), these urban giants face the potential of protracted social conflict. Taking this trajectory of the ‘endless city’ (Burdett and Sudjic, 2008) to an extreme prediction, it has been posited that time will see the creation of the ecumenopolis, whereby humankind will live in one continuous worldwide city. A bleak reflection of this intensified urbanism is the steep growth of what has been dubbed shadow cities, referring to the illegal squatter settlements that express an indomitable resilience and ingenuity among the world’s poorest. Creating makeshift incremental neighbourhoods outside the ‘asphalt world’ of the formal planning process (Neuwirth, 2005), such people live in the denied or invisible city, constituting a new paradigm of human settlement, a ‘zone of silence’ in terms of recognition, legitimacy and public debate (Global Urban Observatory, 2003). Davis (2006) characterises this proliferation of the precarious habitat of barricadas, favelas, and shanty towns as a ‘planet of slums’, a labyrinth of spatially concentrated destitution and related conflict. But, even within the Global South, significant poverty asymmetries prevail. An estimate in 2005 indicated that ‘in the least developed countries almost three quarters of the urban population were slum dwellers’ (UN Population Division, 2007). In summarising this conceptual confusion of the contemporary city— reflected in the various neologisms such as ‘the multi-nucleated metropolitan region, the polycentric urban region, the new techno-city, post-suburbia, the galactic metropolis, the city without, the postmodern urban form. . .’, Isin (1996, p. 123) concludes that the root characteristic is that of socio-spatial fragmentation and discordance within a global context. But, whatever categorisation is employed to reflect the urban mutations and differential geographic scale and reach, the important point to note is that the spatial and the social interpenetrate, and the intrinsic spatiality of social life, as Soja (2000, p. 8) reminds us, is critical to comprehension of contemporary urbanism: Urban spatial specificity refers to the particular configurations of social relations, built forms, and human activity in a city and its geographic sphere of influence. It actively arises from the social production of cityspace as a distinctive material and symbolic context or habitat for human life. It thus has both formal or morphological as well as processual or dynamic aspects. Given this changing definition of the urban, investigation of planning in the divided city—this book’s central focus—is predicated on an understanding that divisions in cities have diverse cause and form.

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Forms of urban division In the contemporary period, eight main forms of urban conflict have been argued: (1) Some insist that with the transformation over the last four decades in the mature economies—variously characterised as the shift to late capitalism, disorganised capitalism, post-industrialism, or the informational society—has come a more pronounced bifurcation of the labour market and a related acute socio-spatial segregation between rich and poor. In its starkest form, the flourishing gated communities of the wealthy and the languishing ghettoes of the underclass are deemed to constitute a dual or two-speed city that is inherently unstable and prone to conflict. Others suggest that this stark contrast is over-simplified. (2) With the massive and rapid growth of the urban in the Global South, due mainly to the ‘modernisation’ of the emergent industrial economies and the related influx from rural settlement, has come a strain on urban infrastructure and an accentuation of social inequality amid proliferation of informal development, whose legitimacy and welfare are deeply contested. Such confrontations risk rending whole urban regions, with potential for recurrent discord. (3) As a feature of globalisation, alongside the greater mobility of capital, labour, trade, and information, there has been an increasing migration pattern, particularly from less developed to richer economies. Such new demographic configuration brings greater ethnic and religious diversity to even formerly homogeneous societies, and since the new populations tend to congregate in kindred city communities, the urban has become a concentrated arena that tests humanity’s ability to live peaceably with difference. (4) A pre-eminent version of such ‘culture wars’ has been the global contest between militant Islam and other politico-religious systems such as the West. For some like Huntington (1996), in the contemporary world, the principal fractures that engulf large populations in caustic and violent dispute are linked to a ‘clash of civilisations’. In this view, the primary condition of world conflict is no longer rooted in the ideological tussle of the Cold War, but rather rests in the diversity of cultural and religious identity, particularly the major fault line that involves elements of Islam and their perceived enemies. While producing new macro-geographies, such as the provocatively designated ‘axis of evil’, this absolutist confrontation also hardens ancient enmities in specific cities like Jerusalem and Beirut, and sparks newer ones in cities like Baghdad. (5) The urban is likely to become increasingly the site of ‘new wars’. This is attributable to both the massive urban growth in the Global South, and the nature of modern warfare. Since insurgents are particularly susceptible

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to high tech precision weapons in open terrain, adversaries of the most powerful nations will increasingly seek the density and congestion of urban ‘cover’, both to merge with local non-combatants and to curtail the superiority of their foe’s advanced weaponry. Moreover, as illustrated in the case of Baghdad, as insurgents seek to erode the will of their opponents, such protracted attrition holds potential for igniting local inter-ethnic enmities. (6) The role of ideology and/or government systems can engender intentional socio-spatial fissures, and related discord. For instance, Berlin’s partition and ultimate physical carving was connected to a global ideological contest, while South African cities were submitted to a state strategy of mandatory racial segregation, discrimination, and subjugation. (7) Increased global economic activity and the related pressures on global warming have sharpened rivalries over sources of energy and communication access. This has led to speculation that many future wars will be ignited by struggles for oil, gas, and water, and in the longer term perhaps by conflicts for those parts of the planet most secure from devastations visited by climatic change. Again, such global contests will come to ground most acutely in specific cities, and the racial profile of the forsaken in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina illustrates the politically toxic capacity of such catastrophes. (8) The end of the Cold War was accompanied by the collapse of authoritarian regimes that had held diverse nationalities forcibly under a centralist polity. Moreover, the buttressing of surrogate and satellite administrations by the two main ideological combatants proved no longer tenable. Together with on-going de-colonialisation, such ‘liberations’ have defrozen old ethnic animosities and ushered in a new wave of ethno-nationalist contest. These new arenas of dispute about borders and sovereignty, such as the Balkans and Chechnya, join those nationalist cauldrons of more long-standing, such as the major conflicts of Israel–Palestine, Lebanon, and Kashmir–India–Pakistan, and those less significant geo-politically, such as Cyprus, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country. There is a tendency for such macro quarrels to find most ferocious expression in the main urban centres, such as Jerusalem, Beirut, Sarajevo, Grozny, Nicosia, Belfast, and Bilbao. In short, much of the world’s urban divisions can be located within this typology. But the explanatory force of each ‘type’ can be debated. Moreover, specific conflicts comprise specific permutations of them. But, whatever the difference in context and form, urban conflicts share a linked set of issues: history, identity, territory, propinquity, legitimacy, equity, and security. In general terms, analysis of these contests tends to fall predominantly into four frameworks:

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The political (addressing the basis of legitimacy, and including arguments about governance and about whether pluralist democracy offers the most effective instrument for securing consensus and compromise between protagonists). The economic (examining the material basis for class and power inequities, seen to underpin the fissures). The cultural (emphasising the way rival norms, traditions, and claims of ethnic groups determine mutual antagonism, ranging from estrangement to active hostility). The spatial (the relational geographies that attend the conflict).

The view of this book is that all cities in the contemporary world are in some regard ‘divided cities’. Thus, it is important to make a differentiation about the type of division. Two main types will be distinguished here. The first concerns those disputes which are predominantly about pluralist issues of social class, status, power and equity, and the second concerns how macro disputes about state sovereignty become encapsulated most acutely in micro spaces in the main cities of the territories involved. Of course, in many cases, it is not such a simple dichotomy. In particular, those cities caught up in sovereignty conflicts also experience the socio-spatial fragmentations of pluralist quarrels, and it is the inter-penetration of these that shape the contingencies of particular situations. Similarly, it will be argued that causal frameworks are not reducible to the neat categories outlined above. For instance, the material impacts on the cultural and political, and is, in turn, influenced by them. In other words, cities are complex intricate arenas, whose social and spatial contours are moulded by multiple inter-connected dynamics, and these need to be deciphered further before consideration of planning’s distinctive role in addressing urban conflict. Given the main character of urban change and division outlined here, how are these features to be understood? The next chapter examines the theories that have dominated discourses about the city from the twentieth century, and their explanatory merit, while the subsequent chapter explores the main conceptualisations of conflict in cities.

3 Understanding the Urban

In the 1970s, the energy crisis and subsequent recession accelerated the process of de-industrialisation, as part of a transnational corporate restructuring within a deepening globalisation, all with a profound impact on urban socio-spatiality. By the 1980s, the very survival of the city in the developed market economies appeared to be problematic, as its very raison d’^etre was being recast in the wake of the substantial shake-out of industrial employment. Moreover, the marked socio-spatial changes seemed to qualify the interpretative relevance of conventional urban theory, which lacked a convincing purchase on that transformative period. Since then, the widening contour of urban studies has seen the increasingly interdisciplinary complexion of the genre. Contextually, there has been the contribution of public policy in addressing the way socially allocated capital was being reshaped, and the implication for the most deprived urban spaces. Political economy has offered insights into the urban impact of changing production regimes and the crisis in Keynesian economic management. The reorganised role of the local state following greater privatisation and centralisation of its former role has been a concern of sociology and politics. Responding to the de-regulation tendencies in development control of land use, urban planning has been impelled to a more pluralist conceptualisation beyond its social democratic roots. But perhaps the subject area which, in examining the new spatial forms derivative of all this change, has engaged the most integrated debate is that of economic and human geography. To take some examples of standard urban theory to illustrate their limitations, we can start with neoclassical location theory about the competitive operation of the land market. Concentrating on the cost–benefit estimation of optimal location and land-use allocation in particular built environments, with the purpose of identifying the favourable conditions and incentives that Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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magnetise profitable investment (Walker, 1980), most versions accorded great significance to distance. For instance, Christaller’s central place theory posited hexagonally shaped market areas, founded on two key concepts: threshold, which was a measure of the prerequisite minimum demand level to sustain a service, and range, which was the furthest distance a customer was prepared to travel to purchase. The empirical practicality of such modelling for maximum economic utility can be queried, as can its emphasis on description rather than explanation (Healey and Ilberry, 1990, p. 23): . . . . neoclassical approaches to economic geography can be criticized for seeking explanation at the level of the individual firm, farm, or office, for building abstract models in which real world decisions are treated as additional factors, and for ignoring the historical conditions in which firms are operating. In the 1970s, a more inductive exercise took hold, in a behavioural perspective which attempted to develop generalised spatial patterns from empirical investigation at the micro-level. Since focus was often on psychological penetration of individual values and motivations, it postulated imperatives besides profit maximisation, including security and satisfaction, and acknowledged the constraints on location decision making, imposed by the range of information and the scope for its application. As such, it strayed beyond a narrow positivism, with a greater potential for including subjective perceptions in the land-use calculus (Pred, 1974). A different perspective came with modernisation theory, a linear and evolutionist formulation, which posited that successful urban development was contingent upon the degree of exposure to, and diffusion of, metropolitan progressive ideas and values (Rostow, 1971). Variations of this theme are Tonnies’ (1957) dualistic distinction of gemeinschaft, resonant with traditional rural values, and gesellschaft, typical of modern urban society, and dichotomies in which the city is perceived as an environment at once liberating and isolating, in which informal ascriptive relations, and related solidarities, give way to more contractual ones, linked to achievement, rationality, individualism and mobility. By the same token, such change is seen to risk greater instability and conflict. Another variation in this urban analysis is found in terms of culture and ecology, tracing itself back to the Chicago School, which was concerned to research how such a large mosaic city, faced with rapid transformation, density, and heterogeneity, could adapt and endure. Leading figures in this team, like Park and Burgess, produced a theory of social ecology, a Darwinian construct of the city as a social organism, virtually subject to natural laws. In this model, urban space is seen to be shaped by a continual series of territorial manoeuvres, in which those ‘fittest’ social groups survive best in the struggle for best settlement. Burgess elaborated this proposition via his

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social mapping of concentric urban zones, whereby the inner circle denoted a Central Business District, rippling out to a suburban or satellite town belt. Least attractive was the ‘zone of transition’, bedevilled by disorganisation and cultural impairments. This dynamic of invasion and succession is appreciative of the decaying potential of the older parts of the urban core, a difference with the Alonso model, which takes a more ahistorical and idealised view of centrality and distance. For urban ecologists, then, the central focus was on the dynamic in the built environment, derivative of competitive individuals pursuing their consumer preferences in a largely market environment. It was the cultural dimension which most engaged another of the Chicago team, Louis Wirth (1957), for whom the urbanised culture of modern society strained to accommodate large numbers of people from mixed social groups in tightly packed spaces, consonant with civility rather than unruly dispute. A derivative of this theoretical strand lay in community studies, in which researchers often immersed themselves in a particular neighbourhood in ethnographical penetration of its specificities. By the 1960s, the pedigree of this approach was challenged by those like Pahl (1968, p. 293), who were convinced that it was social rather than geographical location which really mattered. He disowned as a fruitless exercise ‘any attempt to tie particular patterns of social relationships to specific geographical milieux . . . .’ Certainly, the neighbourhood case study method suffered from the conceptual ambiguity of the term ‘community’. Though textually rich, these studies also struggled to transcend the particularistic narrative, into accounts with more universal application. The most notable, such as the Lynds’ (1929) exploration of ‘Middletown’ US, or 30 years later, Young and Wilmott’s (1957) look at London’s Bethnal Green, testified to an enduring ‘quest for community’ in urban settlement. The latter study inferred that the modern city embodied an urban–rural continuum, in which ‘folk society’ cohabited with a system of secondary relations. Resisting the temptation to idealise the mutual support systems of the closely-knit neighbourhood, the study by Coates and Silburn (1970) of Nottingham’s St Ann’s found that shared adversity could equally instill conflictual relations, and it became an important contribution to the ‘rediscovery of poverty’ literature in Britain. By the 1960s, cultural theories were also being marshalled to explain urban deprivation in terms of communal pathologies. This merely reflected a central weakness of the whole perspective, namely its failure to separate cause and effect, to distinguish in other words, whether people’s value and behaviour patterns were responsible for their urban condition, or a response to it. Its attachment to culture as cause contributed to an environmental determinism, in which it was thought that where people lived greatly influenced how they lived. The architecture and planning that drew on this assumption were reflected in everything from Garden Villages to the post-war New Towns. In the 1960s, the outbreak of urban rioting in the US, and in European countries such as Britain and France, though diverse in its genesis, stimulated

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the reformulation of an urban theory capable of interpreting such conflict. An example was to be found in a neo-Weberian model, highlighting the organisation of social space, with a focus on the managerial and allocative roles of urban gatekeepers. This managerialist perspective, compared with the cultural, acknowledged more clearly the role of power in the constitution of the urban. However, its understanding of power was a pluralist one, premised on a diffusion of political influence throughout the social system, mediated by a representational state. It considered the contest to own and use scarce resources in contained social space involved inequalities and conflicts generated by state bureaucracy as well as by the market. The theory contained a useful reminder that organisations are governed both by rules and discretion, and the arbitrary element can be driven by both rationality and prejudice. By implication, the particular form the matrix took in any given distributive or conflict situation demanded intimate knowledge of the managerial decisionmaking process. The Weberian concern with bureaucratic power was obvious. But a central theoretical difficulty concerned the relationship between the polity and the economy, and a central empirical problem arose in the identification, ranking, and inter-relating of the urban managers. The risk for the researcher lay in accessing the ‘middle dog’, rather than the real power brokers. Conflicts could be characterised as ‘people versus the planners’, when the degree of autonomy exercised by the latter was strictly circumscribed. As such, it could artificially delimit disputes as being between the ‘middle dogs’ and ‘underdogs’. Questions about who decides what resources are scarce might get sidelined. There was also a constraint in seeing the urban as an enclosed arena, rather than locating it dynamically in the wider political economy. In response to such critiques, Pahl (1975, p. 284), for instance, recognised the significance of capitalist markets in shaping particular urban economies. However, he insisted that a general focus on the features of capitalism per se was less enlightening about urban Britain than a specific understanding of British capitalism, and its corporatist structures. Within this, the efficacy of a research focus on urban managers remains: Since the urban managers are the central mediators between urban populations and the capitalist economy and since they also serve to generate and maintain the ideology of Welfare-Statism, their role remains crucial in the urban problematic . . . . The search for a just city is self-defeating. As long as there are ‘modern big cities’ there will be a need for ameliorism and the allocation of resources by managers and gatekeepers. A different perspective—neo-Marxist in roots—tended in general to insist that urban conflict could only be understood if seen as integral to a more fundamental capitalist crisis. In its analysis of the latter, it could be separated into two main schools: those which concentrated on the global character of

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capitalism, and those regulationist theories, which gave primary consideration to the internal relations within the nation-state, and to how national economies regulated their capitalist development, including its spatial component. At critical periods of change, the regulationist perspective identified distinctive shifts in the mode of regulation. For instance, the contemporary period was portrayed in terms of a decisive move away from Fordist mass production to neo- Fordist flexible and de-centralised production systems, an issue revisited later in this chapter. The regulation approach identified the pressure for a correspondence between the stability and predictability urges of capitalism as a societal system, and the dynamic nature of it as a system of accumulation. While the regulationist view regarded capitalist adaptation to historical shifts as being open and spatially variable, the structuralist approach was predicated on the logic of capital accumulation, and though granting the state a measure of autonomy, tended to see it primarily as facilitative of the accumulation process. The early work of Castells (1977, 1978) reflected this emphasis. For him, with the exception of the ‘world cities’ housing the corporate headquarters of the multinationals, the modern city was not the location of the major points of production, which had flitted to more suburban and ex-urban destinations. Accordingly, the city in contemporary capitalism was best viewed as an arena of conflict about consumption, particularly collective consumption of social goods provided by a capitalist state to ensure stable reproduction of labour. In this respect, planning was not an instrument for the pursuit of the ‘public good’. It was a mechanism to bring some ordered opportunity to the capitalist pursuit of private gain (Castells, 1978, p. 3): . . . . the state increasingly intervenes in the city; but, as an expression of a class society, the state in practice acts according to the relations of force between classes and social groups, generally in favour of the hegemonic fraction of the dominant classes. Inevitably, the inequities of this planning system would invite confrontation with its victims, organised in new urban social movements, in a revitalised form of the class struggle. In short, conflict was endemic in the capitalist city. The claims of this theory were hardly modest. First, in its teleology, it suggested a universalist applicability to capitalist cities. Second, it covered all contingencies. It professed to explain the imperative for social intervention and its retreat. Welfarist planning was functional to capitalism because state provision of social and physical infrastructure subsidised the costs of production for the private employer; it legitimised the system by appearing to ameliorate its worst disparities and to hinge its modern development on meritocracy; it brought some method to what would be the madness of markets if left to individual capitalists; and it ‘soft policed’ the working class to manage their compliance. At the same time, the theory could appear to accommodate the fiscal crisis of mature capitalism, which subjected welfare

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to spending curbs. So in a convenient catch-all, the welfare part of welfare capitalism could be seen as both functional and expendable. Third, it conflated the many disparate elements of urban protest into a movement, whose claims for unity and radical identity no empirical urban study could corroborate. Harvey (1973, 1982, 1989) has emphasised over-accumulation as one of the decisive internal contradictions of capitalism. For him, private investment in the built environment has a self-interest in engineering obsolescence in a restless creation of new demand and opportunity for accumulation. Yet, the tendency to obsolescence can undermine the exchange value of previous investment. While this constant over-turning of the urban landscape also risks political opposition from disturbed communities, Harvey has argued that legitimacy is sought by ‘a Faustian bargain’ between capital and labour, whereby the working class is accorded some scope for private and public consumption where they reside in compensation for the alienation they experience where they work. But the bargain is never secure. Urban struggle persists. For urban political economists in the Harvey mould, it is essentially class struggle around the production and circulation processes of capitalism. Crises in over-production generate the conditions for the demise of vulnerable producers, and a related concentration and centralisation of capital, and its spatial re-grouping. More monopolistic control over price may reverse the tendency for the profit rate to fall, but in doing so, it poses a persistent pressure to dispose profitably of surplus value when production is operating at full capacity. In this characterisation of the central urban dynamic, working class opposition is inherent but secondary to the self-limiting tendencies within capitalism itself, whereby competitive individualism amongst capitalists produces a total effect ultimately counter-productive to the system. Saunders (1981, p. 241) has contested this analysis as tending to straitjacket the role of the state into one invariably supportive of the dominant capitalist class in the realms of both private production and social consumption. Thereby, such urban political economy has attempted a catch-all in seeking ‘to explain the production of the urban environment with reference to the interests of various fractions of capital (for instance in reproducing labourpower, extending markets, countering the falling rate of profit, legitimating capitalist social relations or redistributing surplus value between less powerful and more powerful fractions)’. Clearly, the later work of Castells (1983) has shifted somewhat from this structuralism, not only in according greater scope for proactive community interventions around issues of collective consumption, but also in more generally eschewing mechanistic explanations, while continuing to depict the independence of the political process as highly qualified. The other main school in this perspective is that of the urban praxis theorists, who have distanced themselves from what they take to be the reductionist, functionalist and determinist tendencies of structuralism. Alongside the imperatives of structure, they have accorded greater indepen-

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dence in activity and consciousness to the human agency. In their view, it is necessary to deploy this duality of constraints and opportunities for a comprehensive appreciation of the interplay of social forces and space. By duality, then, the urban praxis theorists mean that social structures are simultaneously outcomes and channels of human consciousness and praxis (Smith and Tardanico, 1987, p. 89). A significant weakness of these intrasocietal theories—even those of a neoMarxist variety—is that until recently they have tended to under-play the impact on urban form of the increasing globalisation of the economy. Certain intersocietal theories attempt to redress this neglect, associating uneven development within nation states in the First World with inequalities between the First and Third Worlds. A well-known version is dependency theory, identified with Frank (1969). It has argued the existence of an international hierarchy of capitalist exploitation, whereby the system of profit maximisation not only distributes resources from subordinate to ruling classes within particular societies but also from peripheral to core countries in the world economy. In his later writings, he qualified this dependency, acknowledging more the capacity for determination by local class forces, though he still characterised this scope in terms of dependent development. Variations on this perspective can be employed to explain the spatial dynamic of uneven development. For instance, the urban and regional inequalities within the EU can be understood in terms of the agglomeration and external economies available to those developed areas enjoying proximity to markets, suppliers and appropriate labour supply, supported by physical and intellectual infrastructure, and quality transport and telecommunications. Given such comparative advantages, favoured cities can capture more high-valued added activities, thereby reinforcing the economic imbalance relative to more peripheral places. At its simplest, this pattern has been represented as a dichotomy between locations for corporate headquarters and those for branch-plants, between city-regions with conceptual and control functions compared with those with merely execution ones. This process contains features of a cumulative causation model, which posits that regions with higher output levels tend also to have higher productivity and wage levels. In spatial terms, these clusterings create axes of prime-mover cities, whose rental capacities and multiplier impacts accommodate the fiscal means for further infrastructural development, which in turn, facilitates greater degrees of connectedness with each other. The other main perspective, which stresses exchange rather than production relations, is world systems theory, associated with Wallerstein (1980). According to this approach, the transnationalisation of capital has reached such a point that city-regional/national political economy can best be interpreted as an integral element in one world capitalist system (Friedmann and Wolff, 1982). In short, the global is the relevant unit of analysis. Adopting ideas

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

from both these views, there have been attempts to designate a global hierarchy of cities, ranging from the so-called ‘world cities’ like New York, Bonn, Paris, Tokyo and London, which are home to the corporate headquarters of leading international corporations, to those like Houston, operating in a regional–national network (Smith and Tardanico, 1987). Some see in this differentiation a growing gap between the main urban agglomerations and the rest. As expressed by Dunford and Kafkalas (1992, p. 25): In recent years this gap between centres of control and the rest of the urban system has been reinforced as a result of the recent delinking of the real and financial spheres of capital (due to the overaccumulation of capital), the emphasis of the corporate sector on financial investments and the increase in the centralisation of capital. But the difficulty lies in specifying how complex inter-relationships of dominance and subordination among these global urban hierarchies are mediated and resolved. Healey (1991) has identified four approaches to the urban development process: . . . .

That of behavioural social science, which highlights the agents and their relationships; The estates management focus, which monitors the series of events involved; The neo-classical economic perspective, which emphasises calculations of rental yield; and The political economy approach, which addresses the structural imperatives in a class-based society.

These correspond closely to some of the key theorisations outlined. But is there any common ground shared by these main standard urban theories: neoclassical urban rent theory and its estimations of the utility of centrality; urban ecology and its selective, stratified and hierarchical urban construct based on a form of social Darwinism; urban managerialism and its Weberian focus on bureaucratic shaping of the urban as a socio-spatial system; and the Marxist emphases, for example, on dependent and core spaces, or on the city as a declining locale for production and a growing site for contradictions of overaccumulation, social reproduction and collective consumption? As indicated in the Table 3.1 the analytical focus of all the main urban theories have qualified explanatory power. Unravelling these contesting conceptualisations, some common characteristics can be identified. They all lay some claim to totalistic and universal insight and they all share some attachment to a modernist trajectory of progressive development. In unpacking these claims, it is contended here that contemporary urban complexities

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Table 3.1 Main urban theories. Urban theory

Analytical focus

Partial explanatory power

Neo-classical

Space shaped by price mechanism as accurate monitor of utility

Underestimates socio-spatial relations not determined by private self-interest economic calculus

Ecological

Urban as organism subject to social Darwinism — processes of selection, stratification and hierarchy

Underplays role of power

Cultural

The urban as a distinctive way of life

Cultural determinism demotes role of structure

Managerialism in socio-spatial system

Weberian focus on bureaucratic management and allocation of scarce urban resources. Focus on urban gatekeepers and stakeholders.

Assumes pluralist theory of power in corporatist state. Flawed in designation of urban managerial autonomy

Neo-Marxist

Urban as part of dependent or core space in global capitalism

Theory of the urban, or a theory of capitalism applied to the urban? Urban as arena of struggle over social reproduction: on the one hand, socialisation, on the other, collective social consumption, both putatively functional to capital. Urban as built environment shaped by contradictions of accumulation—underplays public as active agent

demote such perspectives from exclusive to partial revelation. Yet, it is important to recognise that these theories have not been simply the preserve of esoteric intellectual discourse within the academic enclave. Rather, they have informed public policy in much of the Western world. For instance, over the last four decades, the five main approaches to urban decline, social polarity, and related division have been rooted in this analysis: (1) Market failure: some neo-classical economists would suggest that stagnancy in mature urban spaces can be understood as a deviation from optimal ‘Pareto’ efficiency, whereby disturbance of ‘normal’ land and labour markets has disincentivised capital markets, producing disinvestment and under-development. A more favourable equilibrium will return with the liberation of competitive entrepreneurship, reduced transaction costs, redress of community disorganisation and dependency, and restoration of profit motive. (2) Environmental determinism: linked to an urban ecology, this posits that in the built environment, physical condition exercises foremost effect on

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social behaviour. As expressed by Coleman (1985), too often the false utopias of poor planning created inhospitable habitats for nurturing well-adjusted, civilised behaviour. From this prescription, priority is accorded to the demolition of decrepit public housing estates that by enclaving the poorest in grim conditions, have accentuated proclivity for conflict, while debilitating community capacity for socio-economic emancipation. (3) Cycle of deprivation: this view is associated with the concept of cultural disadvantage, which emphasises the role of ‘dysfunctional’ values and behaviour in creating inter-generational poverty and social marginality. The problem is not about more equitable resource allocation—as expressed in the pejorative maxim: ‘if the poor were given baths they would only put coal in them’. Rather, the answer lies in forms of social work, education, and community leadership that challenge ‘pathologies’ such as dependency, stunted ambition, and the predilection for immediate gratification. (4) Government failure: the emphasis here comes from a managerialist take on the poor coordination and silo tendencies within government, derived from Weberian concepts of efficient bureaucracy and related empirical study of ‘urban gatekeepers’. Since the features of this ineffective administration include proliferation of plans, fragmentation of leadership, and flawed service delivery, the solution lies in a ‘joined up’ approach that redefines urban management in terms of entrepreneurial ‘partnership’ governance. (5) Economic re-structuring: this explanation privileges the economic base and its structural transformation in mainly Marxist interpretations about the ‘logic’ of capital in class-based societies. From this materialist perspective, urban deprivation and conflict are inevitable features of the uneven development generated by the private market. While urban problems may be manifest locally, they are increasingly generated by a global capitalism. Ameliorative responses to the social repercussions of this inequitable system are mostly ‘gilding the ghetto’, an avoidance of the radical shift needed towards more public control of the commanding heights of the economy, within a redistributive politics. In essence, the lowly cannot be elevated unless the mighty are cast from their seats. Though the above approaches are not rendered totally redundant in the current period, their mainly exclusivist focus misconstrues the complexity of the contemporary city in the context of massive social transformation at a global scale. But, beyond eclecticism, correction of this over-simplified theoretical framework demands a plausible fusion of theoretical insights, a synthesis that derives from the key debates over the last two decades, concentrating on the material, cultural and spatial dimensions.

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Farewell to Keynesian–Fordist industrialism and welfarism? By the 1970s, most industrial countries had experienced problems in harmonising the requisite aggregate demand for economic growth and full employment with the control of inflation, currency stability and trade balance. Indeed, some came to face the perfect storm of stagflation, together with trade and budget deficits. Yet, the ascendant fiscal and monetary orthodoxy challenged the efficacy of ‘spending your way out of recession’. In this context, traditional Keynesian correctives were said to expand money supply, thereby fuelling inflation and currency devaluation, leading in turn to escalating interest rates and trade deficits, all fostering weaker investment and higher unemployment. Subsequent deflated economic activity boosted welfare dependency, particularly in the most mature urban-industrial spaces, thereby accentuating the fiscal burden. Critics charged that Keynesian ‘fine-tuning’ had proved to be not only more complicated and fallible than supposed, but also more about political art than economic science. In the case of an uncompetitive economy, its reflated aggregate demand would only serve to attract a higher level of imported competitor product. Moreover, Keynesian ‘stop-go’ tendencies debilitated planning for long-term strategic investment, while in a more international world, its national scope was becoming inexorably circumscribed. Rather than demand-side economics, a supply-side approach was preferable, one that emphasised availability of flexible labour and less regulated land and capital. The imperative for nations to become more competitive also scaled down to the obligation on individual cities to become more efficient performers in the remorseless contest that was global capitalism. From this perspective, there was no alternative to a systematic shake-out of unviable industrial capacity, a process of de-industrialisation that would leave a trimmer but fitter industrial base rooted in knowledge-intensive production, alongside a decisive shift to the service sector. Of course, this emphasis on services had been foreseen since the 1950s as an outcome of the re-composition of demand in a consumerist age. According to this argument, as affluence spread beyond the income used to meet basic material need, a growing share would be devoted to non-material products such as leisure and culture. Together with this ‘pull’ factor, the ‘push’ component of this transition was supposed to be the fairly unproblematic way that rising manufacturing productivity would displace surplus industrial labour into the more employment-intensive service sector. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘maturity thesis’ within a general modernisation framework (Rowthorn and Ramaswamy, 1997). A variation of this is a development ‘stages’ model, assuming a periodisation in the mature economies from agrarian to manufacturing to services, and ultimately to knowledge-based services. Though more output from less labour had been achieved in manufacturing,

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the same scope for productivity improvement in services was less obtainable. However, some considered that in the high value-added end of the services sector, surplus value would in time primarily derive from technocratic dominance and high-quality information rather than from productive labour (Bell, 1980). Such adjustment in the industrial world was linked to the emergent new international division of labour, whereby the decomposition of the production process permitted the most labour-intensive part to be re-located to developing countries, which competed then largely on the basis of low labour cost and protection. Importantly, this transferal was a function of not only the strategic restructuring by transnational corporations seeking comparative advantage, but also the pressure from those parts of the Global South able to leverage inward investment with inducements, such as access to their growing domestic market (Gaffikin and Nickson, 1984). Some saw in this attrition of traditional blue-collar jobs a regressive outcome of heightened social stratification, exemplified by fatalistic visions about the demise of the working class. But, while bidding farewell to the industrial proletariat, Gorz (1982) recognised their replacement via other employment, less favourably remunerated and protected. For instance, it was speculated that work-driven economic elites would more and more procure valuable leisure time through sub-contracting household chores to a new servile class for modest stipend, within a mushrooming informal economy. This picture of an increasingly dual city coincided with other putative features of the 1980s, including what some characterised as the debt production system of speculative and fabricated junk bond and hedge-fund capital. As outlined by Harvey (1990, p. 332): Casino capitalism had come to town, and many larger cities suddenly found they had command of a new and powerful business. On the back of this boom in business and financial services, a whole new Yuppie culture formed, with its accoutrements of gentrification, close attention to symbolic capital, fashion, design, and quality of urban life. Aspects of this ephemeral age provide part of the rationale for a new production regime of flexible specialisation, geared to this profusion of shifting niche markets. Rather than large plant Fordist bulk assembly production of formulaic goods at scale economies for the mass consumer market, the focus now was to be on segmented markets, scope as well as scale, more quality design, and more nimble ‘just in time’ batch production to efficiently catch the rapid turnover in trends and styles. However, this unrefined reading of the retreat from Fordist rigidities underplayed the differentiated cause and nature of the change. For some, it was a complicated interplay among four key factors: more fragmented consumption patterns, improved production technologies, imperative for more effective

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managerialism, and a more competitive global economy (Piore and Sabel, 1984; Lipietz, 1987). Related analysis explored the extent to which postFordism could offer an escape route for capitalism’s crisis of over-accumulation, and with what consequences for democracy and equity (Lipietz, 1992)? Some saw the altered environment impelling a corporate switch from being producer-led to being more market-led, with less hierarchical control teams better able to integrate research, development and production in ways that could deliver innovative design, quality, and reliability. For others, it was part of a variant spatial division of labour, whereby job shedding and company downsizing in specific localities could be attributed to differential changes in output and/or productivity, and both processes, in turn, could be linked to permutations of rationalisation, intensification, and technical innovation such as robotisation (Massey and Meegan, 1982). Alongside these disputes about whether the main driver lay in consumption or production, disagreement persisted about whether the overall alteration could be represented best as ‘neo’ rather than ‘post’-Fordism, in other words as an adjustment to, rather than a qualitative departure from, the previous production regime (Aglietta, 1979). For instance, Derek Sayer (1991) remained unconvinced about the incapacity of mass production to develop sensitive antennae about diverse markets. Moreover, some even questioned the ‘mythical geography’ of flexible accumulation as a new phase of capitalist development (Amin and Robins, 1990), emphasising its limited reach into some manufacturing heartlands. In considering how it reflected changes in relation between labour and capital, others situated the term within a wider ideological lexicon, designed to enfeeble working class defiance of demands for greater labour malleability and casualisation, by depicting these traits as now unavoidable. Arbitrating amongst this contesting literature, Harvey (1990) judged that, while post-Fordism, as a new technological–managerial system, contained a socio-spatial reality, it was far from hegemonic. In our view, this guarded appraisal befits the perplexing actuality, including the defective and fleeting Fordist presence in many depressed city-regions. The economic strains underpinning these re-alignments in the Keynesian– Fordist order also had a social manifestation, and prompted political demands for curbs on an extravagant public sector. According to the New Right critique, its wanton borrowing, in a ratchet effort to satisfy ever more bountiful definitions of need, actually served to crowd out the more efficient private sector from which wealth could best trickle to all in time. This fiscal transfer from the marketable to the non-marketable was achieved through punitive taxation on enterprise, thereby promoting levels of social consumption that eroded the work ethic. Moreover, the outcome was a government ‘overload’ that stretched the spendthrift state beyond its capacity to deliver even its core duties efficiently, thereby undermining the efficacy of planning in general. In short, welfare capitalism was seen to have exhausted the contradictions implicit in the term. Values of the former

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space

included: cohesion rooted in common citizenship; equality of opportunity, even if through positive discrimination; and collectivist social provision allocated on the basis of need. Such tenets risked the dilution of capitalist credos, including: competitive individualism; market demand rather than politically-determined need; emphasis on wealth creation over its distribution; and functional inequality. Whatever the variable geometry of such changes in economic management, production, and welfarism, taken together, they have been encased in wider concepts such as disorganised capitalism (Lash and Urry, 1994). This suggested that in this more disjointed world, it was not only labour that had become less collectivised and ‘organised’, with mass redundancies from the Fordist plants and attendant de-unionisation. Capital and government exhibited a similar tendency in the context of globalisation. For instance, corporate contraction and retreat in many sectors had enhanced the sovereignty of large private monopolies. However, the accentuated separation of ownership and control in these big corporations rendered flexible and flatter decision-making structures problematic. Yet, this very de-centralisation was seen as most compatible with innovatory strategising, better alignment between conception and execution, and enhanced corporate clustering and networking in value-added partnerships. More generally, the increased capacity of the former ‘periphery’ such as China and India to compete with the ‘core’ economies for trade, energy, and finance has brought its own dislocation, which will be considered further later in this chapter. These material changes were accompanied by those in culture and politics. In the case of the former, the ‘cultural turn’ in addressing the urban involved seeing the city as text with encoded meanings to be read discursively by different interpreters, rather than through a meta-narrative lens that validated one definite denotation. Moreover, in an environment in which culture would be increasingly ‘consumed’, there would be more diverse cultural idioms to appeal to splintered tastes, even if this differentiated product enjoyed less durability than previously. Multiplicity, heterogeneity, and cultural relativism marked the new urban world, and with this transformation came epistemological vacillation. Such was the ephemeral social terrain of the post-modern city. Post-modernist perspectives disclaim unitary and universalist concepts such as truth and meaning, contending that such abstractions cannot subsist separately from cultural interpretation and social contingency. Their critics charge that this deference to ‘multiple realities’—that stem, in part, from perceptions, emotions, and intuitions—challenges rationality, substituting ambivalence and sophistry for ‘authentic’ epistemology. If logic and cognitive understanding are, if not delusional or absolutist, then certainly conditional, contextual, and temporal (Willard, 1994), the scientific is rendered as little more than refutable discourse. Adherence to this relativism seems to guarantee irresolute textual analysis, a continual deconstruction in which

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denotative language, sublimation, and oblique reference are assiduously interrogated (Rorty, 1982). In retort, adherents insist that their renunciation of totalistic meta-narratives is not a pretext for atheoreticism, but rather an appreciation that a complex precarious world cannot be captured by discoverable social laws that permit easy prescription or prediction. Search for knowledge in an age of ambiguity demands a more reflexive approach, a re-think about the scope of science, while mindful of the enormity and velocity of contemporary change (Duderstadt, 2003). Unsurprisingly, a ‘knowledge society’ invites quarrel about the nature of knowledge itself. This greater uncertainty—or some might say, humility—about the scope of science and rationality conveniently coincided with a politics that was more sceptical about the state’s capacity to intervene effectively in economy and welfare. One reflection of this was a challenge to the role of urban planning, in terms of its perceived inhibition on market-led regeneration, and its presumption to be able to operate against the global grain of less regulated society (Ambrose, 1986).

Globalisation and neo-liberalism Over the last two decades, around two and a half billion people, from the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, China, and India have connected into a broadly capitalist economic system, and this merger has significantly augmented the process of global integration underway for some time. It is worth emphasising that in the case of China, the naked emperor under the Marxist garment is now essentially capitalist, though some insist that with residual attachment to socialist credos by some Party cadres and pressure from the disenfranchised, it is still both plausible and expedient to dress up its modernisation as market socialism (Nonini, 2008). As argued by Held and McGrew (2003), globalisation is an indeterminate concept that eludes simple synopsis. First, sceptics protest its very authenticity, insisting on its faint specificity and explanatory value; the existence of more ‘globalised’ periods such as the age of Imperialism, and the enduring autonomy of national dominion (Weiss, 1998; Hirst and Thompson, 1999). For instance, taking issue with the novelty of the globalising process, Abu-Lughod (1999) remarks that the main seeds of the global city that is New York were planted in Manhattan in the mid-19th century. Some sceptics see in the concept a political project to justify the global diffusion of capitalism as both inexorable and benevolent (Hoogvelt, 1997). Even among the globalists, various interpretations persist. While most agree about its principal features—the distended reach of transnational companies; round-the-clock round-the-world financial markets; the interdependence summoned by global warming’s environmental threat; the proliferation of

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common popular culture; new electronic infrastructure such as the World Wide Web; and such like—the causal and impact analysis differs markedly. Some stress the growing hegemony of market economics, with its implicit modernism, spiralling social inequity, and corrosion of national sovereignty (Sassen, 1996; Greider, 1997). Some highlight the de-territorialisation and ‘death of distance’ brought about by revolutions in information and communication, such as wireless technology (Caircross, 1997). Others repudiate these explanations as either partial or reductionist, substituting for their singular determinism the complexity of manifold factors in society, polity, and economy, not to mention theology (Castells, 1997). Besides its dismissal of extravagant claims about the terminal condition of both geography and history, this latter construal does concede a new age of greater connectedness and spatial–temporal compaction. But this is taken to engender ‘many globalisations’ (Berger and Huntington, 2002) that, far from imposing uniformity, continue to sanction cultural diversity, dissent, and resistance (Jameson and Miyoshi, 1998). In this multifaceted rendition, persistent pluralism and its ambivalences contradict fateful visions of a bi-polar planet trapped between the hegemonies of acquisitive materialism and religious fundamentalism, or as expressed by Barber (1995), between ‘McWorld and Jihad’. Rather, greater integration is seen as holding potential for differentiation, associated with unorthodoxy, heresy, resistance, and rival modernities. For instance, parts of the national state can perform as ‘protector of stakeholding communities (while other parts) are direct affiliates of global capital’ (Appadurai, 2001, p. 2); supposed closer economic bonding across the world actually pertains mainly among the leading OECD countries, with marginal participation by the poorest parts of the Global South; and the general dynamic of a shrinking planet contains its own paradoxes that provoke opposition, thereby rehabilitating the significance of both agency and locality. Thus, Huyssen (2008, p. 15) comments: ‘Rather than producing connectivities and flows equally between all regions of the planet, globalisation functions in horizontal clusters through and among which global, local, and regional dimensions are ricocheting with varying intensities and breadth’. Expression of this differentiated dynamic in the mature economies assumes an acute form. As indicated earlier, over the last four decades, their base economies have substantially shifted from industrial/manufacturing to post-industrial/service, a structural change that has had considerable bearing on demographic mobility, the relations of production, and the spatial and temporal characteristics of markets (Castells, 2000). With such restructuring, some argue that primacy has been attached to the entrepreneurial individual working within a framework of private property, profit, and de-regulated markets, with the state acting as institutional guarantor of such private realms (Harvey, 2005). As such, the nature of the state has been in flux, with changes in its scale and function, characterised best by a shift from government to governance. But increasingly this political dimension is also

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being framed within the related discourse about the ideological ascendancy of neo-liberalism and the attendant discourse about the mixed economy of welfare. This refers to the pervasive political culture since the 1980s that has elided with globalisation, and that professes the value of self-regulating markets and the corollary of minimalist government. This had led some to critique the current form, rather than the beneficial potential of globalisation. One such comes from Stiglitz (2006), who identifies five intrinsic defects: . . . . .

The skewed rules favour rich countries and corporations over the poor; Trade rules and international financial bodies like the IMF undermine the sovereignty of the economically weakest nations; Material values are privileged over wider social concerns, such as environmental justice; The paramount authority accorded to the market has accentuated social inequality within many countries; and The American face attached to globalisation has fomented resentment amongst critics of a consumerist West.

Disavowal of economic demand management and social protection finds institutional expression in a blend of a downsized state, free trade, flexible labour markets, enterprising individualism, all within a competitive logic. But its actual penetration into contemporary polity remains contestable. Arguments persist about its uneven application; whether it represents a new ‘regime’ of accumulation or a transitory disordered phase between the Fordist–Keynesian orthodoxy and a new regulatory era; or whether its high tide has ebbed in many places in favour of a more socially responsible Third Way capitalism between statism and marketisation. Nevertheless, its ubiquity has tapered the political space for collectivist manifestos around public value and social equity. Indeed, the global spread of these societal changes since the 1970s has deeply impacted material and cultural relations, so that the comprehensive deregulation, privatisation, and retreat of the state from many aspects of social provision have re-configured urban society in a fundamental way (Fainstein, 1990; Harvey, 2005). What distinguishes contemporary transformations from their antecedents are their amplified scale, pace and international disposition (Van Ginkel, 2003). In this regard, Castells (1997) suggests that the increasingly permeable form of borders, the erosion of old forms of political economy, and the greater synchronicity of relations are features of the compression of time and space consequential to the new production mode of information and communication. Conventional state interventions to manage aggregate demand in the national economy have become demoted, relative to new networks of relations—captured in the concept of the ‘Network Society’ (ibid.).

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But what does this generic canvas of contemporary social change mean for the functioning of specific cities? Perhaps in response to the perplexity and enormity of the global focus, recent decades have witnessed a notable growth in locality studies (Cooke, 1989). But reservations about the very concept have been expressed. In its attempt to delineate a particular space for research, how is its boundary to be distinguished from other spaces, such as local labour markets or local communities? Duncan and Savage (1989), for instance, remarked that locality was being deployed as a new jargon for case study area. Curran and Blackburn (1994) disputed the very existence of a local economy, as understood in terms of travel-to-work areas, local authority areas, or such like. They argued that even small firms related to the wider economy on the basis of their sectoral position, and linkages were determined less and less on the basis of location. For them, locality had only relevance in regeneration strategies where there were sectoral clusters, and thus an obvious mutual interest for networking. Others suspected that this fashion for locality studies could demote the role of theory, thereby jeopardising urban research by smothering it in a clutter of empirical detail (Smith, 1987). Harvey (1987) went further, contending that there had not just been the derogation of theory per se, but rather a pronounced strategic departure from Marxian theory within urban study. He attributed this in part to the ideological pre-eminence of neo-conservatism in the 1980s. For such critics, the eclecticism of some post-modernist discourses was not so much pluralist as promiscuous. However, some have called not for the retreat from theory as much as the adoption of an approach, which disavows the certitudes and totalities they associate with some versions of Marxism. For them, totalistic theory cannot be subjected to validation or falsification through the partial social reality of any given empirical study. A less rigid and axiomatic approach would permit more sophisticated appreciation of the variabilities in socio-spatial formations. The dominant theoretical contest has long been between positivism and differentiated forms of Marxism. Both are under strain. Paradoxically, as the world integrates, urban theory struggles to either offer convincing explanation about universal causes and patterns (grand theory), or to capture that which differentiates particular places (grounded theory). Instead, amid this theoretical wasteland, there is greater attachment to meso-theories like regime theory.

Urban regime theory Urban regime theory connects to the overarching regulation school. As indicated earlier, regulation theory has posited a shift in the regime of accumulation related to the transformation from a Fordist–Keynesian– Welfarist social model to one that is post-Fordist, liberalised, privatised and

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more market-driven. According to this new regulation mode, urban policy is informed less by government planning, interventionism and managerialism, and more by neo-liberal deregulation and public entrepreneurialism (Gaffikin and Warf, 1993; Rydin, 1998). Urban government has given way to urban governance, as local government’s fiscal constraint demands that city hall enters into alliances, coalitions and partnerships to secure the legitimacy for capital accumulation amid politically acceptable levels of social consumption (Painter, 1995). Within this paradigm, the economic is privileged over the social, as cities assume that their fortunes within a more competitive global order depend less on the regulatory capacity of their nation states and more on their own efforts to magnetise mobile transnational capital. While this urban regeneration agenda centred in the 1980s around place-imaging and a property-led emphasis on flagship downtown projects, by the 1990s it became more balanced with short-to-medium term community-based revitalisation and long-term investment in human capital, designed to attract jobs with highknowledge content. The theory seeks to transcend the long-standing discourse between pluralist and elite perspectives on power and decision-making, by attempting to accommodate both the legitimation imperatives of government and the accumulation drives of private capital (Elkin, 1987). This interdependence of public and private goals within both liberal capitalism and social democracy is seen to increasingly require collaborations, networks and partnerships, particularly between the private sector and government (Stone, 1989). While acknowledging some of the determinism that derives from capitalist logic, for instance profit maximisation, regime theory provides scope for the role of human agency and civic leadership. In this respect, far from being predetermined or at the automatic disposal of any particular urban interest, power is produced by deliberative action (Ferman, 1996). Furthermore, the theory argues that each distinctive power group in the urban arena—whether, government, business, educational or community interest—cannot as a solo player command sufficient influence to determine significant development outcomes. Indeed, such sectoral hegemony is deemed to be less and less tenable amid increasing social complexity. Rather, regime theory acknowledges the limited power of specific stakeholders and the corresponding imperative to pool resources to make impact in the contemporary city (Hall, 1998). Critics of regime theory charge that it has a simplistic perspective on the diverse roles of state and market, not only concentrating on economic and political elites, but also under-playing other key determinants of urban outcomes such as race (Kraus, 2004). Yet, it does mark a greater sophistication of contemporary political economy than growth coalition theory. This is concerned with how the private interest of the local financial, political, property, and media elite in the intensification of land use and the promotion

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of business growth is represented as automatically congruent with a common public interest (Logan and Molotch, 1987). However, one of its limitations stems from its projection of a simplistically polarised urban arena, divided between business proponents of accumulation and their ‘anti-growth’ adversaries. By contrast, within regime theory, different typologies have been suggested. For instance, Imbroscio (1998) distinguishes between: . .

.

Local-statist regimes, where local governments take public ownership and/ or equity stakes in business ventures. Community-based regimes, where community-based organisations and their housing and economic development activities have become a major part of local governance. Petty bourgeois regimes, where a dense network of small enterprises partners with government to form a coalition.

In a different characterisation, Stone (1993) refers to four types of urban regimes. . .

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Maintenance regimes try largely to preserve the existing urban form, for instance to protect its exclusivity, social cohesion, and place tradition. Development regimes proactively seek to champion development, if only to redress decline. These regimes deploy public incentives and subsidies, perhaps combined with de-regulation, to leverage private investment behind an agenda designed to achieve tangible objectives. In addition, progressive regimes emphasise the potential social dividend from development, in terms such as preservation, design quality, and positive discrimination, while seeking to minimise negative externalities such as environmental degradation. As Fainstein (1996) notes, the agenda for progressive regimes is around public participation in decision-making, developing indigenous enterprise, and linkage strategies that ensure that neighbourhoods are not neglected in the trend for prestigious downtown development. Finally, opportunity expansion regimes focus on the role of development in benefiting disadvantaged groups, which are seen to require capacity building and empowerment to participate effectively.

In an attempt to rationalise such various characterisations, Stoker and Mossberger (1994) have presented three overarching regime types: organic, instrumental and symbolic. .

The organic is similar to Stone’s maintenance regime and to the European perspective outlined by LeGales and Lequesne (1998).

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The instrumental is similar to Stone’s ‘development’ regime, Imbroscio’s ‘petty-bourgeois’ regime and the growth coalitions of Logan and Molotch (1987). Finally, the symbolic covers Stone’s latter two types, Imbroscio’s ‘community-based’ regime and the ‘social reform’ regimes identified by DiGaetano and Klemanski (1993).

However, in critiquing the relevance of regime theory to how urban governance might respond to urban conflict, several limitations are evident. First, in terms of comparative analysis, it can be seen as applicable more to the US than to Europe. The structure and funding of city government in the former are both weaker than typically found in the latter. Specifically in the US, reliance on a local city tax base is very different to the European situation where cities benefit from a more redistributive and national tax system. Thus, US city government may be under greater pressure to seek coalition partners to broaden its resource base. Moreover, the pre-eminence of the market is more established in the US, and thus the practice of public–private partnership is more developed. Second, the emphasis attached in regime theory to local action understates the extent to which such latitude is increasingly circumscribed by a globalising economy. In response to the first criticism, it could be noted that both the US and Europe have experienced the fragmentation of local government accompanied by fiscal stress, both of which factors have contributed in each case to city hall networking into wider alliances. However, significant ideological difference remains between a liberal capitalist US and a social democratic Europe. Yet, these distinctions are accommodated in the typologies within regime theory. For instance, deploying that of Stoker and Mossberger (1994), US cities can be characterised in terms of an instrumental regime, whereas European cities can be captured within the notions of a symbolic regime. Moreover, an important contribution of regime theory is its acknowledgement of the role of power and economy in shaping cities.

Beyond the First World lens As indicated in Chapter 2, the most remarkable urban change is stirring in the city-regions of the Global South, particularly those undergoing concerted urbanisation. To take one dramatic example, the number of residents in Greater Sao Paulo almost equals the total inhabitants of the continent of Australia. The contours of this urban revolution are related to 11 key issues that have assumed increasingly global character (Friedman, 2005; Perry, 2008; Katz et al. 2008): (1) The enormity of the transformation, if only in terms of the quantity of people involved, as detailed in the previous chapter, and the implication

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of this growth for extensive development of the built environment. The world’s urban population is now over three billion, the same as for the total global population in 1960. By 2015, there will be 20 megacities with more than 20 million inhabitants each, over half of which will be in Asia. As a remarkable example, Mumbai will likely have around 32 million people, a vast sprawl of humanity, a high share of which will be living in concentrated poverty, overcrowding, and poor sanitation. Overwhelmingly, the world’s population increase will occur in the urban; The unprecedented rapidity of the change, as indicated by the fact that in little over half a century the size of the global urban population has nearly quadrupled; The intensity of the urban experience, partly derived from the increasingly competitive environment that demands continual adaptability and higher productivity, as the earth ‘flattens’ under the footprint of levellers such as supply chaining, open sourcing, and off-shoring; and also related to The increased diversity, as migration and immigration uproot traditional cultures, and transnationalise the ethnic/racial/religious/cultural composition of urbanites almost everywhere, even in European cities like Dublin, once marked by their homogeneity; The hybridity evoked by the symbiosis not only of sundry ethnic cultures, but also by the synergism of multi-agency partnership in new forms of urban governance; The connectivity patterned by a more networked system of cityregions, itself hastened by the dynamics of globalisation and facilitated by the more computer-based technologies of modern transport and telecommunication; The informality that now characterises so much of the production of the urban, not only in the vast shanty towns, favellas and barriadas of the Global South, but also in the deprived enclaves of the rich world; The pressing concern about the sustainability of this more peopled and urbanised planet; The volatility of contemporary city life that demands a rethink about normative notions of stability, order and consensus, and the certainty and predictability that were taken to underpin a rational planning system. Rather, change and conflict are perennial; The ‘personality’ of each city that becomes even more important, as the convergences and uniformities produced by expansive globalisation inflate the value of particularity and differentiation; and finally The complexity of the new urban, as reflected in its multi-dimensional nature.

Much of the pressure and energy of this changing urban form are most clearly manifest in the Global South. Accordingly, urban theory is fortified when analysis of such ‘hyper’ urbanism is pivotal to urban study (Gaffikin et al.,

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2009), whereby we learn from the indigenous expertise and experience of residents and urban scholars in such cities, rather than learn about these cities through the conventional theoretical lens (Connell, 2007). A key precept here is not to differentiate the formal developed world from the informal developing world, but rather to appreciate the intersection between informal communities and formal institutions of state and market in both parts of the world (Chatterjee, 2004), and how the contested articulation of this in one part can assist investigators in making sense of the process in the other (Lietner et al., 2007). In other words, the informal—constituting those constituencies most excluded, or in a ‘state of exception’, from the ordered relations of market and state (Agamben, 1998)—cannot be dismissed as the condition of subaltern ‘outcasts’ in twilight zone habitats (Wacquant, 2008), but rather comprises a valid mode of urbanisation (Roy, 2006). Thus, informal urbanism can nest within the formal city, and the inter-penetration of both is fashioned via the growing significance of three population sets: first, of migrants to cities, most evident in the developing world; second, of immigrants to cities in both developing and developed worlds, and related diasporas communities; and third, of the ways the excluded in both places tend to be consigned to segregated precincts marked by deprivation and social insulation. These patterns, and their permutations, contribute to the creation of a transnational urbanism (Smith, 2001), a complex layering of a series of ‘newcomer’ urbanites, some with a fragile affiliation to their adopted polity, others keen to reprocess their identity to assimilate into their new urban environment, and still others trapped in cultural ambiguity. In turn, such enclaves can: defy the established identity of the host city; challenge social cohesion; generate a contested politics around social exclusion, legal citizenship, and the right to the city; and mobilise new ethno-spaces of diversity, imprinted by both resistance to, and engagement with, formal city authority.

Making sense of the debate We live in a terminal age. The end of Keynesianism, Fordism, modernism, Marxism, and indeed of history, have all been confidently proclaimed. Undoubtedly, the 1980s did witness a pronounced transformation of the urban built environment in the mature economies, as substantial in its economic significance as it was stunning in its recast skyline. Some contend that it was the decade ‘in which the industrial city finally shook off the last traces of its 19th-century self and mutated into a completely new species’ (Sudjic, 1992, p. 5). Viewed more globally, the transformation in the urban domain has been spectacular, and the impetus and opportunity for recreating the urban, though manifested most clearly at the level of locality, are now seen as operating in this wider transnational environment. These qualitative

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‘New Times’ (Hall and Jacques, 1989) of greater diversities and complexities, rooted in structural and international socio-economic change, have fundamentally re-patterned the urban, demanding a radical revision of urban theory. For one thing, determinist accounts of socio-spatial reconfigurations are misconceived. Locality and agency matter, even in an age subject to sweeping structural change in which space and time are being re-defined. For another, some of the key debates considered here remain inconclusive. While it seems that urban agendas in the mature economies are premised on a continuing residualisation of manufacturing and a related shift to post-industrialism, and that such sectoral realignment coincides with a decisive change in the form of production from Fordism to post-Fordism, it is less clear how the consequent politico-economic order seeks to shape the planning of social space. For instance, is it dependent on a post-Keynesian abandonment of traditional planning and spending as instruments to regulate inequitable distributions of market-based urban development? Similarly, are there fiscal and cultural problems associated with welfarism that inevitably demand a shift from a redistributive focus on socially allocated capital to an investment focus on de-regulated wealth creation within a new swashbuckling enterprise culture? If so, what impact does this have on social polarisation and the creation of a dual city, with its inherent conflicts? How far are such conflicts compatible with sustaining the legitimacy of the political economy? Back in the 1990s, many critics of this shift foretold the implant of American conflictual urbanism in European societies like Britain. But back then, it looked as if the obvious retort from the new political orthodoxy to queries about the efficacy of a more marketised society would have been affirmative. Yet, the early part of the new century has witnessed a dramatic challenge to this schema, with the credit squeeze triggered by the crisis in the US sub-prime housing market prompting the risk of meltdown in international finance and related bankruptcy of some major corporations. Subsequently, in the US and Europe, we have seen the return of socially interventionist government, designed to reflate a moribund global economy, via typical Keynesian instruments. Moreover, the share of GDP accounted for by welfare spending remains stubbornly high in most industrial countries, despite the inflated neo-liberal rhetoric. This begs the question about whether the predicted demise of the Keynesian–welfarist model has been, at least, premature. In answering the question about what to do about the development and divisions of the contemporary city in industrial societies, both academic discourse and the policy framework have been bedevilled by simplistic binaries: is the problem considered to be largely still an inner city phenomenon, or a more pervasive urban crisis? Should urban policies target spaces or the residents of those spaces, distinguishing between development of a place and development in a place? Should they emphasise rapid and prestigious property development or plan steadily for long-term economic development?

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In terms of form and process, are the strategies to be dependent mostly on the market or on the state? Is the development to be ‘top down’ and professionallyled, or ‘bottom-up’ and community initiated? Is priority to be accorded to decisive action by ‘experts’, even if at the expense of local participation and accountability? These dichotomously framed options under-estimate the complexity involved. We have a more humble grasp of that complexity now in part because we are hybrid creatures of modernity and post-modernity. The former has accorded us a cultural lens traceable to the 17th century Enlightenment, and a Newtonian understanding of reality. That ontology was connected to a new epistemology, an evidential means of knowing, based on testing and proof. Within this rational, material, and systemic universe, objective ‘natural’—and some later came to believe also social—laws were discoverable through causal analysis. In turn, these ‘laws’ seemed to offer the prospect of predictability and related increased human control over the external environment. But post-modernity has revealed that epistemology can be about more than the rational, and include other ways of ‘knowing’, such as the experiential. In a similar vein, metaphor and myth—powerful instruments in the narratives of identity politics—can hold truths for people even when they contain factual error or historical fiction. This potential for relativism and subjectivity is significant when we come later to consider the feasibility of universalist ideas such as cosmopolitanism. As expressed cogently by Borg (2002, pp. 15 and 17): The modern worldview is based on scientific ways of knowing: what is real is that which can be known through the methods of science. Epistemology (how we know) has become ontology (what is real). (p. 15) . . . . postmodernity is marked by the realization that modernity itself is a culturally conditioned, relative historical construction. The modern worldview is not the final word about reality any more than previous worldviews have been. (p. 17) In this respect, the post-modern perspective recognises that the theoretical constructs fashioned in modernity belie the chaos of current social reality. Thus, the issue is not about which scientific key magically unlocks pattern and order behind particular phenomenon. To mix metaphors, there is no such silver bullet. Rather, the whole modern scientific project itself can be considered overweening, since the enigmas of social life are not amenable to clear verification or tidy explanation. Put simply, reassessment of urban theory has been driven not just by the socio-economic upheavals since the 1970s, but also by the crisis in theory itself, involving a re-think about how we think, how we know, and how we see reality. Moreover, the problem of how to subject highly abstract theoretical propositions to empirical interrogation has been the basis of a central debate in

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urban research for some years. At one level, this is a dispute about how independent and purposive a category is the individual actor or how far the individual is to be seen in the Althusserian prescription as a ‘bearer’ of an allotted role in the production process, and as an actor in a scripted historical drama culminating inexorably in capitalism’s collapse. Few would contest that individuals are to some extent socially constructed and culturally determined. The argument relates to the balance identified in the familiar Marxist dictum that people can shape history, but not in circumstances of their choosing. So the dichotomy of theory and empiricism in urban studies in the recent period has re-opened polarised debates between determinism and voluntarism, universalism and localism, generality and specificity, and absolutism and relativism. In much of this discourse, the sub-text relates to how far the human agency is shaped by structure or how far structure can be proactively shaped by the human agency. As Gouldner (1980) recounts in The Two Marxisms, this debate has been pivotal to disputes between libertarians like Lukacs, Gramsci and the Frankfort Critical Theorists and those like Balibar and Althusser with their more prescriptive emphasis. An interesting attempt to elide this duality is found in Gidden’s (1976, p. 121) concept of structuration, in which he sees ‘social structures (being) both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time (being) the very medium of this constitution.’ In this more dynamic appreciation of the intersection between structure and agency, the enabling and constraining aspects of structure are acknowledged, as are the determination and differential distribution of options for the agent. Giddens has elaborated how, for example, class structures become formed by both mediate structuration, by which social opportunities can be blocked for some by others, and by proximate structuration, associated with work hierarchies and residential segregations. Such processes not merely produce such social and spatial divisions, but these very divisions can reproduce conditions for their own perpetuation. While conceptually it is easy to appreciate this marriage, operationally it is difficult to witness its consummation. For some (Gray, 2002), the limits on conscious agency are substantial. They see a bewildering complex world, full of as much accident, enigma, chimera and ambiguity as pattern and clarity. From this perspective, human conceit that cognitive insight can ultimately command mastery over this mystery amounts to an insolvent faith. Accordingly, theories that purport to fathom the social world and thereby impute an ordered seamless unity offer little more than makeshift sanctuary for destitute thought. Disenchanted with the transient and disposable aspects of a modernity that indulges its fetish for the novel, humankind may seek refuge in meaning, attachment, and continuity. But it needs to relinquish its reverence for rationalism and the related delusion that the world and its history are graspable in a linear and codified narrative. Rather, the disconcerting reality is that most of our lives involve the unconscious muddling through with what turns up. Central to the deception that

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human maladies can be rendered susceptible to social progress is the misconception that there exists a cohesive and intentional force known as ‘humanity’. While such faith may make living with uncertainty more palatable, there is no such thing as humanity, even in a global age. There are only humans in a state of constant craving, struggling through their infirmities of resolve and reasoning. For Gray (ibid., p. 12), the pervasive jumble, chaos, and self-interest are captured in the frailties of contemporary geopolitics: At present there are nearly two hundred sovereign states in the world. Most are unstable, oscillating between weak democracy and weak tyranny; many are rusted through with corruption, or controlled by organized crime; whole regions of the world—much of Africa, southern Asia, Russia, the Balkans and the Caucasus, and parts of South America—are strewn with corroded or collapsed states. At the same time, the world’s most powerful states—the United States, China and Japan—will not accept any fundamental limitation on their sovereignty. At its most bleak, this view holds that all is vanity and self-illusion, and that the script for this human theatre is often more at ease with the imaginary than the real: ‘in order to help us live, the mind censors the senses; but as result we inhabit a world of shadows’ (ibid., p. 78). An alternative view, that does not discount the random or irregular, or indeed the downright inexplicable, in a disorderly cosmos, nevertheless cedes more scope to the purposive, and to the prospect of discovering causality through logical inquiry. And yes, the selfish gene can often trump the altruistic one. But, notwithstanding all of the human foibles identified above, the social world is seen as an imperfect though improvable construction, based on choice as well as chance. Within this debate, the charge levelled at those urban researchers intent on retaining high theoretical abstraction is that it can ultimately degenerate into a form of solipsism. The counter charge is that locality research is little more than geographical particularism. Into this dispute has entered the realist school, associated with Sayer (1984), whose central proposition is that reality is too complex to be comprehensively captured by any single abstract theory. The proper use of theory, permissive of falsification and revisability, is one that can subject the theory to ‘the real situation’ and does not deform reality to confirm the theory. Sayer distinguishes between the internal necessary and the external contingent relations. We can theorise the inherent and necessary components but how things actually materialise in reality will also be influenced by contingencies. While there exists an impartially knowable reality separate from the mind, discernment and cognition can play a crucial role not only in terms of perspective and insight, but also in constructing social reality. For instance, there is a familiar maxim that if people define a situation as real and act as if it were real, then it can become real in its consequence. Given such particularity, Byrne (2001, p. 42) insists that we

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should abandon the futile search for social laws that pertain universally and permanently, and instead embrace forms of knowledge production, contextualised in particular time and space: Whereas postmodern relativism is fundamentally an epistemological project, complex realism has ontological foundations. It is organized around the notion that the world is composed of nested complex systems with emergent properties and in which causes are complex, contingent, and due to mechanisms which can be considered to ‘lie behind’ the world in which we live, which we observe, and which we change by our actions. Complex realism is an anti-universalist programme. We can only know these systems locally—there are no universal laws. It is interesting that just when leading physicists rededicate themselves to the quest for the unifying ‘theory of everything’, in social science there is a retreat from such totalism. Here, some will be uneasy about the desertion of comprehensive theoretical landscapes for explanatory tenets that derive from particularist investigation. As mentioned earlier, one concern here is that such a local focus risks an ‘arid empiricism’, or an ideographic account, or at least an overwhelming set of specificity that buries any prospect for making sense of the wider social world. Others see in this trend the inevitable outcome of demoting the material bases of social life in favour of other perspectives, such as the cultural. Since the 1990s, the ‘cultural turn’ has revealed the politics of identity and the ways identity is assembled through performativity, while the amplification of a post-modern urbanism has projected ‘futuristic’ cities like Los Angeles as prefigurative arenas of what for much of the world remain embryonic urban forms and virtual spaces, exemplified by fluidity, diversity, and multiplicity. For all its denial of epistemological certitude, post-modernism is hardly modest in its claims for a purchase on contemporary social life. Certainly, its greater appreciation of plurality, differentiation and disposability is attuned with a fragmented world, where the reach, size and speed of global connection have been escalating. Nonetheless, while endorsing the pertinence and pedigree of such scholarship, it is contended here that a convincing theory of contemporary urbanism should discard the slanted cultural lens of Western-centrism, and its customary neglect of the insights offered by cities in the developing world. Given their demographic momentum, rethinking the urban condition should start there. And there we discover, as normal, circumstances of informality and the socio-spatial discriminations of restrictive citizenship that generate the resilience, and sometimes the insurgence, of the poorest communities. While such settlements may be marginal in terms of their income and power, and while their ‘informal’ nature may be dismissed as random, chaotic, even anarchic, they are not marginal to the functioning and understanding of the city. They are the city.

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Legitimising their consequential presence does not imply a depreciation of the ‘formal’ city as illusory. Nor does the ‘informal’ city merely offer illustration of sites of resistance, if only because such repressed constituencies exhibit both passivity and defiance in the face of uneven power. Indeed, concentration on resistance, embedded in an oppositional politics of identity or reaction to a status of exception, ignores the facet of engagement between these putative ‘outcasts’ and the formal state. Thus, cityscapes comprise multi-spaces, whose intersection provides the dialectic encounter between the formal and informal—between official and unofficial, orthodox and tacit knowledge, modernity and tradition, discernible and oblique power, inclusion and exclusion—that can engender conflict, but can also convert, often unintentionally, into the assorted hybridities that recurrently invent the everyday routine of city life. Such consideration leads appropriately into the next chapter, which addresses the nature and causes of urban conflict.

4 The Divided City

Introduction In the previous chapter, it was argued that no one theory can decode the complexity of the contemporary city, but that any credible interpretative framework has to grapple with key discourses about the current urban condition. These involve intersection of the following: globalization; the rise of the network society; multicultural engagement, tension and hybridization; putative polarization between rich and poor; new urban governance; sustainability; spatial re-formation of core and metropolis; association between formal and informal city; the relative impact of structural and agent determinants; and the crucial implication of the massive urbanization in the Global South (Dear, 2002). Furthermore, it was affirmed that much of urban theory suffers from an overshadowing First World focus, which itself is over-reliant on a US-centric lens. For instance in the US, typically Chicago and Los Angeles are recruited as seminal referents for debates about ‘the city’. Chicago is appropriated as a model of the modernist urban form, its land use patterns and economic agglomerations emanating from the central city to the wider metropolis, its hyper-segregation a spatial expression of the unrelenting salience of race, and its governance in all its frailty seen as validating the significance of local agency even in a global city. Indeed, this human determinacy is taken to be reflected in an urban renaissance that, however partial and socially inequitable, does include restitution of public space and reclamation of a viable central city. From this Chicago optic, civic ingenuity and dexterity carry at least latent influence over resistible global forces. By contrast, Los Angeles is projected as the epitome of the post-modern city, formless and centre-less in its random development, and whose fragmented sprawl reflects a post-Fordist Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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dispersal of people and economic activity that, in turn, produces fractured governance rendered incoherent and impotent by its balkanisation. Deepening social inequality, interacting with inter-cultural strains associated with migration and multiple identities of diverse ethnicity, elicits both resentment among the dispossessed and fearful fortification in enclaves of affluence. Public space is squeezed and cordoned. Demotion of the social state (welfarism) is juxtaposed with the elevation of the security state (surveillance and policing), as doom-laden apprehension about the unsustainable character of capitalist globalisation consumes speculation about any imaginable civic emancipation (Davis, 1990; Halle, 2004). These two cities are presented as alternative trajectories for urban futures, with a strong inference that Los Angeles prefigures the jumbled fractal development pattern of multiple cores that will likely typify the irregular settlement of the new type of city, networked through highways of both automobile and wired technology—the disorderly confluence of physical and cyber-space. But exactly how archetypal are these two cities for global urbanism? Interestingly, given its correspondence to old style ‘dependency’ theory, which charted the connection between imperialist capitalism and underdevelopment, the deterministic and ominous tone of the Los Angeles ‘school’ has been influential in shaping some urban scholarship in Latin America. For instance, a study of segregation in the dispersed megacity of Sao Paulo reveals the cycle whereby the toxic blend of extreme income disparity, racism, and the ‘disjunctive democracy’ of a society whose electoral politics is compromised by an authoritarian rule of law, leads to a recast social geography. Once located in the socially heterogeneous traditional centre, the wealthy have retreated to new luxury condominiums deposited amidst the sprawling favelas of the poor on the periphery. To protect their opulence against the rampant threat of crime, the rich have commissioned private security, comprising high walls, armed guards, video surveillance, and alarm systems. Thereby, physical proximity fails to induce social integration. Rather, the poor are considered a dangerous class, whose very contiguity is used to justify exclusion by apprehensive urban elites in their defensive enclaves. As described by Caldeira (2000, p. 1): The discourses of fear that simultaneously help to legitimize this withdrawal and to reproduce fear find different references. Frequently, they are about crime, and especially violent crime. But they also incorporate racial and ethnic anxieties, class prejudices and references to poor and marginalized groups. But this unilateral fortification and usurpation of the state’s monopoly of legitimate force creates contested space, as evidenced in the way the hip-hop movement in the city appropriates the walls as a canvas for their ‘subversive’ graffiti, not to negotiate inclusion as much as to validate their own separate

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identity. Interestingly, while this profusion of painted expression contests class inequality, given its male-dominated sexist authorship, it often bolsters gender inequality. Caldeira proceeds to argue that the same devices for withdrawal, exclusion, and privatising the public city have been adopted by the upper classes in cities as diverse as Buenos Aires, Budapest, Johannesburg, and Los Angeles. Thus, she finds that the research literature emanating from the Los Angeles experience resonates well with the uneven development, differentiated citizenship, and repressive policing underpinning Sao Paulo’s disparate and restrictive urban form. But, apart from the fact that the LA perspective does not share with dependency theory, the same conviction in the efficacy of collective action, its depiction of the stark segregation between the gated communities of the rich and the ghettoes of the poor is not corroborated empirically in other Latin American cities like Santiago. There, private developers, in valorising land on the poor periphery for the construction of residential complexes for the wealthy, have inadvertently provided new opportunities for social integration between rich and poor, in a society whose Catholic theology contributes to a cultural empathy with cross-class solidarities (Salcedo and Torres, 2004). It illustrates again that specificity rules. Clearly, division has a distinctive Brazilian accent, with a different pronunciation in Chile. Such contrasting readings of city text and context prompt the need to re-visit the meaning of ‘divided city’. As indicated in Chapter 2, the term ‘divided city’ remains as ambiguous as it is ubiquitous. For instance, a recent edited publication (Scholar, 2006) employs the expression in its title, yet fails to offer clear definition anywhere in its text. To take some other examples of its elusive meaning: in Hepburn’s (2004) distinction of ‘divided’ and ‘contested’ cities, the former can arise from antagonism between two or more ethnic or religious groups, while the latter relates to a more fundamental hostility about the ownership and control of the city. On this definition, despite enduring inter-communal rifts, no US city is truly contested. But more recently, Hepburn (2006, p. 1) offers a looser classification when he suggests that a contested city is ‘a major urban center in which two or more ethnically conscious groups—divided by religion, language, and/or culture and perceived history—co-exist in a situation where neither group will recognise the supremacy of the other’. In a somewhat similar vein, Kotek (1999) refers to fractured urban arenas caught up in border and sovereignty disputes as ‘frontier’ cities. Other scholars avoid such delineation. For instance, Wasserstein (2001), in addressing the struggle over the ownership of Jerusalem, simply describes the ‘Holy City’ as divided. This is at variance with Benvenisti (1987) who insists that since the schism in cities like Jerusalem is intensified by wider national conflict, they change from being merely ‘divided’ cities into ‘polarised’ ones. Introducing another concept, Kliot and Mansfeld (1999, p. 170), speak of urban ‘division and partition’, which they associate with conflict around the control of territory in the

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circumstance of segregation: ‘Partitioned/divided cities are almost always the consequence of the divisions of nations and partition of countries’. By contrast, Marcuse and van Kempen (2002) mostly deploy the concept of ‘partitioned’ urban space in reference to the US model of entrenched sociospatial demarcation. Calame and Charlesworth (2009) largely restrict their focus on divided cities to those torn by the ‘self-imposed apartheid’ of interethnic civil conflict. As one illustration of the inexact terminology, Bollens (2007) addresses one kind of divided city that is variously described in terms of cultural diversity in cities in multinational societies (p. 5), the city facing intense intercommunal conflict (p. 6), the city operating as a ‘platform for the expression of conflicting sovereignty claims’ (p. 6), the city ‘within ethnically tense and fragmenting states’ (p. 8), and the city coping with ‘societal uncertainty and multinational tension’ (p. 222). Unfortunately, he does not accord such variant categories precise distinction. In short, the literature lacks consensus and concision about such classification. Moreover, while preponderant attention is paid to fragmentation as a characteristic state of the contemporary city, it is clear that urban division is not merely perennial today, but is as old as antiquity. Thus, for example, Loraux (2006) scrutinises the role of memory in reproducing the divided city in ancient Athens, while Miller (2007) explores the divisions in English provincial towns in the 17th century, rooted in interplay of religion and politics. Some cast the roots of many present urban divisions in the more recent legacies of colonialism (Abu-Lughod, 1965), recalling the gaping split within the one urban area between the colonial town and the native town, often representing a quite exact concurrence of class, race, and space. Such historic patterns of urban division show that contemporary discourses about the splintered city that implicitly lament loss of past unity suffer badly from lapsed memory (Bodnar, 2006). But even focusing on current examples, plainly, variation in the form and content of urban fractures demands specification beyond catch-all terms like ‘divided’, respecting the fact that conflicts not only derive from different roots, but also assume different outcomes. Some are more durable and intractable than others. As pointed out by Barakat (2005), conflicts in places like Somalia, Sudan, and Liberia have endured for so long that the belligerence has become normative, with scant collective recall of pre-war society. Some, in places like Montreal and Brussels, are conducted peaceably, while others in places such as Belfast and Jerusalem have provoked brutal violence. Some operate with great visibility and are attached with geo-political significance, while others fester relatively unseen in the global spotlight. To assist in this more refined designation, Chapter 2 identified eight main conflictive circumstances in which city divisions can surface: (1) Emergence of the dual city in advanced capitalism is attributed to economic restructuring since the 1970s that has purportedly witnessed the

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upsurge of disconnected socio-spatial communities, associated with the haemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs, a subsequent ‘digital divide’, and related social debilitation of traditional working class community. Fast and vast expansion of urbanism in the Global South, coupled with intense pressure on urban space and resources, is producing sites of subordination, engagement and resistance, often most manifest in the ‘informal city’. Increasing mixed ethnicity and diversity are coming to ever more cities, courtesy of mass migration patterns linked to deepening globalisation. The main source of current geo-political conflict is the professed ‘clash of civilisations’ around issues of cultural and religious identity, most patently between sections of Islam and their opponents. Site of ‘new wars’. Given the massive urban growth in the Global South, and how in modern warfare combat forces are vulnerable to high tech precision weapons in open terrain, the enemies of the most powerful nations will increasingly seek the compactness and congestion of urban ‘cover’, both to blend with local non-combatants and to reduce the potency of their opponent’s sophisticated weaponry. The role of ideology and/or government systems can generate deliberate socio-spatial chasm. For instance, Berlin’s division and ultimate dissection was associated with ideological wars, while South African cities were subject to a state policy of forced racial separation and hierarchy. Global warming and related environmental degradation contain potential for resource wars around issues of energy, land, and water. Ethno-nationalist fissures are proliferating in the context of sovereignty changes that have attended both the end of the Cold War and the postcolonial experience.

Too often the literature around conflict in cities fails to denote the distinctions of such taxonomy. Of course, it could be argued that this particular one fails to capture all contingencies. For instance, it deliberately excludes reference to ‘the diffusion of terror as an urban phenomenon’, despite its particularly high register on political radar since 9/11 (Savitch, 2003, p. 103), and the extent to which cities are more susceptible to terrorism than rural areas, given the former’s better scope for impact and visibility (Beall, 2005). Such omission does not imply indifference to the significant urban impact that such violence has inflicted in terms of public safety, restricted use of urban space, and the surveillance culture it has invoked in the name of security. Rather, its deletion is due to three considerations: first, such urban terror can be viewed as linked to other conditions already identified above; second, it may be that urban terror has variable effect, bringing greater solidarity to some cities in common resistance, and potentially greater division to others, where population composition reflects in micro the wider struggle waged; and finally, some deem assessment of its impact as either premature or as indicating less durability

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than its accorded prominence would suggest. For instance, addressing the resilience of the American city ‘in the age of terror’, Eisinger (2004, p. 115) notes that apart from a temporary downturn in aspects such as tourist and business travel: Few lasting effects on city life are evident. It would appear that the fortunes of American cities are less subject to one time external shocks such as the terror attacks than to larger long-term forces in the economy and society. While specifying eight main frameworks for urban conflict, it is recognised that any particular dispute can be attributed to different combinations of these. For instance, is the current discord between Baghdad’s Shias and Sunnis to be ascribed to: the re-awakening of ancient ethno-nationalist enmity, fomented by the ‘new war’ of US-led invasion; to an intra-communal variant of the ‘clash of civilisations’; or to a war that was at least in part waged to secure access to affordable oil supply? Though most plausibly it is down to a fusion of these factors, it is difficult empirically to disaggregate them, and apportion precise responsibility. Similarly, while Berlin’s fissures in the second half of the 20th century were undergirded largely by ideological contest, first with Nazism and latterly with the rivalry between capitalism and communism, remnants of east–west splits persist since the fall of the Wall, alongside other features like the precarious presence of ethnic groups, and the emergence of neo-Nazi agitation (Verheyen, 2008). Likewise, the divisions in Johannesburg derive from both the legacy of that distinctive ethnocracy known as apartheid and more recent facets such as the accentuated social disparities of the new economy and the acrimony generated by immigration (Beall et al., 2002). In such a manner, many urban conflicts are due to an inter-linkage of local conditions and reproduced schisms from the wider world. But, given the deficient forensics of social scientific inquiry, such complex overlap seldom yields indisputable perspicuity. Properly, the particular permutation is always subject to argument. So, these eight categories are presented for interrogation rather than affirmation, and with this in mind, further consideration of the most frequently cited factors is instructive.

Explanations of division We inhabit a very unequal world. That inequality most patently concerns differentials in income, status, and power. But such disparities are embedded not just in class, but also, for instance, in distinctions around ethnicity, gender, and religious, cultural, and sexual preference. Since all cities contain residents belonging to combinations of such categories, all cities are divided. Moreover, around the issue of income in particular, social differentiation typically assumes a spatial impersonation, with neighbourhood segregation sometimes

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starkly formed in a mainly working class inner city, middle class suburb, and beyond to the landed gentry. But such separatist development can also take the form of the racial ghetto or the gay precinct, or in the case of communities like the Amish, distinctive religious settlement. Of course, some of these spatial detachments are more volitional and less socially disabling than others. In this respect, it is right to distinguish between imposed and intentional ethnic enclaves, between say, in the case of the US, the black ghetto and the Orthodox Jewish community (Varady, 2005). But Byrne (2001, p.105) is clear. Patterns of socio-spatial partition are outcomes of the modern industrial city: ‘In premodern cities rich and poor often lived in close proximity, sometimes at different levels of the same dwelling. The emergence of residential segregation in cities was one of bases of the political origins of modernity’. And, again, later (ibid., p. 128), he adds: Polarisation is now taking extreme forms in many cities of the world. The divides which exist within places are almost as great as those which exist on a global basis, certainly if we consider that inequality should be considered in relative terms. Postindustrial capitalism is unequal and the idea that we are experiencing a Brazilianisation of advanced capitalism seems to be pretty well exact as a description of the tendency of the social trajectory of advanced capitalist societies into the twenty-first century. While residential differentiation has long been considered part of the urban mosaic (Timms, 1971), the suggestion is that the socio-spatial divide has become significantly more acute, with some communities of the post-industrial city exiled to the edge of the new socio-economic system (Baum et al., 2002). But any interpretation of this ‘polarisation’ that encapsulates it in the notion of a ‘two-speed’ city, containing only extremity of wealth and poverty is oversimplification. Indeed, though this tendency to bifurcation in the advanced capitalist city has been explored often in the literature (Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991; Fainstein et al., 1992; Goldsmith and Blakeley, 1992; Massey and Denton, 1993; Hamnett, 1994; Sibley, 1995), closer examination reveals that any such assertion usually owes more to decree than to empirical substantiation. For instance, one collection of studies (Marcuse and van Kempen, 2002) tests the proposition that globalisation is universalising the US urban model. The latter is taken to comprise rampant spatial sprawl; intensified segregation between the bountiful citadels of privilege and the desolate enclaves of the excluded poor; and residualised public space and service, attendant upon neo-liberal policies of commercialisation and privatisation that have both re-scaled the state and hollowed out civic society. While their case studies reflect tendencies in this direction, their empirical evidence does not validate its prevalent application. Indeed, this stark depiction of the American city should itself be subject to greater circumspection. Nonetheless, any such

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reservation about the binary character of current urbanism scarcely tempers the argument of those who see a fundamental tension in the contemporary city. As elaborated in Chapter 3, some like Harvey (1989) see in capitalist urbanism an inherent conflict around issues of justice and empowerment if only because they are subject to contrary power imperatives: the state addressing the rights of common citizenship and inclusion; and the market promoting the rights of private capital and exclusivist acquisition. In many ways, this kind of dualism has long-standing pedigree in references such as: the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’; ‘upstairs-downstairs’; ‘how the other half lives’; the ‘tale of two cities’; capital and labour, and their rival relation to the means of production. Similarly, in wider economic geographies, contrasts are drawn between core and periphery, reflected for instance in Britain’s recurring development gap branded ‘the North–South divide’, and in the US, between the Rust-belt north and Sun-belt south. Another perspective here is that while such binary social cleavage may be applicable to strategic urban centres such as global cities, it carries less salience for the profile of many ‘ordinary’ cities (Amin and Graham, 1997). Yet, even in the case of global cities, some dispute the proposition that their particular reliance on the service sector invariably generates intense inequality. For instance, Hamnett (1996) argues that while such polarisation may be true in the case of major US cities, given their structural context, such as high immigration from low income countries and the relatively restricted American welfare state, it is less pertinent for cities in other political economies of advanced capitalism. Notwithstanding this qualification, Reichl (2007) insists that the ‘dual city’ thesis is unbefitting the case of New York City. Data analysis of income, poverty, housing, and crime for the 1990s, offers no confirmation of accentuated disparity between high and low income neighbourhoods in that global city. Rather, the more conspicuous contrast lies between the thriving areas in the core, and the relative stagnation across all income areas outside the core. Such empirical evidence of the flaws in the ‘dual city’ concept leads some to counter with a more differentiated social sedimentation. Thus, Logan et al. (2000) refer to a tripartite model of urban economy comprising: (1) a white formal core; (2) a mixed formal component; and (3) an ethnic/immigrant informal periphery. Marcuse (1989) goes further. Arguing that any concept of a ‘dual city’ mistakenly condenses a land-use hierarchy embodying complex convergence of social, occupational and spatial disparities, he splits the city into ‘residential’ and ‘business’ parts. Taking the former, he specifies five districts: . . .

The command and luxury city, hosting the wealthy and powerful; The gentrified city, accommodating up-market consumers, such as business executives and ‘yuppies’, in prestigious and conspicuously designed abodes; The middle class city, detached home to professional and affluent working classes, usually in leafy suburbia;

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The tenement city, residence to low paid and insecurely employed, servicing the command/luxury and gentrified cities, in spaces vulnerable to forms of gentrification and valorisation unfavourable to local populations; The abandoned city, the residual refuge of the very poor, the excluded, and the destitute.

Such spatial alignments derive largely from the investments and displacements involved in the market dynamics of the new urban economy, generating controversy and tenacity behind territorial disputes. But this private-led fragmentation into distinct urban quarters risks the differentiation of the public planning process, whereby land parcels are packaged in opportunistic pursuit of maximum profitable development. Not only is it inimical to holistic regeneration, it is presumptive that the socially excluded can be also spatially contained, stoically awaiting whatever ‘trickle down’ benefits accrue from activity in the more favoured quarters of what McKenzie (1994) dubs ‘privatopia’. While acknowledging that highly segmented urbanism demands such nuance, some still regard the advanced marginality endured by those most socially bereft as constituting a special form of inequality in the current period, a ‘new poverty’ captured in the terminology of the underclass debate that has its genesis in the US (Mingione, 1996). There, the most obvious spatial concentration of poverty is found in ‘extreme poverty neighborhoods’, defined as a metropolitan census tract in which the poverty rate is greater than 40%. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of poor living in such ‘ghettoes’ in the US’s 50 largest cities increased, in some estimates, by 66% (Nathan and Lego, 1986). Ghettoes are characterised not only by a concentration of space but also of race: they are mostly segregated settlements of blacks and Hispanics (Jargowsky and Bane, 1991). This persistent link between poverty and place is evident in the way the number of poor people living in high-poverty neighbourhoods in US metropolitan areas nearly doubled in the period 1970–1990 (Jargowsky, 1997). Particularly since the 1980s, with the combined impact of economic decline and the long-standing white flight and later middle class black exodus from the central city, the spatial character of poverty has become more urban (Downs, 1994). Of course, it can be argued that the tag of underclass is not a novice entrant into the vernacular of the poverty debate, but rather a new name for an old stigma, such as problem family, poorest of the poor, lower class, undeserving poor, ne’er do wells, and lumpen proletariat. For instance, Katz (1993, p. 8) notes the term’s continuity with similar metaphors for reservations of the deprived applied over the last 200 years: Stripped of their period features, nineteenth-century discussions of inner cities also sound remarkably contemporary. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers portrayed the undeserving poor as clustered in inner

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cities, where they formed slums that threatened to infect both the respectable poor and the middle classes. Nonetheless, others insist that the accentuated and transformed nature of deprivation since the 1980s merits this new classification. Thus, to neoliberals in the US, the persistence of an urban underclass derives from debilitating welfarism, which saps the ingenuity of habitual claimants, and facilitates moral laxity. This trail often leads to not only rising rates of illegitimacy and female-headed families, but also to the proclivity for low educational attainment, stunted ambition, an enfeebled work ethic, and potential drug abuse. In this analysis, it is the type rather than extent of poverty that marks the perdurable condition, as such families tend to congregate in concentrated spaces of acute impoverishment, depressed in culture as much as income. Given their incorrigible predilections, the ghetto hard core is seen to be impervious to welfare interventions, whose misguided ‘logic’ acts perversely to absolve them of self-responsibility and can even render their feckless pathway a rational choice (Murray, 1984). A contrary perspective comes from Wilson’s (1987 and 1993) contribution to this discourse, in which he construes the underclass as suffering persistent joblessness combined with social isolation, in neighbourhoods of intense deprivation, beset by depopulation. With its roots in structural racism and economic inequality, the contemporary ghetto is the beleaguered inner city home to those outside both the orthodox labour market and mainstream socio-political life. For Wilson, it is almost exclusively black, a focus shared by others like Glasgow (1981). Yet some studies have portrayed the US underclass in cross-racial terms. For example, Williams and Kornblum (1985) present a profile of a white and black underclass in cities like Cleveland and New York, and Moore and Pinderhughes (1993) assess the pertinence of the underclass label to Latinos in the barrio. Again, though some like Auletta (1982) identified a rural underclass in the southern state of Mississippi, for Wilson the underclass is not only a distinctively urban experience but also to a large extent is regionally demarcated in the Northeast and Midwest, a spatial designation broadly endorsed by Ricketts and Sawhill (1986) and Jargowsky and Bane (1991), among others. Wilson traces how migration flows to the large northern metropolitan areas and historic discrimination produced fragile connection to the formal labour market amongst urban minorities, whose vulnerability deteriorated in the 1980s under continued relocation of manufacturing jobs from central city to suburbs, a sectoral switch from manufacturing to services, a related substitution of knowledge for labourintensive production, and an exodus of jobs and investment from the northern ‘rustbelt’ to the southern ‘sunbelt’. Focus on African Americans acknowledges a distinctive legacy of slavery and subsequent systemic discrimination that is seen to create among some of its victims a conflictual response to societal institutions.

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For some like Gans (1995), the real problem is that the war against poverty has become deformed into the war against the poor, and in this ideological combat zone, the brand of ‘underclass’ imputes pejorative attributes to those more sinned against than sinning, conveniently converting victims into culprits. For him, its conceptual ambiguity permits neither rigorous calculation of the numbers involved nor precise policy prescription for its redress. Others note how it comprises variegated and depreciatory connotations— subjugation, passivity, disreputability, and menace—that remain unsubstantiated empirically (Jencks and Peterson, 1991; Morris, 1993). For instance, contrary evidence actually exists for prevailing claims, such as that the poor are more isolated than in the past or that the poor living in concentrated poverty are more politically disconnected than the poor living in more mixed neighbourhoods. Moreover, the notion that the ghetto poor are themselves unified and uniformly at odds with mainstream society is challenged in ethnographic studies such as Anderson’s (1999, p. 36), which distinguishes between the ‘decent’ and ‘street’ residents, and their divergent ‘codes’. While the former ‘share many of the middle class values of the wider society, but know that the open display of such values carries little weight on the street. . . (those from the ‘street’) are ‘highly alienated and embittered, they exude generalised contempt for the wider scheme of things and for a system they are sure has nothing but contempt for them’. Again, such demarcation has longstanding lineage in poverty literature, between neighbourhood families cast as either ‘respectables’ or ‘roughs’. Interestingly, the underclass discourse has been overwhelmingly American, experiencing an uneasy transatlantic crossing to Europe and other parts of the world. For instance, Murray’s attempt to identify its deleterious presence in Britain (1990, 1994) centred largely on a flawed interpretation of illegitimacy rates as a best predictor of a nascent underclass (Field, 1989). That is not to deny growing recognition within Europe in the last 15 years that a ‘new’ poverty especially afflicts mature urban centres, and is associated largely with worklessness and increasingly segmented labour markets attendant upon post-industrialism. Related factors include: the pressure on labour costs from the need to compete in global markets with developing countries; the relatively low pay and insecurity in many areas of the ascendant service sector; the bifurcation of the labour market under computerisation, between de-skilled manual jobs and high skill intellectual ones; the fiscal imperative to reshape socially allocated resources (Benington and Taylor, 1993); and the volatile impact on long-term interest rates from the de-regulated integration of global financial markets. For instance, Hutton (1995) speaks of the trajectory of the UK’s new economy towards a 30/30/40 society, in which the bottom 30% are the absolutely disadvantaged, unemployed and benefit-dependent; the next 30% constitute the insecure, those working part-time, casually, or on fixed-term contracts; and the remaining 40% comprises the privileged job-rich, typically enjoying real growth in post-tax income.

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Versions of this socio-spatial polarisation are evident in the Global South. For instance, in (post-) socialist Shanghai, new moral geographies of exclusion have taken the form of gated ‘civilised’ communities such as Vanke Garden City, private spaces in a dense public city designed to prohibit intrusion by rural migrants, perceived as dirty and dangerous peasants. In studying the ideological formation of this spatial expression of ‘moral hygiene’, Pow (2007, p. 1540) notes: While residents often expressed fear and worry about outsiders trespassing and ‘invading’ their private territories and defiling their pristine environment, their concerns are invariably targeted at the hordes of migrant workers that are now flooding into the city in search of a living. In the Global North, the premise since the 1980s that market reform would restore the vitality of depressed urban spaces has confronted the marginalisation of certain groups and communities, particularly those languishing in urban cores. Since it is important that such negative impacts be de-politicised, the ideological offensive of neo-liberalism is about legitimation as much as explanation. Typecasting an underclass becomes a convenient ploy. In the 1960s, explanations for such urban populations rested in the lower half of Figure 4.1 below: residual socio-economic dislocations were deemed to be largely a function of individual/cultural aberration, in the context of the affluent society and its putative embourgeoisement of the working class. In the 1980s, it was acknowledged implicitly that change was structural, as the Thatcher and Reagan projects concentrated on economic transformation, which their ideologies posited as necessary, painful, but transitory. In this model, the underclass comprised those least prone to apply themselves to the new supply-side imperatives: re-skilling; pricing into jobs; and such like. But,

Structural Ideology

Ideology

Economic

Social

Cultural

Cultural Individual

Figure 4.1 Models of the underclass.

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by the close of the decade with the onset of a new recession, the high tide of these policies had failed to elevate those most pauperised and excluded by these changes; and in the ebb flow, the legitimisation for this came in a new ideological ‘explanation’: the urban underclass was then projected as largely the product of structural change in the social fabric, such as the decline of family and other sources of social authority. In the 1990s, despite rhetoric of a more ‘compassionate conservatism’, Wacquant (1996, p. 121) could still refer to ‘the resurgence of extreme poverty and destitution (suggesting) that the metropolis is the site and fount of novel forms of exclusionary social closure in advanced societies’. Yet, evidence for linear growth in inequality is inconclusive, at least in the US, where between 1990 and 2000, the total number of poor living in high-poverty neighbourhoods dropped by one quarter, an improvement associated with strong economic growth and an unemployment rate that fell below 4% for the first time in 30 years. In 2007, 12.5% of the US population (37 million people) was below the poverty line. While non-Hispanic whites constitute the biggest group in poverty (16 million, or 43% of the total), the poverty population is unequally distributed towards minorities, embracing one in four African American and a similar percentage Hispanic (Simms, 2009). Since then, deepening economic crisis and rising unemployment carry grave implications for increased poverty. Accordingly, in these early years of the new century, we have travelled a substantial distance from the optimism of modernisation theories in the 1960s, with their prospective diminution of class and racial inequity, and related pacification of urban conflict within the frame of common citizenship. As expressed by Wacquant (2008, p. 18): Far from witnessing a resorption of poverty and an erosion of ethnonational affiliations, advanced societies have been plagued by the concurrent spread of ‘new poverty’ and the surge—or resurgence—of racializing ideologies often accompanied by violent conflicts directly involving youths in lowerclass neighbourhoods. Through all of these changes, the basic arguments about the paradox of penury amid plenty as a primary source of urban conflict change very little. As mentioned in the previous chapter, essentially they come down to two preferential theses for the neo-liberal/right in contradistinction to the two privileged by the liberal/left. In the case of the former, first there are variants of the ‘sub-culture of poverty’ perspective, the view that deviant attitudes and behaviour linked to dependency incapacitate the poor, obstructing their inclusion in the opportunity society. Second, it is contended that state benefits have engendered perverse incentives that unintentionally magnify the poor’s vulnerability, making it rational for them to choose welfare over work. Contrary to this emphasis on behavioural pathology, the alternative view suggests that poverty is an intrinsic outcome of an inegalitarian

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society, marked by ineffectual welfarism, meager labour protection, ethnoracial discrimination, and negligent state defence of the rights of common citizenship. Second, it is submitted that global capitalist restructuring disproportionately impairs those distressed urban spaces that accommodate the poorest. Within these broad structural and cultural accounts, further exposition is feasible. For instance, in the analysis of structural inner city unemployment, the relative impact of spatial mismatch (living far from where the new jobs are) and skills mismatch (lacking requisite qualification for the jobs created within physical access) can be apportioned. But, fundamentally, it matters a great deal as to whether poverty is viewed mostly as the consequence of self-degeneracy or societal inequity. For instance, it influences the extent to which certain behaviour on the part of some poor—such as welfare and tax dodging—is to be addressed within a framework of criminality and security or treated as a resistance and survival mechanism within the exigency of their condition. In the case of those operating in more serious legal terrain, this is not always so much ‘resistant’ behaviour as complicit behaviour, complicit in the sense that in the game of casino capitalism, whose ethics are set largely in the corporate boardroom and the financial headquarters on Wall Street, the ‘deviant’ poor can be said to play the hand that they were dealt. Far from being ‘outcast’ and marginal to the operation of the ordered economy, in this view, they actually partake in the accumulation process, responding enterprisingly, if also illegally and informally, to markets of the highest demand, which in the case of drugs like heroin and cocaine in the US is targeted at the white middle class in the suburbs (Perry and Gaffikin, 2009). Yet, this analysis poses related controversy. Countering the tendency on the part of the right to blame the victim by instead blaming the system does not attend to the brutish consequence of the most detrimental forms of anti-social behaviour within deprived communities, not only for society at large but also for other poor people. To absolve ghetto criminality by reference to the less spotlighted, but more substantial, white-collar criminality is to relegate its distressing repercussion in the ghetto itself; patronise its perpetrators with excuses for their aberrant behaviour; pardon its responsibility for the further debilitation of the poor through its aggravation of internal conflict; and disregard the pretext that it offers a security state to address poverty through punitive rather than remedial tenets. In all of this, the discourse about urban division around poverty and wealth is compounded by linkage to race and ethnicity.

Ethnicity and urban conflict From Greek antiquity (Hall, 1997) to biblical myth about the tower of Babel, what might be called the ‘Babel syndrome’ of the world’s tribal separatism

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inscribes a constant human narrative. Ethnic belonging rests on an assortment of mutual affiliation such as lineage, affinity with kith and kin, a close bond with specific territory, a sense of shared history and destiny, and common linguistic, cultural, racial and religious traits (Ignatieff, 1993). Clearly, such generality holds potential for confusion and repudiation of what constitutes the ‘ethnic’ (Kaufman, 2001). Ethnicity can be taken as the objective distinguishing characteristics. Whether these translate into a solidaristic ethnic group depends on the existence of a people with a subjective sense of their commonality and differentiation, and who attach meaning and significance to their shared traits and ancestry (Connor, 1994; Jenkins, 1997; Smith, 1999). But the extent to which membership of an ethnic group produces a particular individual’s ethnic identity, relates to how strongly the individual deliberately associates a sense of self with that ethnic tradition and mission, and is prepared to act accordingly. After all, people can construct their identity with limited or no reference to their ethnic background. This means, for instance, that not all conflicts that involve ethnic groups are primarily ethnic conflicts (Albert, 2008). In this respect, ethnic characteristics contain great complexity. They can be regarded as primordial, expressive, discrete, and immutable or as situationist and instrumental, involving the individual as an active agent in selective identity formation. Some aspects can be ascribed or chosen (Jackson and Penrose, 1993). They can evoke a compelling sense of mutual obligation or feeble attachment to group cohesion (Eller, 1999; Horowitz, 2000). Moreover, along with the multiple variables already identified, other aspects are discernible: the myths, symbols, and fictive narratives of past fortitude and heroic sacrifice (Kaufman, 2006); the duration of the common descent, and related sense of continuity and legacy; the fervent belief in being a ‘chosen’ people, a people set apart; the extent of inter-marriage, which may be seen to dilute the purity of the lineage (Gagnon, 2004); and a sense of common hostility to ‘the other’ (Petersen, 2002). Given these myriad aspects, it may be posited that the strength of ethnic affinity in any particular case relates to the number of these shared touchstone characteristics and to the extent of their application. But any attempt to weight some over others would certainly invite contention within the scholarship. More importantly, it is helpful to see ethnic identity as a shifting rather than entrenched formation, a relational and contested process of becoming rather than being, negotiated within power networks and the politics of recognition (Taylor, 1994; Ong and Nonini (eds), 1997). Thus, the reification of ethnicity as an essentialist and solidified element misses the extent to which it can be more about routes than roots (Hoon, 2006). What binds some can serve to exclude others, and discord about identity and territory can produce ethnic rivalry ranging in intensity from chronic friction to deadly quarrel. Given that history is inundated with narratives of invasion, conquest, subjugation and resistance on the part of one ethnic group against another, current boundaries for nation-states and relationships among their

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diverse ethnicities are shaped by this disputed colonial past. Two thirds of all independent states comprise three or more concentrated ethnic groups, and while most ethnic disputes do not involve violence, almost two-thirds of all violent conflicts contain an ethnic aspect (Toft, 2003). Since 1945, there has been a decisive shift from inter- to intra-state conflict (Marshall and Gurr, 2003), and one reflection of this is that since 1945, fatalities in civil wars have been five times greater than those in inter-state wars (Fearon and Laitin, 2003), while appreciating that such analysis is confounded by conceptual and empirical dilemmas of definition (Sambanis, 2004). Contrasting such belligerence to conventional war, Charlesworth (2006, p. 4) suggests that ‘these conflicts typically lack uniforms, leaders, rules, treaties, conventions and beginnings or ends. Their seeds are sown in the swampy terrain of cultural identity and its repression and reassertion’. Plainly, not all components of ethnicity carry the same violent potential. For instance, linguistic difference is not associated with armed conflict, whereas religious difference can be. But again, the relative extent of influence is not subject to calibration. In general, there is an ineffable and inestimable facet to ethnic identity, an emotive force that for some is visceral, making it a potent trigger not only of passionate celebration, but also of latent aggression. Whether in the Balkans, East Timor, Rwanda, Darfur, Chechnya, or Kashmir, the plethora of recent violent conflicts containing a redoubtable ethnic constituent reveals the fallacy about the ineluctable role of modernisation and globalisation in mitigating ethnic variance. Two related questions arise. Why is this ethnic contest still so prevalent and what determines whether or not it assumes violent expression? While ethnic conflict has been a perennial feature of humankind (Horowitz, 2000), six main explanations are offered for its current form and force (Lake and Rothschild, 1998; Wimmer, 2002; Min and Wimmer, 2003). First, there is persistent structural discrimination and inequality based on ethnic background that produces an enduring sense of common victimhood (Gurr, 1993). Second, there is the ‘imperialist legacy’ argument about the repercussions of empires even in a de-colonialising period, whereby current clashes in places such as Kashmir, Gaza and Chechnya reflect both the partisan purpose of previously imposed borders by the imperial power and an insurgency by historically subjugated people to reclaim the integrity of their homeland as an act of self-determination (Gall and deWaal, 1998). Third, the ‘diversity’ perspective emphasises the impact of greater migration in a globalising world in transposing the global to the local, spreading heterogeneity, and creating more transnational cities in the sense of their diasporic and multicultural affinities. Where such a mix assumes negative manifestation, decreasing uniformity combined with differentiated citizenship, inequitable outcomes of neo-liberal globalisation, migrants’ precarious belonging, and the xenophobia readily generated in economically parlous times, act as a lethal brew to foment scapegoating among the

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impoverished in this unforgiving competitive milieu. The upshot is greater inter-ethnic tension, particularly between perceived ‘native’ and ‘newcomer’ (Chua, 2003). Fourth, the ‘de-frosting’ thesis suggests that the authoritarian polity in former communist countries suppressed ethnic autonomy and nationalist ambition, which were aroused into raging reprisal and/or ‘defensive’ aggression upon the expiry of these centralist regimes, exemplifying the character of the ‘new wars’ in the global era (Kaldor, 2001; Petersen, 2002). Fifth, there are those who insist that behind some apparently spontaneous unrest and combat, rooted in ancestral enmity and primed by current crusade, lies the manipulating hand of ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’, keen to marshall fear and loathing for self-serving motives of power and/or greed (Carment, 2007; Collier, 2007). An example here would be Milosevic, who has been seen to have cynically embraced the banner of Serbian nationalism in the Bosnian conflagration to provide himself with a formidable political platform amidst the volatile disintegration of Yugoslavia. But the flaw here lies in any simplistic depiction of a passive and guileless citizenry readily duped by accomplished leadership. The more complex reality is that in the charged environment of a re-aligning state, where concession to secessionist claims could be taken by other Yugoslavs as setting troubling precedent for annexation and amputation, nationalist forces in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and later Kosovo had an autonomous political and material presence (Burg and Sharp, 1999; Toft, 2003). For instance, Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008 was grounded in its demographic composition of mostly ethnicAlbanians—over 90% of its 2 million people—and the spatial concentration of Kosovon Serbs in enclaves mostly to the north. Finally, it is proposed that many of today’s ethnic contests are surrogates for a fundamental struggle between civilisations, based on cultural–religious collision, rather than the politico-economic confrontation between capitalism and communism that marked much of the last century (Huntington, 1996). The main form of this polarisation is supposed to entail sacred tradition and theocracy represented by Islamisation, versus liquid modernity and market-based secular consumerism, epitomised by globalisation—both in their own ways incompatible with pluralist democratic civil society. But, again, the reality is more textured and contradictory. Taking the Arab world as one example of Muslim differentiation, various responses to globalisation are evident. Militant Islamists see it blurring the provinces of believer and infidel, and instead seek their own form of universalism in a proselytising global Jihad, a religious–cultural identity politics that sees sovereignty as resting not with citizens or the nation-state, but with the divine. Others oppose it outright as a channel for hegemonic American culture and capitalism, imperiling their heritage and identity. More secularist elements embrace it, while still others crave a globalisation that is genuinely integrative and respectful of cultural and national difference (Moussalli, 2007). Accepting this divergence does not

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invalidate the significance of the Islam–West confrontation as an adverse context for hostilities in places like Bosnia, Iraq, and Palestine. Moreover, aspects of this antagonism are self-fulfilling, as in the branding of all Muslims with a common ethnic identity, that, in turn, holds potential for further igniting fission (Tibi, 2007, p. 225): A superimposed Islamic ethnic identity is constructed to supersede real local Islamic identities (Turks in Germany, Maghrebis in France) and create a diasporic unity of Islam in Europe viewed as an extension of Dar al-Islam. This provokes tensions between immigrants and settled populations in Europe as much as the European right-wing extremists do. Such patterns form part of a broader canvas, concerning the tenacious interplay of religion, secularisation, individualism and modernity, particularly amongst people rooted in values of communalism and tradition (Vanaik, 1997). As the world integrates, there is paradoxically an enhanced valorisation on that which differentiates. Thereby, globalisation has been twinned with a new tribalisation (Barber, 1995). While such ethnic/identity politics test the consonance between monolithic cultural politics and pluralist citizenship in a globalising age, the frictions generated are also inseparable from the inequitable outcome of global capitalism (Al Sayyad and Castells, 2002). Part of this outcome reflects itself in the flow of migrants from the periphery to the core, inducing varied responses from generous welcome to contentious dissension in those gateway cities that are the main reception centres. At its most negative, the reaction of the host population can be xenophobic, seeing the new entrants as an invasion of economic refugees, interposing the Third World into the First. On the streets, this hostility translates into familiar criticism of illegal border crossings, unlicensed street traders, the subversion of local customs and values, the under-cutting of local labour, and most recently, the association made between some migrants and the threat of ‘global terrorism’. In societies such as the US, there is the suggestion from some that the relationship between immigrant settlement and internal migration is extending city-regional spatial segmentation on the basis of race and ethnicity. The supposed pattern in gateway cities like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Miami is that most of their relatively unskilled immigrants are caused to work for lower wages than those for the native unskilled, some of who are then priced out of their traditional local jobs, and motivated to become geographically mobile in search of alternative appropriate employment. Their exodus combined with the migrant influx is then seen to re-compose the racial and ethnic mix of the city’s residents, risking the deepening of segregation (Frey, 1999). Such analysis has been criticised by those who regard arguments about ‘demographic balkanisation’ as alarmist, and rooted in normative assumptions, like the equation of ‘American’ with whiteness, and segregation studies that appraise

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assimilation in terms of approximation with Anglo-Saxon culture (Ellis and Wright, 1998). Another aspect of this issue is the limited citizenship afforded to the undocumented immigrant. Taking the US as an example, its 9.3 million undocumented immigrants account for 26% of the total foreign-born population, and around 40% of this category in 10 states. Of this group, Mexicans comprise 57%, with another 23% coming from other Latin American countries. Close to two-thirds of undocumented immigrants (6 million) are working—representing 5% of all US workers—and two-thirds of these earn less than twice the minimum wage, in contrast to only one-third of all workers (Passel et al., 2004). Such exploited status can be read through Agamben (2005) use of the old concept of ‘state of exception’. He highlights the tension that while every modern citizen is supposed to constitute part of ‘sovereignty’, s/he is also vulnerable to state power, and thus to that same sovereignty of which they are a part. This marks the inherent ambiguity of a politico-juridical process that can both bind and abandon. Particularly, when individuals are disrobed of political status and reduced to what Agamben calls ‘bare life’, they can be placed in a legal black hole, a space of exception. Taken to its ultimate potential, this exile can de-humanise branded populations to the extent that the state’s punitive response to them is no longer defined as unfair, or even in extreme cases as criminal. Such precarious belonging has implications not only for propensity for urban conflict, but also for urban planning in general. If millions of residents are airbrushed from official data, how can their presence and needs be accommodated in the planning system? In cities in the Global South such as Bangkok, urban authorities fail to take illegal immigrants into account when adopting planning policy, with specific implications for access to services and to public space for celebration of traditional and religious festivals (Chantavanich and Vungsiriphisal, 2005). That is not to say that all cities adopt an approach of denial or rejection. In the US, for example, some like Chicago are cast as ‘sanctuary’ cities, which through their local ordinances and prominent role in national advocacy, pursue a more sympathetic course. To appreciate fully its significance for current urban conflict, migration needs to be contextualised within the global pattern of its considerable growth and changing flows in recent decades. Whereas in 1965 there were 75 million people living outside their country of origin, by 2002 the figure was 175 million, representing 3% of the world’s population, and involving an average annual growth rate of 2.3% compared with 1.8% for total world population (Kok et al., 2006). Not only does this figure exclude the estimated 15–30 million illegal migrants, it also fails to capture the pace of recent change, given that between 1990 and 2000, the migrant numbers increased by one-third (Balbo and Tuts, 2005). Some of this mobility is driven by economic hardship, and some by the upheavals of war. For instance, some 2 million fled Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos following the end of the Vietnam

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war in 1975. Mostly, the flow is from poor to rich worlds, and as such, it brings mixed blessings to the Global South. While it can involve a brain drain, it can also generate migrant remittances to home, amounting in some estimates to a greater sum than international development aid (Ellerman, 2003). But since the 1990s, significant flows between developing countries have become more apparent: such as those within Southeast Asia that concentrate toward Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Karachi; from Southeast Asia to the Middle East; from the sub-Sahara, Mozambique, and Angola to South African cities like Johannesburg; or in the case of Latin America, from Paraguay and Bolivia to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Overwhelmingly, these migrants are heading to the large urban centres, adding to their pressure (Balbo and Tuts, 2005). For instance, many African countries endure formidable economic and demographic strain. Rapid expansion in population and workforce is occurring amidst deteriorating agricultural productivity and a related exodus from impoverished rural settlements to burgeoning cities, whose own economies and infrastructures are too fragile to bear the heavier burden, leading in turn to greater urban tensions (Adepoju, 2001). Where migrations involve border crossing, as in refugee flight from conflict-torn Zimbabwe to South Africa, such tensions can assume an added tribal character. Karachi represents another example of a city that experienced massive demographic increase following independence, and where a substantial share of its residents are enclaved in informal settlements, an insecurity that contributed to serious ethnic riots in the late 1980s between Pathans and Biharis, recently repatriated Pakistanis from Bangladesh, and between Mohajirs and Sindhis (Tambiah, 1996). Other parts of the Global South have witnessed similar association. For instance in Asia-Pacific, workers are induced to leave places with labour surplus and slow employment growth, such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, and the Philippines, to seek better opportunity in places of stagnant or waning labour force growth and relatively buoyant economy, such as Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. But Indonesia’s economic downturn in the late 1990s gave cause to targeting Chinese Indonesians for violence in cities such as Jakarta. In total, around 1200 people were killed, thousands of houses and shops fired and looted, and many tens of thousands of Chinese families forced to flee to places such as Singapore and Hong Kong (Purdey, 2006). In Malaysia, immigration can be seen as potentially unsettling to its sensitive ethnic balance, while in Japan it can undermine myths about its mono-culture and homogeneity (Yoshino, 1992). In other words, conflict around ethnic implication of immigration is not peculiar to the Global North. Rather, the global picture of transnational communities demonstrates that the mythical uniform nation, offering ‘space for each race’, has long been at odds with reality. Indeed, taking a long view of 13 000 years of history, Diamond (1999, pp. 321–23) argues that today’s multi-ethnic states are simply restoring the diversity that once prevailed in many parts of the world:

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All but one of the world’s six most populous nations are melting pots that achieved political unification recently, and that still support hundreds of languages and ethnic groups . . . The great exception to this rule of the recent melting pot is the world’s most populous nation, China. Since territorialising unique identity is difficult even in places like China and Japan, which have long harboured a self-image of ethnic unity, the contested politics of belonging and recognition has become universal (Gutmann, 1994; Castles and Davidson, 2000). This brings with it redefinition of citizenship, including the notion of ‘flexible citizenship’ that may include dual status (Ong, 1999), within a more contentious understanding of national identity (Castles, 2000). Paradoxically, this transnationalism reflects the reshaping of the nation-state rather than its demise or de-territorialisation under a new borderless global order (Al Ali and Koser, 2002; Yeoh and Willis, 2004). But whether over time it will contribute to a more malleable and fluid sense of identity by way of greater multicultural hybridity, or an opposite hardening of national and cultural affiliation remains uncertain. Given the insecure status imposed on many new urban migrants, their use of informal social networks and diaspora ties back home is both a consequence and further buttress of their exclusion from formal political and cultural life. For some cast adrift, this ambivalent identity involves a continual reprocessing in their own minds about how transitory or permanent is their current residence and civic loyalty. Since speed of modern travel and communication offers a compaction of time-space, ‘home’ can be at once near and far. The ‘politics of return’ for those trapped in this ambiguity can be differentially de-coded—either as an ‘imagined’ place of home constructed from revisionist dreams about their place of origin, or it can translate the urban text of current abode into an informal version of Chinatown, Little Saigon or Korean Town (Smith, 2001; Gaffikin et al., 2009). Thereby, such transnationalisation of the urban can involve complex circuits of cultural response from migrant and ‘host’ city, so that, for instance, exclusion leads to alienation, which can lead to ethnic community formation rooted in cultural solidarity, a perceived separatism that in turn can lend some traction to xenophobic charges that newcomers have divided loyalties, that then promote further victimisation and consequent deepening disaffection. Confounding the tensions and resentments associated with migration is the prospect of a deepening environmental crisis, linked to the use of nonrenewable fuels that is itself linked to the globalised spread of industrial production. Climate change that brings added pressure on energy supply, food production, and access to fresh water—fundamentals for human survival— holds the potential for forms of conflict that inter-penetrate with, and thereby intensify, other sources of division. For instance, the strong correlation between the preponderance of oil supplies in Muslim-dominated countries may accentuate current strains between the developed world and elements

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of Islam. As noted by Gray (2007, p. 201): ‘ The risk is that resource war will be mixed with wars of religion and the otherwise far-fetched theory of clashing civilizations become self-fulfilling’. The geo-political implications in terms of security threat, and what is referred to as the planet’s human carrying capacity, are addressed in a Pentagon report, whose unsettling proposals gained little favour with the Bush administration (Schwartz and Randall, cited by Gray, 2007, p. 201): As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations, especially those with ancient enmities against their neighbours, may initiate struggles for access to food, clean water or energy. Detectable in such analysis is an apocalyptic tone about an ever expanding human race inexorably desolating the planet, and causing conflict in the process. But the research about the link between such environmental features as population density, land degradation, deforestation, desertification, scarcity of fresh water, and civil conflict is more qualified. Some studies (for example, Theisen, 2008) suggest that there is scant evidence to support the connection, and that the real determinants of domestic armed conflict are distributive issues such as poverty together with dysfunctional public institutions. Other investigations (for example, Hauge and Ellingsen, 1998) conclude that, even controlling for political regime type and levels of economic development, resource scarcity can increase the risk of conflict, though it is not as decisive a predictor of civil turmoil as local economy and polity. However, the environmental stress faced by some areas of the Global South will be exacerbated by the extent to which they become sites for the ‘new wars’ of the future (Hardt and Negri, 2004). Simply put, the intensification of urban growth in the Global South will increase the likelihood that ‘modern urban combat operations will become one of the primary challenges of the 21st century’, to quote a US intelligence source (Defense Intelligence Reference Document, 1997, cited in Graham, 2007). The argument here is that powerful nations, particularly the more democratic ones, are inclined in contemporary warfare to deploy the ‘shock and awe’ of aerial bombardment as a means of minimising their casualties and thereby securing political consent at home. In this new urban century, as a means of eluding the lethal impact of such precision weaponry in open terrain, the anticipated future enemies of powerful states like the US will take refuge in the city. Its compact and congested morphology can incapacitate the optimum use of modern weapons, thereby acting as a leveller between a high tech military and its lower tech, more informally organised adversary. Moreover, the city’s human density helps local combatants to blend with their social hinterland, the ideal context for

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waging a protracted guerrilla campaign that inflicts sufficient fatalities on the enemy, while inducing the occupying power to further alienate local residents. For the powerful nations, such attrition in urbanised battle space over time renders the conflict less tolerable to domestic political audiences (Graham (ed), 2004; Cowen and Gilbert (eds), 2008; Graham, 2007). Meanwhile, as in the case of Baghdad, the prolonged conflict can form a combustible milieu, in which sectarian strife amongst local factions is triggered, with devastating impact in terms of attempted ethnic cleansing and forced segregation. None of these conflict scenarios contains a simple pattern of predictability or immutability. As argued in the previous chapter, such lack of certitude does not imply that human intentionality can decide little. Without the pretence that the world is what we make of it, deliberative participation in the world can animate it with new prospects, beyond fateful resignation about the invincibility of circumstance. This is where Wacquant’s (2008, p. 191) central thesis that those trapped in a state of advanced marginality are to be considered outcasts understates the continued force of autonomous agency, and differential state formation across polities. He generalises that in advanced capitalist countries, neo-liberal globalisation and its post-Fordist/Keynesian expression has deproletarianised a whole stigmatised population, now relegated to blighted urban enclaves, there to mutually compete ever more intensely for the scarce resources of a retrenched welfare state. But his own empirical study of the American ghetto and the French banlieues demonstrates the significant particularity of each: ‘. . . the degraded cites of the French urban periphery are not ghettos in the sense of an ethnically uniform sociospatial formation based on the forcible relegation of a negatively typed population to a reserved territory. . . .’ What he refers to as the Parisian Red Belt contains a heterogeneous population in terms of ethnoracial composition, with a continual turnover and mix of population, and insofar as there is over-representation of immigrant groups, it is attributable more to their class than their ethnicity. Granting that race and its attendant discriminations do have an abiding, if not growing, presence in France, he insists that the identity of shared residence supersedes that of ethnic origin, with no banlieue considered the restricted terrain of any particular tribe. Counter-posing the durable spatial bisection of American urban impoverished into indelible Black Belts and the rest, he charts the deterioration from the cross-class communal black ghetto to the imploded hyperghetto, and how such racialised space is marked by pandemic violence and a ‘culture of terror’. In this characterisation, housing projects in places like Chicago’s Southside can resemble a war zone. Whereas persistent poverty in the US is overwhelmingly located in core central cities, the cites are mostly features of the French periphery. Whereas the ghetto demonstrates a retreat

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of public institutions related to downsized welfarism, a profusion of state intervention in Parisian cites like La Courneuve, risks, if anything, complicating service provision into myriad agencies that inadvertently atomise their clients. Finally, whereas political recognition in the ghetto is often mobilised around the ethnic entitlements of diversity, in France it centres on social claims for equality. So, despite his earlier stress on the determinacy of the neo-liberal city, he proceeds to identify a host of ways that urban politics still matter. But even allowing for his specificities, mostly this analysis relegates the poorest to a state of passivity in the face of a passive state in the case of the US and a mostly pacifying state in the case of France. In contrast to his use of terms like ‘marginality’ and ‘outcast’, Chatterjee (2004) emphasises how the activism of the excluded is central to the construction of the urban, and derives out of the state, rather than outside the state. Significantly, in the Global South, this activism of ‘political society’ is not always expressed through formal resistance, but rather through informal responses that bend and stretch regulation, and include transgressions such as squatting, street trading, fare dodging, and illegal land grabs. Such self-organisation not only violates the state’s preoccupation with property and order over social equity, but also penetrates the fictional claims of governance, revealing the less democratic reality that people are mostly governed. Here, Chatterjee acknowledges that the global spread of ethnic/identity politics is related in good part to the propensity of the modern state to abdicate dealing with the public as a citizenry and fraternity with common rights and prerogatives, instead controlling or caring for subpopulations to be targeted by selective interventions of security and welfare. In the face of such pervasive ethnic politics, and returning to the second question raised earlier, what makes some ethnic conflict violent? Beyond the very visible violent strife in places such as Israel–Palestine between Jew and Arab, the Eritrean–Ethiopian war related to the Badme region, the Kashmir dispute involving India and Pakistan, the various struggles in the former Soviet Union and the recurrent combat in Sri Lanka between Tamils and Sinhalese, there are multiple others that seldom make headlines. For instance, in the past decade, the Nigerian city of Jos, capital of the region known as Plateau State, has experienced repeated clashes between Christians and Muslims, in which hundreds have been killed, and thousands have had to flee their homes. Jos, a ‘frontier’ city between Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and mostly Christian south, has been the crucible for tensions in the region, rooted in acrimony felt by indigenous mostly Christian groups against migrant settlers, mostly Muslim from the Hausa-speaking north. As such, it is an exemplar of the combustible mix of issues that hold potential for violence in simmering disputes: ethnicity, migration, religion, language, culture, economic rivalry, and territorial borders. In explaining why some feuds like this do ignite into armed battle, Toft (2003) maintains that the crucial determinant is whether the antagonists

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perceive the disputed territory to be divisible or indivisible. In short, territory can become a matter of life and death for both ethnic groups and the state. For the latter, territory is about protecting the integrity of its borders and the legitimacy of its sovereignty. With states that contain more than one ethnic region able and willing to secede, the fear is that concession could set a precedent that would ultimately invite further withdrawals and threaten its very existence. Alongside this, with the corrosion of central authority in a multinational state, fear can be aroused among some or all of the ethnic constituencies that their security is under greater threat from the other hostile competing groups, and this vulnerability may prompt some to see violent attack as their own best defence. Mostly, the state’s resistance to claims on part of its territory is not primarily motivated by the land’s intrinsic material worth, though, for instance, a country like Iraq would be reluctant to forfeit part of its oil resource through a tripartite partition based on ethno-religious difference. There may be an aversion to split up territory because of its spiritual significance, as in the case of Jerusalem. But mostly, the indivisibility issue for the state is the perceived connection between territory and survival, and in such circumstance, territory is not quantifiable and exchangeable. For the ethnic group seeking to advance its ‘self-determination’, Toft argues that its demographic numbers and concentrated settlement patterns are significant variables in bestowing both legitimacy and capacity. Particularly if the territory in question is considered by the group to be an ancestral homeland, or to hold sacred significance, critical to helping its authentic identity survive and thrive, it becomes a perpetual and indivisible component of that identity that cannot be negotiated away. Moreover, the rallying appeal of ethnic identity is not restricted to ancient quarrels, nor to invocation by charismatic leaders, nor to the socially disadvantaged, as evidenced in post-federal Yugoslavia, where violent pressure for secession erupted in the more prosperous regions first. Very occasionally, partition can offer some solution. For instance, the split in Czechoslovakia was rendered relatively amicable because the Czechs and Slovaks lived mostly in two distinctly separate parts of the country, and the stronger force of what became the Czech Republic could see economic advantage in the separation. By contrast, the ferocious struggle in Bosnia was attributable in good measure to the presence of multiethnic interest, the absence of one dominant group, and the vehemence of Serbian nationalism in affirming control over land containing ethnic Serbs. Based on such propositions, her study looks at Russia’s dealings with Tartarstan and Chechnya, and Georgia’s engagement with Abkhazia and Ajaria, and in summary, she posits (ibid., p. 133): The intersection of a state’s and an ethnic group’s bargaining positions over control of a disputed territory determined whether their dispute would escalate into violence. If both actors represent their interests over the

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disputed territory as indivisible, then violence is likely. If one or both do not, then violence can be averted. Addressing a similar question about the likelihood of violence in ethnically heterogeneous contexts, Laitin (2007) distils his analysis to the proposition that the chance of violence is high where the state is weak in providing essential public goods and security and at the same time, the disadvantaged minority groups are spatially concentrated. In another examination of the links between identity and violence, Sen (2006) locates the source of violence in people’s perception of each other in terms of singular affiliation rather than of multiple identities, an imposition often championed in his view by ‘artisans of terror’ (p. 4). He remarks on the rapid makeover in relations that such aggressive labelling can incite (p. 2): From my own childhood memory of the Hindu–Muslim riots in the 1940s, linked with the politics of partition, I recollect the speed with which the broad human family of January were suddenly transformed into the ruthless Hindus and fierce Muslims of July. While wary of the latent belligerence and zealotry in narrow communal solidarities, his appeal to the rich diversity embodied in everyone’s individuality misconstrues the extent to which certain attachments are blessed with primacy. For instance, for some fervent religious people, the faith is not just one aspect of pluralist identity. Encompassing everything, it is non-negotiable. From this standpoint, antagonistic perception of ‘the other’ is a necessary though insufficient basis for armed conflict. Bigotry alone without the means to impose its discriminations on a rival group is quite impotent. Rather, the most injurious intolerance derives from the equation: prejudice plus power equals racism/sectarianism. On this basis, black people in a white power world can be prejudiced but not racist. But the problem with this formula is that it downplays the transactional impact of chauvinism and its corrosive repercussion on mutual trust and fear within civic society. Indulgence for vilification against a particular race, ethnicity, or religion not only sours community relations generally, but also gives succour to the most recalcitrant, while dispiriting those prepared to invest effort and risk in mutual understanding and equity. Another distinction drawn here is between ‘racism’ and ‘racialism’, with the latter referring to an acknowledgement of difference in trait and tendency, without according a hierarchy or inequality to such divergence. Returning to Sen’s core thesis, it could be argued that it is not simply that an embittered singular identity causes violence. Sometimes, the latter can engender the former, as when the urgency of violence pressures the ethnic ‘bystanders’ to take sides. In this way, once detonated, violence carries its own explosive momentum. Such problematic considerations about cultural ancestry, religious affinity, autonomy of

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identity, imagined homeland, survival, rebellion, and negotiability have a particular purchase on protracted city conflict rooted in ethno-nationalist confrontation.

Ethno-nationalist contest In cohering four key concepts: group solidarity; territoriality; sovereignty; and political legitimacy, nationalism is typically constructed from an edited adoption and adjustment of images, symbols, and myths of ethnic identity. Roshwald (2006, p. 8) notes: As an ideology that seeks to create a broad yet cohesive framework for collective and individual identities alike, nationalism relies heavily upon the simplification and distortion of history, the propagation of beliefs about all-encompassing ties of blood and sentiment, and the disavowal of social, economic and cultural differences that contradict the all-important themes of unity and fraternity. Bollens (1999, p. 3) refers to the ‘ethnic contested city, where identity and nationalist claims combine and impinge significantly and consistently’ on the urban. As referenced earlier, the city can often be the intensive microcosm for the wider societal tensions and fragmentations, and their related diverse discourses (Soja, 2000). This is particularly so in circumstances where fundamental disputes over sovereignty are played out, often most intensively in capital cities like Nicosia, Belfast, and Jerusalem. But significant differentiations apply to such cities. The most partisan state response to such conflict has been captured in the concept of ethnocracy, a designation Yiftachel (2006, p. 3) employs to describe the Israeli approach: Ethnocratic regimes promote the expansion of the dominant group in contested territory and its domination of power structures while maintaining a democratic facade. Ethnocracy manifests in the Israeli case with the long-term Zionist strategy of Judaizing the homeland—constructed during the last century as the Land of Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In essence, this form of government favours Jewish citizens and immigrants over Arab citizens and takes an indulgent, if indeed not supportive, attitude to new Jewish settlements that de facto act to extend Israeli territorial claims. It uses instruments of state power such as planning to discriminate positively toward the protection of Jewish demographic advantage. In explaining the history and polity that shape this deliberate agenda of ethnic chasm based on relationships of domination and subjugation, Yiftachel (2006, p. 12)

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identifies the fusion of three structural forces of colonialism, nationalism and capitalism: (1) The creation of a colonial settler society, and the on-going strategic intent to foster immigration and new settlement; (2) The ideology of ethno-nationalism, with its congruence of territoriality and ethnic group survival, and its capacity to rally adherents behind appealing democratic banners of self-determination; and (3) The ‘ethnic logic’ of capital and class formation, whereby an ethnoclass hierarchy takes shape, with the indigenous Arab at the bottom, at worst, as an underclass. However, this configuration, designed to justify asymmetrical power and the ‘prominence of the ethnos over the demos’ (ibid., p. 276), is permanently insecure. For instance, at the economic level, ‘the accelerating globalisation of markets and capital movement has weakened the state’s economic power’ (ibid., p. 15), and thus its influence to determine distributive outcomes. Moreover, pressure to adopt the model of the minimalist state implicit in neo-liberalism could compromise the image of a state capable of both security and social protection, a change in materiality that could undermine state legitimacy. At the political level, there are on-going tensions between the reality of ethnocracy—with its autocratic and coercive character, expressed in selective allocation of rights, opportunity and power—and the superficiality of the formal democracy that is meant to accord equal resident citizenship. Accordingly, the basis for ethnocracy cannot be considered in simple reductionist terms. In cities like Belfast, the concept of ethnocracy in these terms holds little explanatory power. Here, the state’s declared role in shaping the city throughout the ‘Troubles’ has veered between claims for even-handed neutrality, via a technocratic apolitical planning system, and a limited compensatory model of positive discrimination informed by values of equity and diversity. Yet, the state’s republican and loyalist opponents have at times challenged the accuracy of this characterisation of the state as referee between two warring tribes, acting above the fray as champion of the disadvantaged. But, on the ground, space and territory have been central to the dispute. The spark for the Civil Rights Movement, which immediately preceded this period of conflict, was housing allocation, and the distribution of housing settlement remains at the heart of the divide. In Belfast, overall patterns of demographic decline— around one-third in the two decades since 1971—have over-arched the shifts in sectarian geography, whereby Catholic share of population has risen and Protestant share has declined to a point where a city that was once two-thirds/ one-third in favour of Protestant numbers is now closer to fifty/fifty. As this pattern becomes clearly reflected in the political composition of city government, the extent to which these demographic changes are voluntary or

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enforced becomes a central part of the on-going contest about ‘whose Belfast?’ This disposition on the part of both sides of the community to ‘read’ the changes in the city through their own political lens is captured well by Shirlow and Murtagh (2006, p. 68) in their description of the divergent message sent out by a particular territorial ‘re-alignment’ in the city in recent times: The departure in 2005 of the remaining Protestant community from the Torrens estate in North Belfast was a signifier of the incapacity to solve evident interface difficulties. The leaving of the last few residents was viewed through disparate forms of analysis. For the residents the impact of republican violence and intimidation had been the main catalyst that encouraged their departure. For republicans, the exit of the Protestant community had been negotiated and welcomed by those who had left. The hoisting of Irish national flags moments after the departure of these residents presented a form of space-claiming that intensified the loyalist/ unionist sense of decline and forced exodus. Such patterns of territorial contest and conquest are often most visible at the urban interfaces, described by Feldman (1991, p. 28) as ‘the topographic ideological sector that physically and symbolically demarcates ethnic communities’ and where periodic rioting functions as an instrument for establishing and sometimes extending ethnic turf. While these harsh ethno-spatial realities might seem to demand a more proactive government attempt to sponsor public dialogue about the mutual costs involved in such continued sectarian animosity, government might see such candid exchange as ‘shining too great a spotlight on division at a time requiring the rhetoric of healing’ (Neill, 2004, p. 200). Yet, these low-intensity struggles in Belfast cannot be air-brushed out of the soft-focused picture of a city deemed to exemplify a successful peace process, unless citizens and government want to substitute serious political discourse for the delusional language of contemporary tourism promotion. In assessing the dynamics of these spatial patterns, Boal’s construction of ‘the scenarios spectrum’ (1997) offers five futures for ethnic segregation and antagonism in contested cities like Belfast: assimilation, where difference is erased; pluralism, which permits positive accommodation and mutual respect; segmentation, involving continued separatism, though in the absence of competing sovereignty claims; polarisation, which characterises the ‘frontier city’; and finally, cleansing, which achieves homogeneity by compelling the exclusion of one source of differentiation. Extermination of diversity, taken to its most extreme, reveals the potential ferocity of ethnic slaughter. Since 1950, nearly 20 genocides have besmirched humankind, with the worst of them—in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Rwanda — accounting for over one million victims (Gray, 2002). Clearly, such carnage cannot be accredited to ethnic conflict alone. For instance, the tribal struggle between Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda can trace its imperialist

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roots to Belgian divide and rule that favoured the Tutsi. Its more recent basis lies in the resource war in an area disrupted by massive demographic growth in the previous four decades, tripling from 2.5 to 8.5 million (Ponting, 1999). As a grim riposte to Western conceit about the link between civilisation and modernity, millions of people have perished over the last three centuries not only from direct execution, but also from indirect killers such as disease, hunger, and slavery. Though marked by deliberate intense violence against a whole collectivity, genocide finds pale resemblance in other forms of violent ethnic conflict in demanding a numbed sensibility to the welfare of those outside the fold. As Hinton (2002, p. 6) explains, the targeted villain is the alien other: Genocides are distinguished by a process of ‘othering’ in which the boundaries of an imagined community are reshaped in such a manner that a previously ‘included’ group (albeit often included only tangentially) is ideologically recast (almost always in dehumanizing rhetoric) as being outside the community, as a threatening and dangerous ‘other’—whether racial, political, ethnic, religious, economic, and so on—that must be annihilated.

The state of conflict and conflict in the state In recent times, the media have projected manifold images of atrocities whose apparent causality lay in inter-ethnic enmity: the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur; the massacre in Srebrenica; the pitiless siege of Sarajevo; the battering of Grozny; and the stream of refugees in struggles such as the Congo, Kosovo, and South Ossetia. Conventional wisdom suggests that the combination of the above eight factors has led to increasing urban conflict in the world, particularly given the media attention devoted to terrorism, civil wars, and coups. However, the data suggest otherwise. Most conflicts are now fought within states. Of course, some of these intra-state struggles are ‘internationalised’, as is most obvious in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking the case of state-based conflict (where the state is one of the warring parties), there is evidence of reduced levels of conflict. For instance between 2002 and 2006, the number of state-based conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa— together with the Middle East, a particularly conflict-prone region—declined by 46%. Whereas in 2002, the region’s share of the world’s state-based conflicts was 40%, by 2006, it had reduced to 22%. Moreover, since the ‘new wars’ are largely restricted to low-income countries and engaged by poorly trained and equipped combatants, the average fatality rate per conflict per year has notably reduced in recent decades. While in 1950 it was 38 000, in 2006 it was 500 (Human Security Brief, 2007). With respect to non-state conflict, for instance intra-communal disputes and those involving rebel groups and warlords, these decreased from 36 to 24.

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In other words, compared with other periods, the current state of conflict in the world is not abnormally acute. Between 1960 and 1992 for example, there was a threefold increase in state-based conflict. The relative decline since is attributable to the winding down of anti-colonial struggles, and to the end of ‘proxy’ wars associated with the Cold War. Nevertheless, despite evidence of this kind, there is a widespread impression that certain forms of conflict like terrorism have increased. Here again, it depends on definition. In 2006, an astounding 79% of global fatalities attributed to ‘terrorism’ occurred in Iraq. Yet, in previous times, these deaths in Iraq would be regarded in terms of intracommunal sectarianism and resistance against perceived invasion, not as terrorism. If these victims are removed from the figures, then the threat of terrorism as a lethal source of spreading conflict takes on a much more modest complexion (ibid., 2007). None of this qualification is intended to downplay the devastation experienced in Mostar, Sarajevo, Basra, Baghdad, Beirut, Kabul, and such like victims of severed and scarred landscapes, nor to deny the significance for conflict proliferation of factors such as the new arms trade in small arm weaponry and anti-personnel land mines. Moreover, trying to measure the extent of discord through such data prompts a timely reminder that the absence of overt conflict should not be read as the absence of the basis for conflict. The peace of silent inequity is usually based on subjugation rather than durable conciliation. It should not take the tragedy of a Hurricane Katrina to unveil the racial discrimination behind the stark socio-spatial segregation in New Orleans. As noted by Rieder (2003, p. 11): The absence of manifest conflict may simply mean accommodation to injustice, indifference to inequality, or the exhausted inability to imagine striking back. Quiet riots, as Roger Williams once deemed them, are utterly compatible with a lack of surface indications of ‘fragmentation’, and they can be as damaging as less tranquil ones. This may be particularly apt for the massively expanding cities of the Global South. For instance, addressing the intensification of socio-spatial polarisation in Cape Town, Lemanski (2007) notes the multiple dilemmas facing recently liberated new nation-states, that while still trying to undo the colonial legacy—in the case of Cape Town, the imprint of a sturdy infrastructure of inequity—confront the challenge of balancing policies for global competitiveness with those for more equitable distribution in the domestic domain. Moreover, many such states in the early formation of a cohesive society have to deal with the diversities attending the increased volume and pace of migration. Thus, while the ‘divided city’ is a global phenomenon, its starkest manifestation lies in the informal and forbidding settlements that mark those urban spaces most mistreated by the world’s uneven development.

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In short, we live in an age that is at once subject to globalised uniformity and accentuated differentiation. One reflection of the latter is the growth of identity politics, which often takes a pronounced spatial form in the urban arena. The next chapter addresses these issues of identity and space within the framework of urban planning and policy.

5 Identity, Space, and Urban Planning

Outside of those seeking seclusion from the world in isolationist communities like the Amish, and in places like convents and monasteries, most of humankind increasingly will be obliged to engage with social difference. This has led to policy concern about how to promote togetherness in diversity even in places like the Netherlands that were once held as models of tolerant cosmopolitanism (Binnie et al., 2006). In turn, this is related to the flourishing of identity politics. As indicated in the previous chapter, understanding identity formation is an important part of urban conflict analysis. Anheier and Raj Isar (2007, p. 5) note that ‘we are in a time of intense ‘culturalism’, as cultural difference is consciously mobilised in a politics of recognition and representation. . .’ In this regard, the current prominence attached to the issue of ‘identity’ in the social construction of the urban demands that its configuration is linked to a relational concept of urban space. Accordingly, this chapter: explores the issue of identity further; locates it within an urban framework of territory and space; and examines the implication of this interpenetration for urban policy designed to address social cohesion and for planning in contested space, within a conceptual context of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism.

Identity and diversity As outlined earlier, identity can be: singular or multiple in form; ascribed or achieved; individually chosen or collectively imposed; varied in its fixity, and in the interplay of power and resistance in its formation. Since its configuration is a continuous process, its abiding character is one of transience. Moreover, expression of identity varies in different contexts. For instance, Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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on the principle that external force creates internal cohesion, the prospect of insecurity can entrench a sense of common identity among those who feel under threat (Amin, 2002; Zetter et al., 2006). In other words, conflict between groups can marginalise dissent within the protagonist groups, thereby engineering internal consensus. As indicated in the previous chapter, such conflict can take either violent or non-violent form. But conflict over identities and space cannot be erased, since in Harvey’s words (2003, pp. 84–86): ‘calmness and civility in urban history (is) the exception and not the rule. The only interesting question is whether outcomes can be creative or destructive.’ Clearly, ethnicity, identity and contestation in the city are closely intertwined. As expressed by Young (2003, p. 9), other identity variables such as class do not possess the ‘potential volatility of ethnic consciousness.’ While it is influenced by external environment and circumstance, identity formation entails the performance of agency. The significance of this personal resonance is apparent when there is an attempt to mobilise a contrived identity through marketing a hollow brand such as Cool Britannia in the case of Blair’s Britain (Muir, 2007). Identity can be overarching, or more modestly overlain with other associations. It can provide a compass to help navigation through the social options of everyday life, for instance generating solidaristic relations to counter social atomism and disconnection. Moreover, the process of its construction can take various forms. Thus, it can be about authenticity, about discovering an inherent self and meaning already largely scripted and rooted in nature and circumstance. It can be about replication, adopting the traits of others as a matter of compliment or convenience, or it can be existentialist, where existence is taken as a precursor of essence, and individuality is largely self-invented rather than inveterate. Between this prescriptive, imitative and creative mode of identity formation, and between the riveted and shifting nature of identity, lies the reality that the constitutive nature of social being involves an interactional process that is at once derivative from social context and dialogic (Taylor, 1991; Foucault, 1998; Appiah, 2005). For some, recognition of identity is distinguished from other responses, such as toleration, which ‘is associated with disapproval: we tolerate only that to which we object’ (Jones, 2006, p. 123). It can be argued that recognition demands acknowledgement rather than mere acquiescence, but that it does not automatically infer either concurrence or approval. Yet, ‘those who call for ‘recognition’ in relation to identity and difference intend it to convey something affirmative’ (ibid., p. 128). Some distinguish between a limited form of recognition, whereby the state accords a legal imprimatur for minority behaviour, even when it incites majority reproach as deviant or offensive, and a broad recognition of identity reflected in a readiness on the part of objectors to show respect for a different viewpoint or lifestyle. With regard to identity politics then, such sensibility combines tolerance and recognition in according legitimacy to an identity as a socially valid category. This

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identity-recognition in a pluralist society is meant to extend beyond an impartial approach to difference and also beyond equitable treatment of the individual as a fellow human despite her identity (Galeotti, 2002; Haddock and Sutch, 2003, as cited in Jones, 2006). Instead of involving selective endorsement by the state, following its inter-cultural appraisal of the merits of particular identities, this process adopts an instrumental value of diversity. In other words, it affirms cultures and identities for the worth they hold for their possessors. An alternative form of recognition elevates personhood over either a subjective or objective estimate of the identity per se. Expressing this view succinctly, Jones (2006, p. 139) remarks: . . . because I recognize you as a person (independently of any particular identity you possess), I ascribe value to whatever identity you have — not because I value that identity in and of itself but because respecting you as a person requires that I respect the identity that you embrace. But such arguments over-generalise the nature of ‘identity’. They indicate the problem of conflating lifestyle choices, beliefs and values, gender, sexuality, and ethnic belonging all under the umbrella term ‘identity’. Since some aspects of these are volitional and very transient, while others are more core to a person’s sense of self, denunciation of some traits is tantamount to dismissal of the person, whereas refutation of others may make little impact on the recipient’s self-esteem. Another distinction that can be drawn here is between ‘racism’ and ‘racialism’, with the latter referring to an acknowledgement of difference in trait and tendency, without according a hierarchy or inequality to such divergence. But when rejection assumes the severity of racist response, it is usually when there is a genealogical determinism and a belief in ‘racial hygiene’, involving a refusal to recognise culture and identity as variable, adaptable, impermanent and bridgeable. As opined by Fredrickson (2002, p. 170): ‘. . . racism exists when one ethnic group or historical collectivity dominates, excludes, or seeks to eliminate another on the basis of differences that it believes are hereditary and unalterable’. This is deemed to be different to the religious dogmatist, who casts the ‘other’ as heretic, apostate, or infidel, since possible conversion or assimilation renders such dissent eradicable. In other words, he is reviling or maltreating others for their conviction rather than for their intrinsic being. Finally here, the concept of identity also summons a potential tension between individual and collective rights, between the case for human rights that should apply equitably to every person and the proposition that all identity groups also should have equal status. As noted by many scholars (Gutmann, 1994; Bohman, 2000; Woodward, 2002; Appiah, 2005; Deveaux, 2006; Nicolacopoulos, 2008), important questions derive from this relationship. First, are all group rights to be internally assessed and indulged on their own terms without external appraisal of validity, on the assumption that

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non-members are disenfranchised from such evaluation? Second, should all identity groups be considered deserving of equal recognition and treatment? Should an identity group that shows intolerance to others be shown tolerance by society? For instance, is a religious movement like the Mormons that have had a history of barring black people from leadership positions to be treated the same as other religious fellowships that have not exercised such bigotry? Third, what about those identity groups—particularly religious ones—that rely on revealed truth that cannot be contested by the unbeliever? If some groups are accorded the privilege of being beyond critique, is this not biased against those groups prepared to submit their nostrums to open scrutiny? Yet, in a pluralist polity, is it feasible to invite such devotees to privatise their sectarian faith as a condition of their democratic participation in a secular state, based on deliberative rationality? Fourth, and more specifically in the case of historically subjugated groups, can only the victims of discrimination deliberate on the source and consequence of dominance? So, for instance, can only women determine what constitutes sexism against them? Can only people of colour adjudicate on white racism? Fifth, who has authority to speak on behalf of group rights? Taking the example of Belfast, it has been claimed that partisan flags and emblems in particular neighbourhoods cannot be removed because it offends ‘community’ sensibility. But in reality, these ostensible community verdicts have not been subject to local plebiscite. Rather, such opposition has tended to come as an edict from the more recalcitrant cultural gatekeepers and forms of dictatorial community ‘leadership’, some of which has association with local paramilitaries. Their claim to ventriloquise community opinion is actually a cover for partisan pronouncement and retrenchment of their local power. Sixth, what is the scope for personal autonomy within a group identity? Clearly, this depends on how democratic or despotic is the group’s decisionmaking structure. Where tribal chieftains or warlords are in ascendency, there may be an illiberal approach to individual dissent against the communitarian will. In extreme form, Appiah (2005) refers to a paradigm of ‘hard pluralism’, where the state is seen to comprise a set of identity groups, with a high degree of self-dominion. Clearly, such group autonomy can embed strict codes of internal conformity. Even where they concede a ‘right of exit’, such opt-out may only offer an uncompromising ‘love it or leave it’ alternative to dissidents. Contrasting this kind of sub-state repression with ‘soft pluralism’, he notes (ibid., p. 79) how the latter affirms that ‘concern for identity groups is not only motivated by, but ultimately subordinated to, the well-being of the individual and the bundle of rights and protections that traditional liberalism would accord her’. In other words, there can be a strain between the right of the group against the state and the right of the individual against not only the state, but also the group of primary attachment. In the model of hard pluralism, the state’s shield against such group coercion is compromised. Moreover, there are other interesting examples in states such as France, which

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believes that its secular and egalitarian tradition prohibits it recognising its citizens in terms of ethnic category. Paradoxically, its refusal to collect statistics on criteria of racial or ethnic origin, as distinct from its census data on nationality, has impeded its capacity to monitor progress of all sections of society, and it has only recently started to gauge diversity for this purpose. Seventh, incidents such as the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, a depiction that many Muslims found deeply offensive, highlighted the sensitive role for the state in arbitrating about valid public expression. But, if the state is obliged to protect all identity groups against the irreverent and satirical, does this stricture not risk suppression of free speech? Conversely, where such adjudication involves the sensitivities of groups that have been subject to victimisation, should special allowance be made on the principle that equality of treatment does not infer uniformity of treatment? Finally in this regard, where an identity group regards its culture as not only different but superior, how can that group regard the ‘other’ as worthy of equality? Where the state is compliant with such moral monism from supremacist groups, how can such facilitation be compatible with an equitable cohesive society? For instance, how would such principle play out with the caste system in a democratic India? Such questions indicate the complicated role of the state, and its instruments of urban policy and planning, in building cohesion in very stratified urban arenas, thereby inviting closer examination of routine concepts such as multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism Amin (2002: p. 11) distinguishes between multiculturalism and inter-culturalism, as he explains that the former ‘stresses cultural difference without resolving the problem of communication between cultures, or versions of cosmopolitanism that speculate the gradual erosion of cultural difference through inter-ethnic mixture and hybridisation’. But it could be argued that appeals to common citizenship, within which different cultural identities can nest, ignores the power relationships that determine the nesting arrangements. In the case of Britain, the apparent diversity and pluralism enshrined in multiculturalism disguises the extent to which varied ethnicity operates within a framework defined by a cultural majority that is taken as normative. In contrast to forms of multiculturalism that are said to reinforce separatist notions of difference by designating ‘ethnic minorities’ as distinct cultural communities (Hall, 2000; Vertovec, 1996), Longley (2001, p.12) argues for an understanding of culture that ‘is neither based on a minimalist multiculturalism of separatism nor an assimilationist denial of difference, . . . (rather) an interculturalism based on exchange, fluidity of identity and recognition of difference’.

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Yet, the fear among some sections of European society is that multiculturalism has gone too far, since in recognising difference, it has encouraged the accentuation of distinction at the cost of civic solidarity. This proposition has generated its own political paradox. While the liberal/left has generally championed cultural pluralism, a section of it has grown increasingly concerned that protection of social democratic values amid the putative neoliberal orthodoxy demands a sense of collectivity and common citizenship that is being compromised by the diminution of a mutual sense of identity. Accordingly, though the political left has generally been uncomfortable with nationalism, some are now turning to national identity as a framework for social unity. An example here is New Labour’s effort to construct a concept of Britishness that can bind multi-ethnic Britain (Muir, 2007). But the basis of a ‘progressive’ patriotism in many parts of Europe is inextricably entangled with a contested imperial past. Thus, the concept of nationalist fellowship is not always unambiguous foundation for conciliation and shared citizenship (Bragg, 2006; Goodhart, 2006). On a similar theme, Benhabib (2002) talks about the efficacy of a flexible citizenship and legal pluralism consonant with a deliberative democracy and rooted in egalitarian reciprocity among constituent identity groups. Membership should be voluntary, and offer free association and exit. Rather than emphasising the purity, homogeneity and immutability of each culture, delineated in its own irreducible exceptionality, she extols processes of signification and representation that are internally fraught with contested narrative and differentiation. In short, recognition of internal diversity, discrepancy and dissension provides the basis for a polyvocal, multifaceted dynamic. In terms of external relations, she suggests that instead of being captive within fixed and separatist contours, determined usually by devotees and ideologues, different cultures within a society should be involved in interlocution that generates continual boundary intersection, blurring and transfer. Without this adaptability, she perceives the risk of society being embroiled in constant cultural collision, marked by internal conformity and external animosity (ibid., p. 1): Culture has become a ubiquitous synonym for identity, an identity marker and differentiator . . . what is novel is that groups now forming around such identity markers demand legal recognition and resource allocations from the state and its agencies to preserve and protect their cultural specificities. Identity politics draws the state into culture wars. In part, the conundrum involves the tension stressed earlier between individualism and collectivism, reflected in two contending philosophies: liberalism, with its emphasis on the rights and freedoms of the individual; and diversity, with its emphasis on the rights and freedoms of group identities and cultures. In the face of these contrasting perspectives, Parekh (2000, p. 341) recognises:

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The commitment to a political community . . . does not involve sharing common substantive goals, for its members might deeply disagree about these, nor a common view of its history which they may read differently, nor a particular economic or social system about which they might entertain different views. Decocted to its barest essentials, commitment to the political community involves commitment to its continuing existence and well being. . . . In similar vein, addressing the dilemma of integrating religious traditions in a secular age, Voas (2009, p. 16) speaks of the ‘paradox of pluralism’ in that ‘we want everyone to be free to practice as they prefer, consistent with the same liberties for others—but we worry about religion becoming a source of social division’. In this sense, religious identity is both private and social. For Voas, this means that society has three options in dealing with religion as a communal interest and source of authority: incorporation, whereby religious groups are accorded official status like an ‘established church’ or recognition as social providers and gatekeepers for particular congregations—a separatism that can offer peaceful co-existence, but at the risk of solidifying social division; confinement, which restricts religious faith and practice to the private sphere within a general impulse for assimilation, uniformity, and equity; and conciliation, which also seeks integration, but through accommodation of public religious expression via continual negotiation and debate, with the proviso that such facilitation does not promote isolationism and segregation. But, in the pursuit of greater civic togetherness, it is important to note that the link between separatism and segregation is not axiomatic. The solidarities of separatist communities can be seen as a potential source of social capital that is compatible with wider community cohesion (Putnam, 1996, referenced in Zetter et al., 2006). Nevertheless, normatively, segregation is taken as a negative process that spatially concentrates and insulates opposing sides, accentuates their social distance, and operates to the detriment of the most disadvantaged populations in divided cities. As explained by van Kempen (2007, p. 24): When people live in separate neighbourhoods groups learn of each other by means of distant, indirect experience, through reading or through what they hear from their neighbours or see on television. Their knowledge is then based on shallow understanding, prejudices, and superficialities. More directly: radical segregation causes white suburban residents and inhabitants of ‘gated communities’ to be ignorant and even afraid of the population elsewhere, especially in the cities. This is not quite a good basis for tolerance, understanding, and living together. Still, some counter that there is no necessary link between the segregation of distinct communities and their integration into the wider civic community.

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Certain civic instruments such as the welfare state can have an equalising and integrating effect despite high levels of residential segregation. Indeed, some insist that urban policy in contested cities has an exaggerated focus on segregation and, ‘as long as these processes do not result in the development of static worlds apart . . . then policy makers should be less eager to intervene’ (Musterd, 2003, p. 639). However, as argued earlier, segregated areas in such cities often carry a territorial stigma as reservations that serve to contain and socially marginalise their relatively deprived populations further (Wacquant, 2008). Of course, social interaction across cultural diversity is not completely related to the spatial proximity of shared residence in a neighbourhood. Instead, some research into ethnic division and animosity in Britain has shown a complex picture of partial segregation, co-existing with practical accommodation of difference and everyday social mixing. Often expressed are positive sentiments about the benefits of living in a diverse neighbourhood in terms of appreciating other cultures and reducing fear and wariness of people from different cultural backgrounds (Hudson et al., 2007). In the latter study, the authors suggest (ibid., p. 113) that government policy should seek to reframe the notion of cohesion, understanding that: there is an overemphasis on residential segregation to the exclusion of the complex dynamics of separation/interaction in highly diverse neighbourhoods; the primary focus on ethnicity as the most salient social division that results in hindrance to cohesion is itself problematic and needs to be rethought; and the emphasis in cohesion policy on promoting shared British and/or local neighbourhood identity is too simplistic in the light of individuals’ multiple and shifting attachments. This would suggest that policy needs to accommodate a co-existent cohesion and separateness. By contrast, part of Britain’s recent policy can be read as a retreat from multiculturalism toward a more centrist, not to say coercive, summons to ‘ethnic minorities’ to conform to core tenets of a presumed ‘mainstream’ culture. This shift has occurred in the societal context of a slender affinity with cosmopolitan identity (Stone and Muir, 2007). In a recent publication, Amin (2008, pp. 3–4) reacts to this imposed normality partly through re-consideration of his own earlier reservations about the pluralist and inclusive credentials of multiculturalism, and partly through contextualising the recent directive approach in an emergent new ‘phenotypical racism’ that racialises everything: The war on terror/Islam has turned the judgements of racial phenotype into a war of outright condemnation of selected racial others, without the need for qualification or restraint. Britain’s bravado in the war on terror— sustained by vamped up surveillance, licentious arrest and detention, foreign invasion, and endless media commentary linking rogue states, Islam, and terrorism—has tainted even well-intentioned gestures to foster inter-cultural understanding and community cohesion, by reasserting the

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strangeness of the stranger. No longer are Muslims people from different racial, ethnic and national backgrounds, people getting on with their daily lives, members of disadvantaged, socially excluded, and vilified communities, subjects with complex and multiple identities, citizens with sophisticated antennae. Instead, the common Muslim has been conjured into existence, cast as a threat to national security, western civilization, and the modern secular state. Amin locates recent apprehension about diversity in the corrosion of demos and the general migration from public space and social life in a consumerist age that privileges privatism and individualism. For him, creating urban multiplicity that instils civic spirit, appreciates and embraces people of all cultural backgrounds, and provides equitable access to channels for traversing terrains of difference and dissent remains a commendable if vexing goal. It involves a cosmopolis that is at home with non-conformity, the unsettling, the eccentric, as well as being a wellspring of geniality that assures, restores, connects, excites, empowers, and mediates within a commonwealth of shared urbanism. While in societies like Britain there have been moves to establish citizenship tests such as proficiency in English and knowledge of national history, for Amin, if there is to be an eligible citizenship, then the stipulations should emphasise the civic literacy of empathy and mutuality. Nevertheless, such aspiration for inclusive plurality and civic magnanimity encounters censure about both its promise and prospect. Appiah (2005, p. 214) recognises that some critics of cosmopolitanism see it as a posturing sentiment indulged by the privileged to convey sophistication: ‘Cosmopolitan values, it has been said, are really imperial ones—a parochialism, yet again, puffed up with universalist pretensions; liberalism on safari’. He locates this pattern within the wider tendency for identity groups to claim a distinctive ‘culture’, a propensity that seems to be in inverse ratio to the cultural melange emerging with contemporary globalisation. You may wonder, he says (ibid., p. 117), ‘whether there isn’t a connection between the thinning of the cultural content of identities and the rising stridency of their claims’. Ensuing from this tendency, liberal forms of multiculturalism have tended to accord ‘cultural’ groups similar protections and freedoms that were previously the domain of the individual citizen, a pattern holding potential for ‘differentiated citizenship’ (Young, 2000, cited in Appiah, 2005). It is helpful at this point to explore further the two main meanings of cosmopolitanism: first, the idea that cultural diversity is an enriching opportunity to be embraced, even as it involves haggling and skirmishing as much as learning and loving across cultural boundaries; and second, the idea of global citizenship that acknowledges universal principles, within which we share responsibility for each other as fellow humans (Binnie et al., 2006). While the former emphasis concerns a ‘moral’ cosmopolitanism, with values about international distributive justice and concern for the distant stranger, it is

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the political import of the second aspect that derives from the original Ancient Greek word ‘cosmopolite’, and translated for the contemporary period, involves the creation of a multi-layered form of global governance (Held, 2003). Taken together, both facets presume a general disposition to transcultural engagement, global mobility, and internationalism in contrast to an insular, doctrinaire, not to say xenophobic, ethno-centrism. As expressed by Beck (2006, p. 6): ‘. . . the spaces of our emotional imagination have expanded in a transnational sense’. From this perspective, cosmopolitanism involves ‘ways of living at home abroad or abroad at home—ways of inhabiting multiple places at once, of being different beings simultaneously, of seeing the larger picture stereoscopically with the smaller’ (Pollock et al., 2002, p. 11). As such, it is predicated on empathy across cultural difference, and a fraternity based on the interconnectedness of people, bonded through their cohabitation of the planet. Interpreted as a civilizing force, it has a traceable societal presence from at least the Hellenistic age, in particular Stoicism, through the Roman and Christian eras, through to the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment, and onto modernity. Of course, such a broad historical scan through its genealogy immediately reveals that for some at least, the raison d’etre of their universalism was the autocratic/theocratic propagation of their temporal/spiritual empire and the coercive dispersal of their writ. In other words, there is nothing inherently liberal and democratic about the universalist ideal. For instance, the current globalist project contains potential for both a diffusion of exploitative forms of capitalism and more egalitarian objectives around themes of ecological conservation, world equality, and inclusive human rights. With such scope for contrary outcomes, predictably debate persists about these two dimensions of cosmopolitanism—first, receptivity to cultural difference alongside equitable caring and sharing of the earth; and second, the formation of a new domain to democratise the transnational power invested in capital, media, and militarism. Posing some questions can best illustrate the conundrum. Is our duty to the stranger the same as that to a compatriot? In a competitive world, how can a nation’s interest be made compatible with that of rival nations, beyond some generality about sharing an interdependent future? Is the cosmopolitan ethos simply about choosing human mutuality over a patriotism that is often sullied by the partisan and prejudicial, or does it involve a more complex layering of both intercultural heterogeneity and attachment to the parochial and vernacular? Is cosmopolitanism to be seen in the context of a world ever more de-territorialised by increasing flows of people, trade, and capital, or has nationalism shown a resilience that cannot be so readily sublated (Hudson and Slaughter, 2007)? Addressed differently, given the growth in the nation-state from the Westphalian phase in the mid-17th century through to the more recent period of decolonialism, has the gradual dissolution of empire engendered an equivocal process of ‘self-determination’ at a time when global forces of capitalist

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hegemony are putatively constraining the autonomy of the nation-state, allowing some to argue that old imperialism has simply left the stage to its understudy, resplendent in American apparel? Can the ideal of an ecumenical approach to all civic cultures in a protean world be reconciled with the apparent reality that many faced with diversity retreat into the comfort zone of the familiar (Sennett, 1994)? In constructing a universalist model of civic plurality, is it feasible to disown elements of cultural imperialism short of collapsing into a post-modernist cultural relativism? Can channels for open international conversations among activist movements and non-government organisations—such as public broadcasting, the new digital media of cyberspace and university networks—potentially foster a robust cosmopolitan tradition, affirmative of comprehensive solidarity, diverse civil society, cultural hybridity, and responsible citizenship of the world community? Or, will the established institutions of globalism such as the World Bank, the IMF, and even the United Nations, persist in their broad compliance with transnational capital and the logic of markets, thereby crowding out the impulses of a civic internationalism? Finally here, is the edifice for more democratic global governance built on the delusion that there exists a self-conscious and purposive collectivity that we salute as ‘humanity’? Expressed in these terms, the over-riding question seems to be whether people can live with difference. But this may be the wrong question. Given the shrinking world and mass mobility of people across it, the reality is that ever more people are compelled to deal more and more with difference. One’s sense of self-identity is wrapped up in relation to the ‘other’, and the ‘other’ increasingly will be a stranger who stands outside one’s cultural familiarity. However, there is no final destination in this journey of discovery and encounter. This is the mistaken emphasis of many of the above questions. They assume cosmopolitanism as ideal outcome rather than a practical and messy process. They ask about what it takes to make people more accepting of difference, whereas the real test of true cosmopolites concerns their recognition of difference. That ‘difference’ has many complexions. It can be associated with a variety of contemporary features: identity politics, oppression, terrorism, nationalism, and so on. Taking nationalism as one example, the intrinsic nationalist impulse is about cultural dominance and exceptionalism. So, it is difficult for the nation-state to accept cultural forms that seriously compromise its sense of national cultural integrity. Accordingly, the multi-ethnic city is a site where the regulatory state and its ideology are problematised. In the same way, the objective of the inclusive city or the cohesive city is subject to contest both in concept and delivery. Expressed differently, cosmopolitanism is not about a clear outcome—whether that is inclusivity, equity, cohesion, multiculturalism, or whatever. Rather, it is a rich but deeply troubling category of the urban that concerns incremental struggle in an agonistic process involving continual negotiation and contingency (Perry, 2009).

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In considering these issues, it is worth recalling that many of these contradictory features were present in the colonial city. For instance, Prakash (2008, p. 196) describes the divided modernity of colonial urbanism in Mumbai, where though political order imprinted racial dominance behind the fa¸cade of a European cityscape, a dynamic city developed in contest with this uneven spatialisation: This city of mills and the Indian neighbourhoods were worlds apart from the European enclaves of the city . . . . In light of these sharp divisions, the idea of the cosmopolitan city, the ‘shining city on the sea’, appears as a myth. Yet . . . these sharply distinct and segregated realities were drawn together in the city’s public spaces, where communities and classes interacted in everyday life. Marketplaces, bazaars, civic and judicial institutions, commercial establishments, public open spaces, streets, tramways, and seashores were places of transactions across divides. Bombay’s cosmopolitanism is usually identified and proudly recalled in such public spaces. . . . Cities may be where strangers live together, but they are also spaces of collision and confrontation. This was eminently so in Bombay, where public space threw together groups with sharply divergent and contradictory experiences of modernity. The British sought to secure this public space of indeterminacy and confrontation with a spatial design and order intended to reproduce social and racial hierarchies. But again, such cross-pollinations are easier to sponsor in circumstances of inter-ethnic co-habitation than in conflicts centred on rival ethno-nationalist claims. In the latter, particularly in the acute form of ethnoscape, the dilemmas of contested space are typically more acute (Yiftachel, 2006).

Space and its contestations Appearing frequently in discussion about the ‘divided city’ are three terms— space, territory, and place—whose distinction has been subject to extensive debate within the literature (Macgregor Wise, 2000; Lash, 2001; Tuan, 2001; Valentine, 2001; Brenner, 2004; Delaney, 2005; Stilz, 2007). Starting with space, there has been growing agreement that it should be seen less in static Cartesian terms as an object, in one, two or three dimensions of distance, area, and volume, and more as a dynamic process of continuous social construction and re-definition. Establishing territory within space is a political process involving power relations in determining sovereignty and signification. Thus, territory holds the connotation of jurisdiction, administrative authority, and of an assigned area that is usually occupied and defended. The most often confused set of terms are space and place. Selection of various emphases in the literature suggests that: space can be thought of as nature, place as culture;

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space as void, place as habitable; space as abstract, place as concrete; space as mobility, place as relative stability; and space as wild and chaotic, place as more domesticated. While superficially appealing, these dichotomies are misleading. Certainly, there is an emphasis in familiar planning expressions such as ‘creating place’, ‘place attachment’, and ‘place marketing’ of place as human lived experience in a physical environment. On this interpretation, there is an inference that space is about capacity and chance, whereas place is about choice. But this is to ignore the fact that space is the primary category, with territory and place as two of its potential outcomes. In this understanding, place is a geographically-sited product of the social process of spatialisation (Perry, 2009). Granted, common usage does not make such distinction. Indeed, reference to a dictionary demonstrates the convoluted meanings attached to these three terms. Of course, such definitional ambiguity is further confounded by the argument that in a more fluid world, ‘place’ is less embedded, as more people operate less through channels of neighbourhood, city, and state, and more through networks of family, friendships and work relations that are increasingly less geographically bound, and indeed include the placeless ‘tech nets’ of virtual cyberspace. Disembodying people, electronic interaction through the Net is incorporeal. As explained by Mitchell (1999, p. 8): The Net negates geometry. While it does have a definite topology of computational nodes and radiating boulevards for bits, and while the locations of the nodes and links can be plotted on plans to produce surprisingly Haussmann-like diagrams, it is fundamentally antispatial. While this book adopts the classification of these terms outlined above, it also acknowledges the contested conceptions and perceptions involved. But what are the links between these categories and the earlier discussion about identity and social difference? First, place also has identity. Amundsen (2001, p. 10–11) identifies four elements typically present in a place identity (that distinguish one from another): . . . .

Spatial qualities such as location and infrastructure, communication, architecture and design. Characteristics of the inhabitants, e.g. values, customs, physical appearance. Social conditions and social relations between inhabitants. Culture and/or history seen as a unifying element that connects people.

In societies marked by deeply competing identities, places hold particular symbolic significance, and their fabric, meanings and identities become acutely politicised. Where these reflect themselves in violent conflict, their formulation and re-configuration become entrapped in strategies of protection

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and survival. Thus, the proclamation on a city wall in Northern Ireland that ‘you are now entering Free Derry’ redefines a familiar site first in terms of security, and later appropriates its local significance for a wider political project of ‘liberation’. But such particular patterns of ‘enclaving’ are part of a more universal human territoriality that Soja (1971, p. 19) defines as: ‘a behavioural phenomenon associated with the organisation of space into spheres of influence or clearly demarcated territories which are made distinctive and considered at least partially exclusive by their occupants’. Hague and Jenkins (2005) take this further when they emphasise how the construction of place identity involves a confluent relationship among sociocultural values, economic trends, the physical environment and government processes. From their comparative research, they concur with others (such as Healey et al., 1997; Herschel and Newman, 2002), to suggest that strategic planning has become a significant instrument in changing territorial identities. For them, the corollary is that more deliberative forms of governance and participatory planning processes are required to support the development of inclusive environments. From this literature, it can be seen that territory is not given or automatic. Usually, the reification of territory can make it appear unproblematic, rather than socially shaped and disputed. This exposes the intrinsic nature of power, which is not just defined as the ability to prevail despite opposition, but also entails the prevention of opposition in the first place by making the condition appear normative and immutable. But, while in many instances, territory will be accepted as natural, authentic and legitimate, it is when its validity, connotation, and possession are challenged that the pivotal relationship of dominance and subjugation is most lucidly revealed. As expressed by Delaney (2005, p. 11): to the extent that territory . . . appears to be self-evident, necessary, or unquestionable, it may obscure the play of power and politics in its formation and maintenance . . . . But, to the extent that it—or any given manifestation of it—is seen as contingent, socially constructed, ideologically informed, and, when push comes to shove, enforced by physical violence, then the forms of power which are inherently connected to territory may become more visible, and justifications, more clearly partial or partisan. Thinking of the relationship between territory and space, Delaney (2005) notes that not every enclosed space constitutes a territory, since the latter is distinguished by its capacity to signify, and the fact that the meaning it projects relates to social power. From an anthropological and global perspective, Barth (1969) agrees with this idea that territory is characterised not merely by bordered space, but that such enclosure typically delimits, and is delineated by, identity, and is further marked sometimes by provisos of

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selective admittance that in turn obligate protection of its integrity within the sanction of mandated power. In this sense, territory, with all its customary signage of access and prohibition—including in extremis such racist decrees as Whites Only—and physical manifestations of these rights of passage in the form of gates, fences, walls, and railings, can often materialise the typically intangible nature of power (Sack, 1986; Sibley, 1995). Some might insist that much of this connects to an old idea of territoriality, based on greater fixity and rootedness, whereas the fluidity and mobility of this more global age call for greater recognition of the permeability of boundary. Certainly, as discussed in the previous chapter in relation to the transnational city, the dislocation of many migrants and immigrants provides one example of not only the porosity of border, but also the discursivity behind spatial identity. Navigating beyond traditional nationalist demarcation, many such subordinated urbanites illustrate the liminality that attends the inter-penetration of identity, territory, nationality and space in the ambiguities of their daily social negotiation. In an even more generic framework, the link between say identity and territory has become more perplexing. As Donnan and Wilson (1999) note, citizenship and nationality sometimes now have to compete for allegiance with the individual’s alternative primary attachments such as ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and gender. Such splintered tendencies relate to a foundational question about what remains rooted in a world of constant flows and impermanence. Here it is clear that territory is not just about spatiality and physicality. Other inflections can be seen in its moral and cultural contours. For instance, Pow’s study (2007) of the proliferation of gated enclaves for the wealthier urbanites of Shanghai emphasises the ‘moralising’ of territoriality within the cultivation of a pristine public decorum, whereby the reputed vulgarity of dissolute peasant migrants renders them unworthy to inhabit urban spaces reserved for those cultured in the proprieties of civilised modernity. In this case, legitimation of an exclusionary territoriality is driven largely by discourses of moral disdain rather than the more familiar discourses of fear. Alongside these ‘moral geographies’, territory holds a complicated cultural dimension. For instance, Gupta and Ferguson (1997) dispute the assumed isomorphic relationship between national territory and culture, as if there is a set of discrete isolated cultures attached symmetrically to discrete states. For one thing, displaced groups like immigrants can have a cultural affiliation and imaginary that intersects with the customary beliefs, values, and social behaviours of both homeland and current locality. For another, the legacies of empire mean that for both coloniser and colonised there has been both cultural transfer and contest. As expressed by Huyssen (2008, p. 14): ‘The colonial or post-colonial city cannot be had without the metropole, but then the metropole wouldn’t have become metropole without the colonial city’. Then, there are those who reside in borderlands interfacing two or more territories, which experience some degree of cultural interaction and fusion.

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Finally, there are the cultural idioms that dominate globalised media that transcend territorial boundaries. Thus as Gupta and Ferguson (1997) emphasise, beyond the monopoly grid of physical territory, cultural distinction operates across manifold grids of association and propinquity, and is differentiated by factors such as class, race, age, and gender. Whether marked by pluralist or deeper sovereignty contest, city divisions and collisions manifest such cultural ricochets. Some of this is evident in Modan’s (2007) ethnographic account of change and gentrification in a multi-ethnic mixed class neighbourhood in Washington DC in the US, in which she elucidates the discourses of both personal and communal identity that shape the politics of place. In cities where the division is visceral around issues such as race, ethnicity and nationality, protagonist groups will seek to exercise their power to mark their turf, prevail in boundary disputes, defend interfaces, and implicitly characterise intrusion by their political opponents as trespass. In such circumstance, territory can function to accentuate identity and difference, and mark ‘membership’ over the status of the ‘outsider’ (Sack, 1986). Such discordant urban politics are contrasted with the ideal of an interconnected cosmopolitanism. Place and territory operate within space. Re-thinking what we mean by ‘space’ demands that we get beyond the common notion of an entity that is both physically grounded and socially fixed. In recent literature about public space in the diverse city, two very different models emerge: the first conceives it as display space where difference based on distinctive and closed identity can be affirmed, while the second suggests that it is relational space where a greater pluralism of identities and belongings emerges from constantly negotiated collaborations and contestations across divides. In this regard, Massey (2005, p. 9) argues three main propositions: . . .

Space is the outcome of interrelations. It is ‘constituted through interactions’. Space is an arena of ‘coexisting heterogeneity’, reflecting and changing the multiplicities and pluralities of contemporary society. Space is forever a work in progress, continuously being remade.

In this, she is challenging conventional understanding of space as associated with stasis, closure and representation, and instead is elevating concepts of change, openness, mix, difference, and relationality. Following Laclau (1990), she sees space not as a site but as an event. If taken not as a static entity, a passive stage on which social life and relationships are played out, but rather as a dynamic agent in itself, then it can be seen that its lack of social fixity is down to the fact that it is socially re-made in a continuous way. Its meaning and representation change with its designation and use, and thereby spaces can be re-imagined in ways that ‘challenge exclusivist localisms based on claims of some eternal authenticity’ (Massey, 2005, p. 20).

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For instance, the way this linkage of conflict and space permeates the routine of everyday life in contested cities is very manifest in the ethnoscape of Jerusalem, where Arab and Jew ‘live together separately’ (Romann and Weingrod, 1991). Thus, Misselwitz and Rieniets (2006, p. 26) refer to how the struggle over that city’s ownership has turned from one based purely on periodic military might to a permanent war of ‘cement and stone’. In other words, planned development persistently reconfigures the once stark fault line of Palestinian East Jerusalem and Jewish West Jerusalem into a more intricate web of enclaves and exclaves, underpinned by expansion of Jewish settlement to protect Judeo demographic ascendancy. But, in the face of such stark partitions, is the notion of ‘shared space’ to be taken as normative, and socio-spatial separatism to be regarded as universally deviant and problematic? In such circumstance, talk about creating ‘the shared city’ involves some indulgence in an easy but empty ‘signifier’—in other words, the ready use of a bland term that invites unanimous consent, but unravels when tested against the detailed reality of ethnic, religious, or ethno-nationalist rivalry and asymmetrical power relationships. All of these debates point to ‘shared space’ being a very differentiated concept, if only because all discourse about cityscapes imprinted with ethnic or ethno-nationalist contention reflects the enmities, mutualities and hybridities produced by parallel lives lived in intimate proximity. Changing the perception and social use of space in a city with longstanding fixed territories demands ambitious vision and proactive intervention that writes a new script, while appreciating the capacity for such scripts to become self-fulfilling. As expressed by Watson (2006, p.7): Stories of the city and its public spaces as dangerous, dead or dull, or as sites of exclusion, marginalisation and violence . . . contribute to, and produce, the very conditions that they describe . . .. But new stories of public space as life enhancing, exciting, safe and inclusive . . . can take us far in creating those spaces in just that way. Thus, it may appear sensible to build up reservations of shared space, first through the consolidation of public space. Dines and Cattel (2006) describe public spaces as a core feature of cities, offering the amenity for sociability and personal interaction, and whose presence and quality can be taken as a valid measure of the quality of urban life in general. Such public space, by definition, assumes a right of inclusion for all (Massey, 2005). However, a persistent narrative in recent literature about urban regeneration is that processes of privatisation and commercialisation of social life have compromised the public realm. Iveson (2007) categorises this as a ‘paradise lost’ analysis, while acknowledging that the language of retreat and retrieval can serve a purpose in setting an ideal of public space, around which a city politics of inclusion can be mobilised. He quotes Mitchell (1995, p.117) in this regard:

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By calling on the rhetoric of inclusion and interaction that the public sphere and public space are meant to represent, excluded groups have been able to argue for their rights as part of the active public. And each (partially) successful struggle for inclusion in ‘the public’ conveys to other marginalized groups the importance of the ideal as a point of political struggle. Public space holds scope for chance encounters among people of diverse traditions, and in such improvisations rests the opportunity for exchange and greater mutual understanding that can help dismantle barriers of mistrust and stereotype. However, before exaggerating this interactional role, it is important to acknowledge the argument of Amin (2002) that most public spaces are ‘places of transit’ that offer little meaningful or durable relationship between strangers. In places like Belfast, many notional public places such as parks are located in or aligned close to communities of a particular political hue. Accordingly, since the 1980s, considerable public investment in the city centre and waterfront has been rationalised in terms of its contribution to safe space, where the city’s many publics can meet and relate. While some now regard this ‘new’ Belfast as a cosmopolitan oasis, surrounded largely by the ‘old’ fortress Belfast of sectarian enclaves, the spatial splits in the city are more differentiated. Four main types of space can be designated: .

.

.

.

Ethnic space: reflected in the dominance of segregated communities, particularly in the working class parts of the city. Here, intervention has involved a mix of housing, regeneration and special assistance programmes but, most often on the assumption that most religious–political spatial demarcations are largely immutable for the foreseeable future, and that at the most volatile interface areas, ‘peace walls’ are an evil necessity. Neutral space: based largely in the city centre and waterfront, where public funding for expansion, modernisation, and re-imaging has been justified in part on the creation or consolidation of safe space open to both main traditions for employment, shopping, leisure, and residence. Shared space: taken as space that facilitates not just contact, but also engagement, across the divide, this is more rare in the city. Distinct places like integrated schools claim to be arenas for this deliberate dialogue on difference. But even some sites that are perceived widely in these terms have qualification. For instance, Queen’s University as a campus seeks to offer students an ‘integrated’ experience. Yet, there is a strong impression emerging that Catholic/Nationalist student residence tends to congregate in one area around the university, while Protestant/Unionist students tend to live in another. Cosmopolitan space: defined as space that is international in character and has no specific reference in terms of the local division, this is even more rare. Arguably, the ‘new spaces’—particularly areas like the Titanic Quarter

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along the waterfront—are conceived more in these terms. Attempts have also been made to re-define ‘old spaces’ like the seat of regional government (Stormont) and Belfast City Hall away from their partisan political past—for instance, by bringing a regular international flavour such as major concerts in the case of the former, and a European Christmas food market, in the case of the latter. Such a spatial typology bears relevance for other deeply divided cities. But, within such neat differentiation, there remains a great deal of contested space, where the imprints of history, memory, ‘sacred’ soil, conflicting land claims, displacement, and tribal territory confound the pluralism, negotiation and fluidity demanded for a more ‘shared city’. Here, Dodds et al. (2002, p. 23) ask: how do you ‘heal a city fabric physically rent by myth?’ But, notwithstanding this taxing assignment, cities can play a distinctive role in peace-building (Bollens, 2007, p. 8): Challenges regarding identity, citizenship, and belonging in a globalizing world will need to be addressed most immediately at the local level; our degree of progress at this grassroots level will either fortify or confine our ability to address these issues at broader geographies both within and between states. In general, the determination of how space is socially shaped involves the interplay between political and economic power on the one hand, and civic rights on the other. Purbrick (2007, p. 4) refers to the links among identity, space, and power: ‘to feel or know a space as enclosing or expansive, comforting or alien, empowering or oppressive, depends upon power relationships that are established both in and around that place’. But Harvey calls on citizens to remember that ‘the right to the city . . . is not merely a right of access to what the property speculators and state planners define, but an active right to make the city more in accord with our . . . desire’ (Harvey, 2003, p. 101). Yet again, such prescription refers mainly to ‘normal’ political contests, where common democratic and civic values are feasible. Such foundations of common belonging are least stable in the context of deeper ethno-nationalist conflict, which involves ‘colliding, irreconcilable claims of ownership’ (Sorkin (ed) 2002, p. 14). Such ethno-nationalist contests tend to see space deployed as an ethnic marker by the protagonists. For instance, the premeditated use of flags, emblems, graffiti and wall murals that epitomise such contested cities, serves not only to delineate the hostile ‘other’, but also to affirm tribal fidelity. In what Smith (1986) characterises as a process of ‘ethnic formation’, mythical historical narratives and symbols are marshalled to buttress nationalist projects (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2000; Mann, 2000). Thus, ‘the political culture intentionally invests cultural landscape with contentious ideological

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messages—obvious and subtle mnemonic and didactic devices that remind citizens of their loyalties and responsibilities’ (Keirsey and Gatrell, 2001, p. 2). Such ethnoscapes convey the territorialisation of selective memory, emphasising the congruities of genealogy, custom and the historical continuity of the ‘ancestral’ motherland, which becomes ‘an intrinsic element of the community’s myth of origins and shared memories’ (Smith, 1999, p. 150). Though the almost ineffable attachment between people of similar pedigree and a particular place is often rooted in sentient rather than literal history (Connor, 1994), separate zones of belonging serve multiple purpose. Functioning as both enclave and exclusion, they facilitate control of the tribe (Sack, 1986), and safeguard the integrity of the pedigree, while expediently hosting ‘an alien other hovering on the margins’ (Sibley, 1995, p.108). But this is not to neglect the perceived advantages of such spatial concentration and prohibition, such as: group camaraderie, and cultural preservation (Peach, 1996); the cultivation of ethnic entrepreneurship (Boal, 2001); the economies of scale for viable local services; and some fortification against external threats (Murtagh, 1993; Murtagh, 1995). Five main characteristics of ethno-nationalist conflict can be proposed: . .

. .

.

Intensive: the coincidence of cultural/religious/national/ethnic identities provides a ‘compound’ effect that sharpens and deepens the animosities; Extensive: it is difficult to demarcate the pervasive contest from the wider social agenda. Permeating most aspects of social life, it crowds out space for civic society, and compromises the autonomy and integrity of any particular social issue; Persistent: with its ancestral roots, it displays durability, and partisan versions of history inform contemporary social cleavages; ‘Intimate enemies’ (Benvenisti, 1995): the problem is rarely reducible to solutions of greater contact and communication. While segregation and separation can promote ill-informed stereotypes and deformed perceptions of ‘the other’, often the protagonists know each other only too well in terms of behaviour and intent; Fluid: the very volatility of the conflict means it can change gear over time, and thus a textured appreciation of its dynamics can identify nuances and shifts even when the big picture appears immutable.

Aspects of these features may be apparent in city conflict around pluralist contest, whether based on socio-economic or ethno-religious or cultural distinction. But the ethno-nationalist disputes, involving sovereignty contest, demand a special deliberate policy mix of conflict resolution, community cohesion, and social inclusion. Moreover, it is clear that urban contests and their related socio-spatial divisions, whether rooted in pluralist or sovereignty dispute, require not only macro political resolution, but also a sustainable

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reconciliation built painstakingly on the ground, where planning and policy make visible impact.

Policy and planning responses to diversity Whether seen officially as a source of jubilation or tribulation, living with difference and dealing with related potential for sectionalism and conflict has faced many countries that have experienced increased diversity in recent times. For instance, over the last decade in Britain, there has been renewed policy concern about a fragmented society torn by the supposed growth in ethnic enclaves and unruly, estranged housing estates. But the analysis underpinning the policy for greater ‘community cohesion’ is confused. It is unclear whether the problem is seen to be rooted in the general eclipse of community, or whether some kinds of community are, if anything, too animated. While many desolate white working class districts are deemed to display a nihilistic disregard for ‘conventional’ politesse and ambition, some of the ethnic communities are seen to contain those who proclaim principles and affiliation contrary to the dominant political culture (Flint and Robinson, 2008). Thus on this score, some disaffected lack values, while others possess them in excess—though unfortunately the ‘wrong’ ones. Some communities lack unity and coherency, while others are internally cohesive, but derive this social adhesion in part from their common mistrust of, and even hostility to, the external orthodoxy. In short, understanding of cohesion stems from a jumbled composite of traditional themes about ‘community pathology’, the alienated underclass, and ‘radicalised’ Muslim youth. The risk here is that anti-social behaviour in so-called ‘sink estates’ can be drawn into the same policy discourse as peaceful political agitation by elements of Islam, a conflation that can justify concern that non-violent militants are being criminalised. The effect is to problematise certain populations, elevate religion and ethnicity over other pertinent categories such as class and gender, and invest undue confidence in the ‘curative power of community’ (Kearns and Forrest, 2000, p. 6), as government sources the solution in the redemptive capacity of ‘community cohesion’ (Robinson, 2005). Unsurprisingly, the policy that obtains from this interpretation largely recycles long-standing state intervention in poor urban precincts around improving community infrastructure and capacity. The additional component concerns the need to redress the spatial segregation that is seen to promote ‘parallel lives’ lived in social isolation from ‘the other’ community, spiralling into mutual mistrust that can foment into inter-communal enmity and even sporadic violence. Beyond creating more opportunity for crosscommunity engagement, the answer is seen to reside in the creation of new integrated housing complexes, diversified in tenure, social and racial

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mix—not very dissimilar to the policy impulse behind the HOPE programme in the US, referenced in the previous chapter. Overall then, Britain’s strategy for greater community cohesion includes: . . . . .

Encouragement for all to be involved in building a shared vision and sense of common belonging, in locality, city, region, and country; Dissemination of civic awareness and application of mutual rights and obligations; Celebration of diversity, within a legal framework of equity; Elevation of trust in local institutions to act fairly; and Promotion of social interaction among people of diverse backgrounds within workplace and neighbourhood; and specifically between recent arrivals and more ‘veteran’ citizens (Home Office, 2001, 2003, 2004; Commission on Integration and Cohesion, 2007; Communities and Local Government, 2007).

In short, policy objective is now designed to minimise the pattern of ‘parallel lives’, whereby people living in separate communities operate in mutual ignorance and sometimes fear. The Cantle Report (Home Office, 2001, p. 25) provides a new agenda for citizenship in a multi-ethnic Britain, one that engenders an inter-communal camaraderie ‘based upon a greater knowledge of, contact between, and respect for, the various cultures’. Elsewhere in the report, however, the aforementioned ‘problem’ in achieving this objective is accepted (Home Office, 2001, p. 70): Community cohesion . . . is about helping micro-communities to gel or mesh into an integrated whole. These divided communities would need to develop common goals and a shared vision. This would seem to imply that such groups should occupy a common sense of place as well. The high levels of residential segregation found in many English towns would make it difficult to achieve community cohesion. Increasingly, this approach to tackling segregation and supposed separatism is being tied in with another policy initiative about community empowerment and the reinvention of local government. This is said to include more focus on the role of citizen; de-centralisation of influence and responsibility from existing power centres to communities and citizens; improved resourcing of the Third Sector (the voluntary and community movement); channels for more civic challenge and debate; and encouraging people to regard political activity as consequential. This is in the context of a marked disengagement from electoral politics, with a low voter turnout of 59% in the 2001 general election, only slightly improving to 61% in 2005, compared with the historic high of 84% in 1950 (The Electoral Commission, 2005). Figures for local elections (35% in 2008) and for the poorest inner city communities are

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considerably worse again (Communities and Local Government, 2008). All of this effort for a more vibrant democracy is explicitly linked with ‘more interaction between people of different backgrounds and more emphasis on shared goals. Greater openness about decision making and greater involvement in those decisions can remove perceptions of injustice that can fuel extremism’ (ibid., 2008, p. 22). Seven main misgivings can be raised about this agenda. First, to what extent is it based on a ‘moral panic’ about ethno-religious fanaticism, or even hyperbolic rhetoric about a society ‘sleepwalking’ into deepening socio-ethno segregation? Some studies (Phillips, 1998; Johnston et al., 2002; Simpson, 2004; Dorling and Thomas, 2004; Burgess et al., 2005) suggest a counter narrative of growing acculturation by those communities with an immigrant origin. Summarising research by Poulson and Johnston (2006) covering the inter-census period of 1991–2001, Amin (2008, p. 1) notes: . . .even in places like Bradford, the percentage of Whites living in relatively mixed, but White-dominated areas increased . . . (and) in more multicultural cities such as London, there was a considerable fall in the percentage of Whites living in predominantly White areas . . .. As regards most large non-White ethnic groups, the trend has been towards living in mixed neighbourhoods, in which Whites, however, are a minority (i.e. areas of mixed non-White ethnicity). The trends, thus, are complex enough to disallow any simple segregation story to be told. Second, is there an unhelpful conflation of four distinctive issues: social distance among diverse groups; political radicalisation within militant Islam; growing political cynicism and erosion of electoral legitimacy; and the efficacy of community empowerment? While there is feasible conjugation between elements of such processes, a subtle policy needs to disaggregate the constituents in each case more forensically than at present. Third, is there policy coherence? For instance, a strategy to break down spatial segregation between diverse groups does not sit comfortably with a government penchant for the proliferation of faith schools, which may intensify social distance between ethno-religious groups. Thus, there can be a policy disjuncture between respecting diversity and ethnic autonomy (e.g. conceding faith schools) and achieving greater inter-communal social interaction. Fourth, is ‘community cohesion’ an obvious precursor to social cohesion in society at large? As argued earlier, policies designed to build solidarity and bonding capital in the local community may inadvertently accentuate the predicament of building bridging capital for wider civic mutuality. Fifth, while the mood music of urban deprivation is still playing audibly in the background, is the policy here intended to subordinate class-based disparity to cultural differentiation, and rather than promote greater equality to settle for a more modest and less measurable equality of opportunity?

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This consideration is part of a wider concern that the identity politics that marks contemporary public discourse is often detached from wider distributive issues (Yacobi and Tzfadia, 2009). Clearly, today’s more competitive urban economy holds potential for increasing rivalries among the most underdeveloped communities on the false basis of the perceived priority accorded ‘native’ or ‘newcomer’. Sixth, does the policy grasp the transformative implication of what Vertovec (2007, p. 1) calls Britain’s recent ‘super-diversity’, which is ‘distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants over the last decade’? This pattern of new migration from a much wider global reach than the usual former colonies has further diversified socio-cultural difference, has generated a much more stratified form of legal belonging, and has witnessed ardent connections with countries of origin and diasporas (Berkeley et al., 2005; Kyambi, 2005). To take the example of Britain’s Muslim population, it has produced an intra-religious mix of beliefs and practices within the one faith, thereby underlining the imprudent assumption that all followers of Islam share identical devotion. Finally here, is the overall policy for integration and cohesion premised on a normative take on what constitutes ‘British’, and the idea that more recent arrivals should assimilate to the clear and fixed culture of their ‘host’ society? Such a perspective places the burden of adaptation on the ‘newcomer’. An alternative perspective disowns the notion that Britain comprises a pristine indigenous population—essentially white and Christian, and tracing lineage back centuries—with everyone else cast as ‘ethnic’. While every culture is continually re-made through cross-pollination with others, this is particularly so in the case of a former imperial power. Talk of a ‘host’ society can lead at best to the advocacy of ‘hospitality’ to the stranger, and such inference of generosity can contain a paternalistic inflection rather than the democratic currency of co-citizenship. At worst, this ethno-centric approach can treat more recent settlers as alien, and worthy of some suspicion, particularly in an environment of heightened security alert. Such reservations indicate the ambiguities of ‘cohesion’. Gilchrist (2004) describes a cohesive neighbourhood as one where there exists a collective capacity to continuously manage the fluidity and configuration of myriad tensions and disputes among diverse communities. In this view, policy makers can proactively remove barriers that inhibit interaction, in part through the creation of social spaces and forums for conflict resolution, while tackling the multiple deprivations that typically align with many urban conflict scenarios. But the actual delivery of such a policy agenda is highly problematic, even where the dispute is simply inter-ethnic rather than ethnonationalist. Some of this intricacy is detectable in current debates about the compatibility between multiculturalism and community cohesion. Parekh (2000, p. 341) considers the need for divided cities to foster a sense of common

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belonging that is not based on ethnic or cultural roots but on ‘shared commitment to the political community . . . (involving) commitment to its continuing existence and well being’. Building this shared identity can be taken to entail three main strands: first, a robust set of equality, anti-discrimination, and hate crime legislation that demonstrates the state’s unequivocal protection of equity; second, improving socio-economic opportunity to tackle entrenched inter-ethnic disparity; and third, a cultural dimension to the promotion of cohesion, that prioritises proactive approaches to (a) greater interaction among diverse populations; (b) generating consensus around shared values; and (c) amplifying the mutual attachments and solidarities that can create shared identity. Many advocates of this composite strategy acknowledge its potential shortcomings: that increasing contact among diverse groups does not guarantee improved relations since it may be either too insubstantial to make any impact or too threatening to reverse the mistrust and anxiety that feed prejudice; that attention to cultural aspects can distract from redress of socio-economic inequality; that ‘shared identity’ may be misconceived as a master identity that surpasses all other components of a multiple identity; that the disquieting exclusivity behind some identity formation may stigmatise the outsider; and that the multiculturalism that respects diversity may be misconstrued as a separatist alternative to social integration (Muir, 2007). Such difficult policy issues around identity politics, multiculturalism, and related forms of urban stratification are becoming urgent for ever more societies. With the increase in transnational communities across the world, key reception urban centres are reconsidering migrant policy. In many advanced economies, public policy from the 1940s–1960s showed preference for their assimilation with the prevailing ‘host’ culture, though distinction tended to be drawn between those accepted as settlers and those registered as ‘guest workers’ with restricted citizen entitlement. By the 1970s, policy changed to at least a toleration of multiculturalism that was supposed to involve respect for principles of equity and diversity, though the ‘multiple identities’ were meant to bind under a prime allegiance to the wider society. More recently, the policy discourse splits between those concerned that multiculturalism has produced an incongruent collection of separate communities, with potential for at least low intensity cultural collision, and those who regard globalisation and related porosity of borders as demanding a more genuinely transnational and intercultural pluralism (Castles, 2000). Such multiplicity is most manifest in cosmopolitan urbanism, which though it offers the prospect of creating ‘the world in a city’, also generates a set of paradoxes. For example, insofar as the creation of ethnic quarters with related cultural attractions contributes to a city’s development as a visitor destination, the gentrification process that can accompany such makeovers can price many ‘ethnic’ residents out of the local housing market, thereby compromising the area’s authentic appeal. Similarly, while the contrast is

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often drawn between privileged elite cosmopolites traversing the earth and the immobile poor held captive in place, the status of such globe-trotters as genuine internationalists is itself contestable (Binnie et al., 2006, p. 17): . . . . the apparent stateless and almost free-floating cosmopolite is actually grounded in quite specific sites and places wherein encounters with diversity and the development of a cosmopolitan attitude are seemingly contained and limited. The question then arises of whether such people or class formations are in fact cosmopolitan at all, in that they simply encounter and interact with other ‘cosmopolitans’ sharing the same cultural and aesthetic values. Given these kinds of limitations, what then can instruments of policy and planning achieve for cities deep in conflict? Four models of planning and policy in contested space have been advanced: neutral, partisan, equity and resolver (Bollens, 1999, adapted from Benvenisti, 1986). The neutral approach is one that is purposely ‘colour blind’ to the contest, adopting a professional and technocratic response that purports to be apolitical and impartial in land allocation and use. For this approach, Bollens cites the example of Belfast. The partisan model entails a calculated state exploitation of planning and policy instruments such as zoning, infrastructure, and settlement to favour the ascendant group, often manipulating factors such as demography and spatial concentration as a means of sustaining advantage in the conflict (Mc Garry, 1998). An example often referenced is Jerusalem, where a mix of land appropriation, zoning, density regulations, erection of security walls, etc. is deployed to enhance the Judaisation of the city, a bias some suggest is linked to the macro Zionist project to create an ethnocracy (Yiftachel and Meir, 1998; Yiftachel and Yacobi, 2003; Yacobi, 2004). While the equity model applies to policy and planning that helps achieve socio-spatial justice between the warring factions, the resolver approach addresses the root causes of the conflict in a more radical, strategic, and proactive stance that places planning at the heart of conflict resolution. None of these models offers a panacea. The assumption behind the neutral approach that planners and policy-makers can airbrush out the conflict ignores their role in shaping social space and allocating public resources. For instance, since planning is concerned with land use and land itself is at the centre of these urban contests, planning is necessarily central, and thus its outcome is never neutral. Another version of this ‘neutrality’ is found in forms of planning that seek to sanitise local conflict with a veil of anodyne multiculturalism. In some cases, a contrived cosmopolitanism is appropriated by city managers as a brand in their place-marketing of their city as both global and unique. At its worst, this leads planners to package a safe version of cosmopolitanism in anaesthetised cultural zones, where instead of offering absorbing encounter with alterity, they end up reproducing the tamed edition

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in bland conformity with every other aspirant sophisticated city. At its best, cultural planning attempts to capture the city’s multiple identities in creating development opportunities to include whole communities, capitalising on arts and heritage, as well as local traditions, festivals and diversity of activities/leisure to bring together communities of interest across the ‘normal’ divide (Mercer, 1991). However, not everyone would agree with Ghilardi’s plaudits about the process, when he maintains that (2001, p. 4): ‘Cultural Planning is intrinsically more democratic, more conscious of the realities of cultural diversity and more aware of the intangible features of cultural heritage and patrimony’. Whatever the pretensions of this ‘neutral’ slant, patently the partisan model permits the dominant power to exercise distributive favouritism, thereby intensifying discord and grievance, and further eroding the state’s legitimacy as an impartial influence. Indeed in this scenario, planning and policy become significant weapons in the conflict. As such, they become part of the problem. On the other hand, equity approaches are complicated by the fact that equality, rights, and cultural recognition are intrinsic to the controversies in urban conflicts, are often championed by each side to endorse their partial perspective, and overall are awkward to unravel from the wider contest. Finally, the resolver model shares the deficiency of all radical agendas. If nothing much of significance can be changed until the whole arena is transformed, this aspiration for planning and policy to be in the vanguard of city peace-building could over-extend the capacity of the public realm. Despite their limitations, the equity and resolver models hold potential for relevant forms of planning in contested cities. Moreover, in Europe at least, there is an emergent agenda around a new approach to planning, with an emphasis on a more integrated participatory practice that may be very appropriate for attending to the particular challenges of urban conflict. Referred to as spatial planning, it transcends the narrow focus of land-use and physical built environment, addressing the creation of sustainable communities through visionary and integrative strategies developed through inclusive procedures from a formative stage. This more proactive, value-driven and action-oriented model acknowledges the need for a more inter-disciplinary perspective that comprehensively addresses the linked dimensions of the physical, social, economic, and environmental, while respecting local distinctiveness (Royal Town Planning Institute, June 2001). Thus, it affirms that public policy in general has spatial outcomes that need to be more clearly identified, and that planning involves a far-reaching remit of creating place. Albrechts (2004) locates this shift to spatial planning in terms of its greater capacity to address the imperatives for sustainable forms of regeneration within a delivery framework based on more evidence-based and democratic governance. In turn, this agenda connects with a wider discussion about how to develop new governance that moves beyond departmental silos towards

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a more collaborative and holistic practice (Stoker and Young, 1993; Sullivan and Sketcher, 2002). If taken seriously, it marks a significant departure from conventional planning, whose defects have been long recognised. For instance, Healey et al. (1982) have noted how planning has been disingenuously presented as an a-political activity legitimated by a culture of professionalisation that circumscribed it largely within the authority of technical experts operating a centralist decision-making system. Others have specified the shortcomings of a proceduralist planning method, based on systems analysis that moves mechanically from survey/data generation to forecasting to strategy to implementation and evaluation (Murray and Greer, 2000). This ‘predict and provide’ model can often simply generate self-fulfilling prophecy. Still others have referred to the tradition in planning of attempted rational imposition of order on a heterogeneous, random and fragmented urban arena, which is far from being an exclusively rational universe (Boyer, 1986). Those who perceive in the contemporary city-region the chaos and diversity best captured by complexity theory and non-linearity have disowned such reductionist and mechanistic approaches, advocating instead a creative and participatory approach that rehabilitates the scope of agency and locality. Other familiar critiques of conventional planning associated with the political left include: .

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Its fixation with the physical, with an inclination to slot in the economic, social, environmental, and cultural dimensions as after-thought, rather than blending these multi-faceted components in a concerted and sustainable way (Blowers, 1993); Its tendency to legitimate economic elites such as the development industry and related financial institutions despite its paternalist claims to mediate fairly amongst competing claims for land and property, based on the ‘common’ good (Reade, 1987); and Its related failure to counteract market-driven spatial inequalities and uneven development (Gans, 1968).

Of course, particularly since the 1980s, conservative and neo-liberal voices have expressed reservations also about the extent to which planning subverts market functioning, including its bureaucratic delays and hidden redistributive goals (Atkinson and Moon, 1994). In the new era of deregulation and privatisation, for some in the advanced economies it was seen as a delinquent relic of an old social democratic order (Gaffikin and Morrissey, 1990; Thornley, 1991). However, since the 1990s, greater recognition of ‘social fragmentations’ in many societies—deriving from many uncertain re-configurations, including the splintering of territorially-based relations, greater ethnic and cultural diversities, and the problematic links between local and global—has prompted advocacy for ‘planning by debate’. This sees planning as a process wedded to enterprising governance based on collaborative

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consensus-building that ‘would involve developing ‘conversations’ between stakeholders from different social worlds’ (Healey, 1997, p. 219). Such ‘inclusionary argumentation’, given to dispute-resolution rather than adversarialism, sees plan and policy making as interactive, dialogic, democratically negotiative and future-oriented. Recognising both the ‘soft’ infrastructures of decision-making and power-brokering—for instance, routine organisational forms and styles of discussion—and the ‘hard’ infrastructure based around more systemic attributes like formal laws and resource flows, adherents of this discursive form of collaborative planning stress the contribution of trust, reflexivity, and open exchange to the creation of new agendas in old struggles. With this promise in mind, the next chapter assesses the potential of collaborative planning to intervene effectively in cities riven by both pluralist and sovereignty contest.

6 Collaborative Planning and the Divided City

The previous two chapters have indicated the need to integrate conflict resolution, community cohesion and social inclusion in addressing the most exigent forms of urban division. Since it provides the spatial undergirding of these composite policies, planning also plays a crucial role. However, to be effective in redressing the debilities of contested space, it needs to be reconceptualized. In exploring how planning might be so re-framed, this chapter first summarizes the way planning has evolved to the current thinking about spatial planning. It then relates this in turn to the concept of collaborative planning, which has been suggested as the most effectual model for intervention in deeply fragmented cities. Arguing that agonistic planning may offer a preferable approach in the context of intractable and deadly conflict, the chapter explores its resonance in other related disciplines such as conflict resolution before concluding with the implications of this model for both development and governance.

Shifts in planning With regard to the form of planning in most developed societies since 1945, six models can be briefly identified to give an indication of the changing slant: (1) Top-down land-use planning: this is within the traditional genre, based on the rational objective approach and technical expertise of the professional planner. Largely about zoning and the physical aspects of the built environment, it tends to propose development priorities, leaving it to other public agencies and the market to dispose in terms of detailed projects. Mostly, the public are seen as passive, if beneficial, recipients. Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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(2) Advocacy planning: starting in the 1960s, this involves sympathetic planning experts serving disadvantaged and excluded communities by defending their interests (Friedmann, 1987). However, this championing risks paternalistic assumption about the incapacity of the powerless community to articulate on its own behalf. Moreover, in such representation of the disadvantaged, their authentic voice can get lost in translation. (3) Equity planning: starting in the 1970s, this derives mainly from the US, and refers to a process whereby committed government planners devote particular attention to the impact of planning outcomes on the most impoverished and excluded populations, using their assets and skills to leverage positive discrimination in their favour (Krumholz and Forester, 1990; Metzger, 1996). Although such redistributive endeavour is meant to work with an intimate knowledge of the beneficiary community, there is still an intimation of service and advocacy. (4) Participatory planning: since the 1960s, there has been wide validation for the direct involvement of people impacted by plans in those plans’ formation (Forester, 1999). Yet, dispute has persisted about how best to channel such inputs, and improve civic capacity for their expression. Broadly speaking, two approaches have dominated this discourse. One is learner-centred, bottom-up and suspicious about professional expertise, insisting that the community most affected by plans knows best, not only about their most effective contribution, but also about their own knowledge gap with respect to participatory planning. However, asking people what they don’t know is flawed, since: (a) people don’t always know what they don’t know; (b) they are reluctant to admit knowledge/skills deficits; (c) they may genuinely, though mistakenly, believe that they do know; and (d) given the anti-intellectualism in parts of the practitioner world across all sectors, they may assume that their experiential/tacit knowledge is superior to the formal variety. The second approach is more top-down, prescribing a suite of skills and competencies necessary for effective community building, against which the performance of any particular participant community can be measured. Even while acknowledging the disputatious character of planning, and the awkward presence of power relations, both of these approaches share anticipation of a final consensual outcome from the adversarial stakeholder engagements, and emphasise the importance of skills in facilitation and mediation for conflict resolution. (5) Spatial planning: as outlined in the previous chapter, this is on the agenda mostly only in Europe as an approach that is: visionary, inclusive, comprehensive, integrative, equitable and sustainable, and concerned about the spatial outcome of public and private investment. Though still in a very formative state of application, this offers an ‘official’ paradigm, within which collaborative and agonistic approaches to contested space can be examined.

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Finally, an ‘unofficial’ and more radical version of this inclusive approach can be conceived and it underpins the critique of collaborative planning pursued here: (6) Knowledge co-production for participatory planning: this model attempts to establish an equitable partnership between experts and activists in the co-production of knowledge needed for plan development and delivery. Not only does it stress processes such as enabling and empowering for all participants, it disputes that any particular source is the repository of superior knowledge. Rather than deliberative processes of linear argumentative debate and problem-solving, it leans towards a more recursive and agonistic approach of competitive, outspoken, and sometimes combative exchange, respectful of the real rivalries, hard choices, and exasperating trade-offs, and whose conclusion may yield both discord and concord. In shifting from an approach to inquiry and engagement based on Habermasian communicative action to one that encourages the savvy of improvisation and reflexivity in a capricious world marked by fluidity rather than solidity, it disowns any assumption about certainty and predetermination. As expressed by Kikoski and Kikoski (2004, p. 51): In the past, the purpose of inquiry was to learn answers and solve problems that emanated from the hard facts of an unchanging reality. In this 21st century, the purpose of inquiry may be to surface yet-to-be known possibilities from each individual’s intuition or tacit knowledge . . . . Postmodernism proposes that knowledge of a changing unfinished world is collaboratively or ‘socially constructed’ in conversation by humans. Reviewing the history of planning models, it is apparent that the traditional ones contain deficiencies. The rational–comprehensive approach, entrenched in classical science, considers that knowledge is out there, and once ascertained through meticulous and impartial analysis, can provide a predictive instrument for normative planning in the public interest. While rejecting this idea of value-free professionalism and supposition of an undifferentiated public, advocacy planning offers an adversarial approach that champions the most socially excluded. But its epistemology is still rooted in the authority and proficiency of the specialist, and its translation of the vernacular of people’s opinion into a professional vocabulary can both misrepresent and disempower. The more humble incremental planning model relinquishes the ambition of grand master plans in favour of practical and continual advancement in the technical facets of delivery, based on effective application of time, resources and data, and in the political facet of legitimacy, based on public deliberation and consent. All these standard approaches struggle to prevail over the predicaments that confront democratic planning in a very differentiated, not to say, divided world. Whether the more recent participatory and spatial

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models outlined above can fare any better can be considered as part of a wider appraisal of collaborative planning, and its potential in deeply divided cities.

The role of collaborative planning Collaborative planning—like the overarching concept of collaborative governance—denotes public policy decision making that is inclusive and based on dialogue among all stakeholders, producing ideally consensual outcome (Brand and Gaffikin, 2007). First, it implies the complementarity between traditional representative electoral politics and participative democracy; second, it is less reliant on legalistic formats of courts, tribunals, and public inquiries to arbitrate in the public interest; third, it is an intentional shift from market over-determination of socio-spatial development; and fourth, it disowns the claim that efficient decision making is best undertaken by professional experts within a bureaucratic and technical mindset. As an inclusive dialogic approach to shaping social space, collaborative planning appears to accord with certain features of contemporary society, at least in the Global North. These include: the post-modernist insights into the reduced certitudes and predictabilities of a complex world; the putative shift to new modes of partnership governance that acknowledges the imperative to ‘buy-in’ multiple stakeholders; the cross-fertilisations among these stakeholders, supportive of a creative milieu for remaking the world of work and attending to urban regeneration in a more globalised economy; and the supposed hegemony of neo-liberalism that some see not only in terms of de-regulating and privatising the public realm, but also of dismantling the split between state and market in ways that facilitate new synergistic partnerships. Recent thinking behind the efficacy of collaborative planning emerged out of ‘the neo-liberal, antiplanning morass of the 1980s’ (Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 2002, p. 214). But, in its conceptualisation and genealogy, it is linked to US researchers like Innes and Booher (2003), Forester (1999), and Friedman (1993), and in Europe, to Albrechts (2004), Davoudi et al. (1997), many of whom have long-standing scholarly interest in the related issues of public participation, conflict resolution, balanced city development, and effective urban management. Thus, many of these writers have extolled its virtue and heralded its advance: ‘collaborative planning is moving forward and spreading as a method’ (Innes and Booher, 2003, p. 24). In Britain, the paradigm shift in planning towards local development frameworks and spatial planning augurs this inclination to subsidiarity and what might be dubbed ‘democratic de-centralism’ in contrast to the orthodoxies of ‘command and control’ administration. The theoretical underpinning of collaborative planning embraces other related terms such as communicative, dialogic, argumentative or deliberative planning. These various names offer one indicator of its hybrid status as a theory, or it may be more accurate to describe it as a

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paradigm, normative framework, or as Harris (2002, p. 23) would have it, simply ‘a form of planning’. Despite their nuanced differences, all of these approaches share belief in the effectiveness of engagement and dialogue among all stakeholders. Participating as informed equals, in well-facilitated forums that optimise the trust and candour needed for an exhaustive examination of concerns and interests, such stakeholders are meant to employ rational persuasion. Assumptions about dispassionate rationality, ‘reasonableness’, fairness, and justice support the view that out of such critical but respectful exchange can emerge consensual decisions that are not automatically aligned with power differentials. Reason can trump power. In the words of Flyvbjerg (1996, p. 391), the intent of collaborative planning is ‘not to dissolve relations of power in a utopia of transparent communication but to play games with a minimum of domination’. In this way, it seeks to replace the argument of the greater force with the force of the better argument. In its ontology, collaborate planning sees the social world as a complex adaptive system ‘characterised by fragmentation, uncertainty and complexity’ (Innes and Booher, 2003, p. 10). While there is dispute about how organised or disorganised this complexity is, there is agreement that it is not totally chaotic and beyond shaping by intentional agency. So, typically, advocates of collaborative planning do not perceive the city in modernist reductionist or mechanistic terms, as a simple machine, but neither do they adhere to the ultra-individualist and relativist worldview associated with post-modernism. Emphasis is given to the contextual and contingent, and to the individual as a purposive social being rather than an atomistic one in pursuit only of instinctive self-gratification. Thus, it has affinity with structuration theory as developed by Giddens, with respect to the recursive relationship between structure and agency, and with the reflective and reflexive components of the theory of communicative action associated with Habermas. Space is seen in relational and dynamic terms rather than in the static Christallerian-Euclidean geometries (Brand, 2007). Similarly, time is more than a linear chronology or regular tick tocks on a clock. It is experiential, and therefore related to other factors such as culture. So for instance, in Belfast—a city where history can be a very animated ghost—murals depicting what some see as centuries of British oppression can make the narrative feel to be within living memory. In its epistemology, collaborative planning does not rely on some external ultimate veracity as if the social world is a closed system subject to predetermined laws discoverable through the pursuit of standard knowledge. Rather, it is exercised about many types of knowledge beyond the formal, such as the tacit and experiential. Accordingly, in Healey’s words (1997, p. 264): ‘there is no privileged, correct “rationality” . . . . all . . . . potential forms of reasoning have to be learned and given respect’. Here, it is not simply that say aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder. It is that beyond the conventional ways of knowing, there is a need to consider the neglected sources of knowledge and understanding that may lie buried in the informal, the

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invisible, the under-stated, the assumed, the immeasurable, or the inarticulate. Excavating such sources is further compromised by ‘the blinders’ (Innes and Booher, 1999, p. 418) that derive from conditioning and custom. But it is only by appreciating such sources of revelation, beyond the obvious and explicit, that we can grasp how ‘power is exercised through taken-for-granted norms and practices’ (Coaffee and Healey, 2003, p. 1982), and the prejudicial potential of the ‘common sense’ that seeps in sub-consciously through routine acculturation. Such considerations involve a shift from positivist to interactive epistemology, challenging the fixity of prevailing nostrums and ways of seeing, and extending the knowledge base (Forester, 1999) through engagement with a diverse social world. If these thoughts relate to how the world is, collaborative planning is also associated with ideology—about how the world should be. In general, it disavows the pretensions about value-free planning and the related fiction of an undifferentiated ‘public good’. As noted by Allmendinger and TewdwrJones (2002), collaborative planning contains both an explanatory and prescriptive element, and in its more manifesto mode, it is not merely given to a deeper democracy and a more explicit and proactive role in conflict resolution. Rather, its left-leaning emphasis is on giving voice to the most disenfranchised, highlighting issues of gender and diversity, and concepts such as environmental justice. Indeed, alongside other campaigning themes like sustainable development and human rights, it can be seen as a refuge for leftist ideas, attempting to re-legitimate socialist or at least social-democratic tenets in face of ascendant neo-liberalism. It also overlaps widely with notions of a ‘third way’ between old-style public intervention and the de-regulated market that putatively constitutes the philosophical underpinnings of the UK’s New Labour party (Giddens, 1998, 2000). In turn, these perspectives on ontology, epistemology, and ideology infer a congruent methodology. Beyond their references about the efficacy of a more flexible, nimble and adaptable planning process in a rapidly changing world, advocates of collaborative planning recognise the importance of engagement with the full range of stakeholders, preferably not in separate sessions for each silo interest, but rather in arenas that offer the prospect of discursive exchange across divides. Such processes are seen to involve more than standard mediation designed to mitigate, or to induce sufficient modest concessions around the table to tip the maths toward consensus. They require facilitation by the ‘critical friend’ (Forester, 1996), the ‘knowledge mediator and broker’ (Healey, 1997, p. 309) who can help re-frame dilemmas, thereby inviting the innovative thinking that can crack the conundrum. Further, they require inventive formats that encourage negotiative problem definition and solution rather than rival bargaining of fixed interests. Through such methods, it is claimed, potential exists for many conflicts to be re-conceptualised as ‘creative tensions’ that offer ‘win-win’ solution rather than ‘winner takes all’ or ‘zero sum’ outcome.

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However, it is in the methodology that the flaws in collaborative planning become most patent. First, within its own terms, it acknowledges the need for trust as the basis for productive non-hostile discourse among equals. Yet, in the case of conflict scenarios how is this trust to be built among the distrustful and between sides that are often distinctly unequal? What is the ‘big bang’ moment that creates the foundation of trust to secure the platform for mutual articulation (Brand, 2007)? An even more basic critique challenges the core canon of collaborative planning, whose scaffolding comes from precepts of deliberative democracy. The latter champions forms of partnership decisionmaking that are inclusive, reflexive and consensus-oriented in ways that extend access to, and legitimacy of, a more transparent and answerable form of governance. In this view, rational discourse among equals permits all participants to openly debate and grill others in a process facilitated impartially and founded on universal values such as justice, equity and democracy (Calhoun, 1991). Many facets of this proceduralist method are commendable: its recognition of multiple and diverse stakeholders partaking in an ever more complex, pluralist and unpredictable world; its integrative perspective on development; its implicit attachment to subsidiarity and the traditionally disenfranchised; and its aspiration for an active and informed citizenry in respectful interface to resolve dispute. But this deliberative and communicative polity encounters a stark ontological difficulty. As expressed by Mouffe (1999), the boundless public deliberation among all on all matters of common concern is conceptually unfeasible. Related to this is a defective appraisal of the significance of power and inequality, implicit in the assumptions about a public sphere for rational discourse as a viable channel for democratic consensus. Power disparities, an ontological presence acknowledged by many adherents of collaborative planning, cannot be dissolved or adjourned through logical argumentation, however respectfully conducted. Besides the practical problem of getting all stakeholder interests equally around the table, given the immense obstacle of power, the central objective of consensus may be not only over-ambitious (Hillier, 2003) but altogether misguided. Even if feasible in principle, the desirability of consensus in all circumstances is questionable. It may simply be a false conviviality that suppresses dissent or difference, a consensus purchased at the cost of containment. It can involve platitudinous affirmations, which sometimes are referred to as ‘empty signifiers’ since they offer low common denominators that apparently claim the assent of protagonists without exacting anything very specific in terms of commitment or concession. Moreover, since conflict is intrinsic to human relations, particularly in a very diverse world, social harmony is not the normative. Thus, critics of collaborative planning complain largely about the contradiction between its consensual premise and the conflictive realities of unequal economic and political power, ethno-religious rivalry and ethno-nationalist contest. For

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instance with respect to ‘pluralist’ conflict, it professes to offer the means to create the city that is at once globally competitive and inclusive of the most disadvantaged local communities, without explaining how the neo-liberal ideology that sets the contemporary framework for the former is compatible with the egalitarian ideology that promotes the latter. If markets are selfregulating, why fix what is not broken? On the other hand, if public policy is serious about dismantling disadvantage, it demands levels of redistributive welfare that contravene the hollowing out of the state implicit in de-regulated capitalism (Brand, 2007). Even allowing for the contingent and partial manner in which both ideologies are actually grounded in any given urban context (Hackworth, 2007), collaborative planning does not contain ready responses to how ‘rational debate’ can resolve this ideological contest. Moreover, as indicated earlier, post-modernist perspectives challenge the very notion of a rational universe, uncontaminated by human emotion, intuition, blind faith, and prejudice. And the role of emotion in conflict has long been recognised both in terms of its visceral cause and political impact. For instance, referring to the different approach to negotiation between blacks and whites, Kochman (1981, p. 40) comments on how whites typically seek to mollify the anticipated hostility of blacks by insisting that any such discomfiting dispositions are left at the door, a precondition that can be seen by blacks as reflective of existing unequal power relations: The requirement to behave calmly, rationally, unemotionally, and logically when negotiating is looked upon by blacks as a political requirement—and to accede to it in advance is considered a political defeat. Given these reservations, it may be argued that a more genuine respect for the diversities of contemporary society may favour a more agonistic kind of planning that accepts the discordant realities of living with complex difference. This then is the key paradox: advocacy of collaborative practice, rooted in values of cohesion, solidarity and inclusivity, operates in a world that can be seen as ever more individualist, socially fragmented, competitive, or in other words, uncollaborative. Thus, it may be less delusionary to settle for a ‘democratic art of governance, namely civil servants’ and planners’ ability to work productively with and within strife’ (Ploger, 2004, p. 72). Particularly in protracted and deadly conflicts, the impassioned and partisan aspects are not readily disarmed. From this perspective, it still remains feasible to change from a politics of antagonism, where the opponent is perceived as an enemy to be overpowered, to a politics of agonism, where the opponent is perceived as an adversary to be contested with, within a mutual acknowledgement of the right to differ. Thus, Mouffe (2000, p. 15) notes that ‘an important difference with the model of “deliberative democracy”, is that for “agonistic pluralism”, the prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions from the sphere of the public,

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in order to render a rational consensus possible, but to mobilise those passions towards democratic designs’. Thus, there is need to acknowledge the scope of the emotional, intuitive and the personal, permitting ‘the whole person to be present in negotiations and deliberations’ (Sandercock, 2000, p. 26). In similar vein, Gunder (2003) applauds the virtues of ‘passionate planning’. In this perspective, the disharmonies of rival ideas and their forthright expression are an immutable feature of an unrepressed pluralist polity. In the collision of passion and power, particular struggles will yield hegemonic outcomes reflective of the power relations, and will be invariably exclusive of some social interest. In short, the agreeability underpinning ‘collaborative’ decisionmaking presumes an unrealistic tractability in a discordant world where the gravitational pull is toward more combative contest. By contrast, it is argued that agonistic planning accepts the reality that outcomes of engagement may not be always consensual, totally inclusive, or prone to stability. For advocates of collaborative planning, many of these arguments are taken to caricature their position. While the typical focus of communicative action may be on commonality and accord, proponents insist that this does not entail mollification of conflict through restraining the provocative, and inhibiting outspoken expression of distinction and dissent. In her rebuttal, Innes (2004) has protested that proponents of consensus building have not naively invested faith in its capacity to deliver easy or durable harmony. Rather, often it leads to ‘second order effects such as spin-off partnerships . . . new ideas for use in other situations, . . . new institutional forms of planning and action’ (ibid., pp. 8, 9). For her, the reality of differential power should not dissuade effort at engagement across the disparities. For one thing, in an increasingly fragmented world, the incentive for the powerful to participate and to help achieve wider ‘buy-in’ for proposals lies in the beneficial security and certainty that derives from enhanced legitimacy; the reduced external costs of conflict; and the added value of new forms of network power and synergy that can attend collaborative partnership. Such motivations for the powerful offer leverage to the powerless, but not a panacea for their relative impotence. Honig (1993) and others who have outlined the contours of a contemporary agonistic politics, observe that the indispensable condition is for persuasive discourse that extends beyond ritualistic exchange of well-worn scripts and formulaic positions. It involves trying to get beyond the guarded comment and cagey verbal ‘choreography’ of positional debate to at least make protagonists more informative about the most fractious aspects at stake. And this yields another paradox: sometimes in building the peace, you have to disturb the peace. In this, agonism prefers the edginess of awkward encounter to the expedience of editing the contentious. Importantly, such argumentation within a forthright dialogic process acknowledges the persistence of dissent and contest. In this uneasy reality, concurrence can be often provisional and tenuous rather than reassuringly consensual and terminal, and the most disquieting divisions may remain intractable despite recurring exertion at

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resolution. Indeed, the multiple meanings and interpretative rivalries of a very diverse world offer a delicate foundation for constructing a solid context of shared norms, values, and perceptions (Mantysalo, 2002), and thus attempts to untangle the fictional and delusional from the factual can be beset by overconcession to relativism. For Connolly (2002, pp. 178–179), the efficacy of an agonist approach derives from its discomforting challenge to presumptive articles of faith, its acknowledgement of the contestability and fallibility of all ‘truths’, and the related vitality and volatility of its processes. This is apparent in the way the ambiguity of identity belies standard notions about social normality and unity. For him, identity formation involves an inherent agonistic dimension since it can be understood totally only in reference to that which it resists: An antagonism in which each aims initially at conquest or conversion of the other can now . . . . become an agonism in which each treats the other as crucial to itself in the strife and interdependence of identity/difference . . . . Sometimes one shows respect for another by confronting him with alternative interpretations of himself, sometimes by just letting him be, sometimes by respecting her as the indispensable adversary whose contending identity gives definition to contingencies in one’s own way of being. But in this agonistic approach to engagement, conflicting contentions have to compete to be compelling; and the dialogic process is itself transformative for participant relations, creating a ’sensing together’ rather than the conventional consensus, whereby debilitating antagonism can be re-fashioned into a more constructive encounter (Hillier, 2002, p. 289). Optimally, such processes can help to create relational empathy and some mutual meanings (Stewart and Thomas, 1995) without pretence about the quarrel’s complete dissolution. Within this ontology, there is recognition that knowledge is always partial, and indeed sometimes partisan, and that the pursuit of multi-perspective ‘truth’ is more about patient mapping through pathways than soft landing on a pre-determined destination. Since, unlike the typical paradigm of the ‘good’ deliberative democracy, agonism does not regard consensus as a regulative frame (Schaap, 2006) or stability as the normative state, it can better accommodate the protracted disarray that stems from disputed knowledge, multiple intelligence, proto-assumption and diverse perspective among interlocutors. As noted by Deveaux (2000), such a predicament is intrinsic in struggles around identity and difference that engender disparate conceptions of ‘the good’, and as Murtagh (2004) illustrates, are especially manifest when the task of creating place in contested territory confronts emotive attachment to ethnic space. By contrast, Habermasian inter-subjective communication, while repudiating many of the universalities that relate to totalising metanarratives, is still

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said to be tied to rational mutual awareness, and a normative take about the virtue and viability of consensus. Articulated through a proceduralist and testable rationalistic argumentation, this approach is widely taken to commend the cognitive and communicative power of the shared search for truth through reflexive and reciprocal debate. Herein lies a central paradox of this approach. The public sphere for this debate and deliberation is meant to be inclusive. Yet, since it is also predicated upon a competency for detached, disinterested, and public-spirited exchange, an impartial articulation that is not within everyone’s gift, it is intrinsically exclusive. However, this reading is one refuted as inaccurate by Habermas himself, who seems to see idealised linguistically-based understanding to be merely a channel for creating dialogic space that accommodates diverse voices, and thereby more difference and contradiction (1992, p. 140): ‘. . .linguistically attained consensus does not eradicate from the accord the differences in speaker perspectives but rather presupposes them as ineliminable . . . . The more abstract the agreements become, the more diverse the disagreements with which we can non-violently live.’ Despite his own rejection of a rationalist utopian worldview, his model of communicative action is often taken as one designed for consensus building, which from an agonistic standpoint can be a politically convenient contrivance for evasion when addressing contentious issues. For instance, it has been suggested that in the realpolitik, planners are expected to pursue ‘a consensus strategy [because it] is a way of avoiding turning questions of interests, representation, justice or power into political questions and community controversies . . . Consensus steering can thus be seen as a way of ignoring antagonism or suppressing strife, because this form of governance prevents public disputes from unfolding and becoming important in planning politics’ (Ploger, 2004, p. 78–79). While agonistic planning is not about abandoning the pursuit of consensus, it sees that ambition as secondary to the aim of at once fostering the optimum ventilation of a much differentiated plurality, and, at the same time, accepting the possibility of irreconcilable incompatibility. Thus, the quest for concurrence should not conceal the contestatory and combative character of planning politics, in which stubborn dispute about strategic spatial and resource distribution abounds. An agonistic planning approach offers multiple forms of communication and transaction, not just those expressed in the formal, dispassionate, disembodied speech privileged by deliberative democrats. But such criticism should not obscure the appreciable benefits of collaborative planning: its focus on sustainable and equitable development; its contribution to deepening representative democracy with more participative decisionmaking; its recognition that increased social diversity should be accommodated in a new pluralist politics; and the principle that divergent allegiances, however staunchly held, should be a challenge for conciliation rather than a pretext for violent conflict. Nevertheless, such benign intent for a more animated civic solidarity is based on suppositions that are hard to confirm

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empirically, including: adequate civic capacity to bear the inclusivity of an informed public; the trump card of rationality in contest adjudication; and the compliance of the privileged as regards participation in transparent discourses, when more unobtrusive avenues to decision-makers are accessible. Indeed, what the case studies here demonstrate is the modest power of rationality when confronted with the immodest rationale of power. In an attempt to achieve some synthesis between agonists and deliberative democrats, Dryzek (2005, p. 220) first admits the dilemma of crafting conditions for trustful and reasonable discourse amid incompatible claims of identity, where it appears that one identity can be authenticated mainly by the subjugation of another. He wonders how the necessary reciprocity is to emerge in either approach. In the agonistic process ‘the outcome is not agreement but rather relationships that combine continued contestation with deep respect for the adversary. . .’ While conceding that such engagement across contesting identities is more amenable to the robust confrontation that attends such rivalry, he appreciates that it carries its own risks. For instance, if sensitive contentions are underscored in such forthright clashes, the quarrel may be inflamed or congealed, and persistent collision on these terms may at worst generate disintegration, and at best yield impasse. Moreover, the indecision and continued exchange implied in the latter suggests pessimism about resolving deep difference that may be selffulfilling. Conversely, deliberative discourse that is cramped by dispassionate expression or rationalistic ontology, may evade rather than encounter the contrarian and disputatious. Significantly, Drysek reminds us that not all altercations among protagonists in a deeply divided society need to be toxic, and that a more textured appraisal of the codes and postures in such social relations can help mitigate their more lethal potential. Specific suggestions are advanced to optimise productive outcomes: ‘engagement is less likely to end in hostility if the focus is on specific needs. . .’ (p. 225); and ‘deliberative rituals and indirect communication (as opposed to confrontation) also have roles to play in reconstructing relationships’ (p. 225), for example, providing opportunity for small talk between partisans over a meal with no explicit reference to their main dispute. Nevertheless, he does query some standard consensual models for redressing conflict, such as consociational arrangements, since these are often derived from agreement among ethnic leaderships for macro coalitions among the blocs, within a framework for segmental autonomy, mutual vetoes, and proportionality. Instead of a ‘shared’ society, they tend to offer a ‘shared out’ society, whereby spheres of influence are marked in a balkanised carve up of respective ‘sovereignties’. Such ’analgesic’ accords can smother dissent from those outside the fold and solidify the sectarian cleavages. His alternative modus operandi for planners and public officials is their facilitation of a discursive democracy that is founded on an autonomous public domain and given to copious discourses that generate inventive alternatives, induce

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critical reflection, are non-coercive, and are capable of connecting distinctive experiences and epistemologies with more universal principles and themes. Elsewhere, Drysek (2002, p. 3) disavows the idea that deliberative democracy as a form of reflective communication in which participants are open to non-coercive persuasion is very different to more agonistic approaches. He resolves the difference by employing the term discursive democracy, which ‘should be pluralistic in embracing the necessity to communicate across difference without erasing difference, reflexive in its questioning orientation to established traditions. . .’ The important emphasis is on ‘oppositional civil society and public spheres as sources of democratic critique and renewal’ (p. 4). In similar vein, Martin (2005, p. 367) has been interested in a ‘theoretical middle ground between a Habermassian consensual intersubjectivity and postmodern agonistic subjectivity’. Rooted in a disposition to regard consensus as a natural outcome of rationality, the former does not do justice to ‘the irreducible centrality of dissent’ (p. 365). But the latter does not sufficiently acknowledge that engagement can embody both rationality and other forms of communication such as rhetoric, polemic, and narrative. What really matters beyond the labels of deliberation and agonism is whether exchange precludes the dissentient or whether it offers instead multiple perspectives and exposure of under-valued positions. Thus, for Martin, some of the dichotomous debate between the two approaches is spurious. The desired composite is for ‘. . .a democratic practice between consensus and conflict: a never-ending, inclusive, multi-faceted contest of discourses—of publics, counterpublics, and public opinions—producing both generally irreducible differences and particular shared discourses’ (p. 386). This is similar to the argument of Young (1996, p. 120). In her critique of the standard deliberative approach, she notes that: Deliberative theorists . . . . tend inappropriately to assume that processes of discussion that aim to reach understanding must either begin with shared understandings or take a common good as their goal. She advocates a more open communicative process whereby participants can ‘transcend and transform’ their initial positions by acknowledging both cultural differentiation and diverse forms of communication in addition to reasoned argument. For her, its efficacy rests on the extent to which: (1) encounters with difference clarify for participants the partiality of their position and perspective; (2) such engagement induces participants to translate expression of self-interest into a more convincing appeal based on principles such as equity; and (3) the penetrative probing adds value to the total sum of social knowledge in the dispute. But, in arbitrating the relative merit of deliberative and agonistic approaches for deep division, it is instructive to turn to the literature of conflict resolution.

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In a cogent summary of three main stages in dealing with protracted and deadly conflict, Ramsbotham et al., (2005) identify the following: (1) Interactive conflict resolution: this can involve a partisan and adversarial espousal of mutually exclusive positions. Marked by animosity and suspicion, the virulent exchanges are typically oppositional and dichotomous: right and wrong; us and them; either/or. While trying to keep claim and counter-claim at the level of verifiable empiricism, the main role of the facilitator is to expose the mutual detriment of this sterile script. (2) Dialogic conflict resolution: this is designed to move away from the preponderance of dispute and prejudice towards a comprehension of the history, culture and case of the other side. This involves interlocutors traversing from familiar to strange terrain. As a reflexive exchange that is both cognitive and affective, it should move from simple receptivity to a formative relational empathy. Building trust and openness, this process should then facilitate a mutual hermeneutics that goes beyond the judgemental toward an appreciation of the feelings if not the claims of the other. (3) Discursive conflict transformation: this is concerned to unveil the flaws and inconsistencies in the divisive discourses that enkindle violence so as to engender an integrative mode of engagement that re-conceptualises the conflict as a mutual problem. Such conversion should then provide the basis for mining below the exterior contest to the more subterranean interests that may offer the prospect of shared horizons, and problem solving through principled and creative negotiation. This approach is associated with an epistemology rooted in critical theory. Conventional wisdoms are subjected to re-appraisal in ways that expose common sense understandings of key positions as ideological rather than worthy of automatic endorsement on their own terms. As elaborated by Ramsbotham et al. (2005, p. 296), such discourse analysis pursues a transformative re-think beyond the ‘normal’ rational bargaining, or communicative problem solving or institutional development found in other approaches to peace-building. As such, it is trying to highlight: . . . .the embedded symbolic or representative orders, linked to differential access to resources, of which specific conflicts are taken to be a manifestation. Positivist or cognitivist assumptions about language as a transparent medium are seen to ignore the central role that language plays in the reproduction of the structures of domination and exclusion that generate and perpetuate violence. Thus, while the adversarial and dialogic processes may be useful as stepping stones, it is this more radical discursive approach—that many advocates openly associate with Habermas—which is said to be demanded for more

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fundamental and sustainable change. Importantly, this involves acceptance that there is no privileged truth, however hegemonic, but rather rival ontology and epistemology to be contested. But the rational bias of this approach is again apparent. As noted by Avruch (1998), in such processes, feelings and attitudes may be permitted ventilation, but only in order to get past the positional to reveal the more hidden logical interests around which the conflict’s resolution must ultimately centre. Instead, he stresses the salience of culture in conflict resolution, while still problematising the concept and its multiple meanings. In this, he distinguishes between a foundational generic culture that relates to universal attributes of human nature, and local culture that relates to the variability and particularism associated with diversity. This local culture is socially created and permeable rather than objectified as stable, homogeneous, consistent, and fixed to definite social boundary. Influencing both social and cognitive processing, it offers a lens through which is refracted perceived verity and valence. Developing Avruch’s (1998) work slightly, we can identify six common conceptual flaws about culture that impair analysis of its links to conflict: first, it is misconceived in narrow terms as habitual or socially acceptable conduct; second, that each individual is attached to, and partly formed by, only one culture; third, that a culture has both uniform composition, and consistent distribution within a group; fourth, that culture is ahistorical and unaffected by time; fifth, that it can be materialised as an independent agent outside of human intervention; and finally, that inter- and intra-cultural variation is often of modest consequence. Contrary to such limited appreciation, culture matters a great deal, including its relationship to rationality. Thus, the same situation can evoke varied phenomenological construal, demonstrating that we do not all reason the same. Culturally conditioned presuppositions and interpretative frames produce different mindsets that in turn pose problems in attaining shared definition of social situations. From a western tradition of social science, ‘our embedded rationality requires that we construct simplified models of complex reality in order to explain things. . . . We normally have little tolerance for the confusion of aggregate, mixed-up, unsorted, undifferentiated, unpredictable, and random data. We naturally move quickly to sort, order, and predict simplified patterns from the chaos of our daily experiences’ (Pedersen, 2006, p. 657). But conflict cannot be understood fully through a universal toolkit of analytical techniques. For instance, the approach to conflict resolution by Burton (1987) is rooted in the notion of universal needs, akin to the Maslow (1970) theory of basic human needs of survival, security, identity, recognition, and control. Such generalised paradigms underrate the significance of cultural relativism. As noted by Vayrynen (2001, p. 4): Conflicts are cultural events, evolving within frameworks of cultural norms and values which condition what is worth fighting for, what is the

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normal way to fight, what warrants conflictual action and what kinds of solutions are acceptable. In this regard, the agonist critique of that part of Habermassian deliberation that insists ideas should hold intrinsic merit without the surplus support of impassioned presentation or affectation can itself ignore the way candid expression can be a cultural issue. For instance, one type of Asian approach to conflict—nemawashi—prefers the ambiguity of an oblique and inexact exchange that affords scope for elasticity without any party losing face. While the contextual and situational are more crucial to some cultural groups than others, Markus and Lin (1999, p. 328) remind us that: What is invisible, taken for granted, or discounted in the analysis of behaviour in one cultural context may be focal and objectified in another. In particular, the analysis of conflict in cultural contexts other than those of the European American mainstream reveals the importance of an array of social and relational concepts such as face, honor, respect, sympathy, forgiveness, and interpersonal harmony. But such cultural focus does not necessarily imply the insolvency of Habermassian approaches. For one thing, Vayrynen acknowledges that there are different kinds of rationality. For instance, so-called common sense may not be so common. An instrumentalist rationality that emphazises a calculus about maximum utility for the parties concerned may underplay the cultural and emotive forces that prefer a ‘scorched earth’ solution over one that offers material gain. On the other hand, a discursive rationality may be able to cope with the contextual implications of cultural difference. In short, there are reasonable routes in the navigation of even profound inter-cultural sensitivities. To relate this back to the reservations held by agonists about the limits of the rational, it is arguable that the cultural and rational are not intrinsically at odds. People with deep cultural antagonism may still be open to persuasion through reasoned argument. But this is not the full extent of agonist misgiving. There is the deeper concern about the way many aspects of conflict—for instance, the chance, incongruity, futility—are not reducible to logical explanation. Moreover, there is the formidable context of the ‘all or nothing’ issue of sovereignty, where contending claims are mutually exclusive. The struggle for conflict resolution in such quandary is how to achieve a more conditional definition of sovereignty, when protagonists favour the more absolutist language of invariance and indivisibility. It is in these deadly intractable conflicts that the agonist disposition may have more traction than the deliberative virtues of impartiality, civility and reciprocity. For instance, it is here that reciprocity may be asymmetrical. One side may have to show readiness to alter assumptions and shibboleths before it can expect the

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other side to emulate. Furthermore, the agonist emphasis on immanence— the world of becoming rather than being—may open agendas to fresh thinking and breakthrough. Crucial here is the recognition that each side starts with a conviction of its own integrity. Thus, the summons to change for each is not about becoming like the other, but rather about becoming more like its own assumed virtue (Valentine, 2009). In summary here, it can be noted that there has been a prolonged dispute about how best to address conflictive relations—between deliberative processes of Habermassian communicative rationality, and a more empowered grassroots participation based on an agonistic pluralism, associated with Mouffe (2000). Succinctly expressing the difference between both, Beaumont and Loopmans (2008, p. 98), remark: The Habermassian ‘ideal speech act’, one that adopts universal and pragmatic linguistics in a way that aims to transcend specific contexts, is for her grounded on an outmoded utopian and authoritarian position that combines rationalism and universalism with a modernist philosophical creed. Only an irrationalist position sensitive to emotions and passions, which denies context transcendence, stresses decentred social identities and rejects a final reconciliation of values and truth claims in a conflictive polity can represent a truly radical and plural democracy. In this dispute, three central dilemmas persist. First, how much can be conceded to cultural relativism, anti-essentialism and contextualism, which disclaim the idea of universal truth and reality, while searching for normative meaning and value beyond the very particularistic? Second, how far can a disembodied rationalism be refuted in accommodating passion and emotion, while reaching for a common language and communicative ethics to foster guileless dialogue, inter-subjectivity and mutual empathy across deep divides? Third, how far can pluralist engagement around contest take effect when there are significant power differentials among protagonists? These questions will be re-visited in the conclusion. But here it can be re-stated that whatever particular form is adopted, urban planning and policy have to be part of the process. However, planning and policy have to address the many ways conflict—the reality and image of political instability and violence—can hamper effective development, and produce economic fall-out like high unemployment, which if concentrated on one side of a divided community can further feed political grievance. Even in areas coming out of acute conflict, development has to occur for a considerable period in a context of low-intensity violence. But, places of conflict are not cocooned from the world, and that world now operates in an increasingly competitive way. So, this raises the question of how planning can be part of a collaborative process that addresses the difficulty of development amid division.

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Development and division Clearly there is a crucial relationship between economic competitiveness and socio-political structures. For instance, in places of deep historical ethnonationalist contest, there is a connection between the area’s underdevelopment and the pre-eminent role of ethnically grounded social capital over civically grounded social capital. Simply stated, the economic virtues attributed to institutional thickness can be compromised when social structures are deformed by deep division. Yet, even areas locked in persistent conflict cannot totally escape the ramifications of the competitiveness agenda, which now represents a core policy framework almost everywhere. For one thing, there is the impact of globalisation on small, open economies, including the emergence of supraterritoriality spaces, global oligopolies, and transnational corporate networks. In addition, there is likely decreasing subsidy support for such regions, as their traditional sponsors come under increasing fiscal pressures. A usual feature of the weak economic performance that can attend acutely divided city-regions is the corollary of heavy public expenditure dependence. Whatever its desirability, the long-term feasibility of this arrangement is very fraught. For example, Northern Ireland has benefitted from subsidies from the UK, the European Union and the US. In the case of the UK, there is a perceived imperative to trim public spending, and in the case of the EU, its Structural Fund programmes are likely to be more selective with the vulnerabilities of the Euro-zone, and shifted east with the recent expansion of the Union. Similarly, places like Israel cannot indefinitely rely on the largesse of the United States, though its geo-political significance gives it greater leverage in this regard, compared with other places like Northern Ireland. In any case, such largesse can give rise to a grant culture, whereby substantial public and private energy is devoted to chasing the latest source of external funding, a diversion from the pursuit of sustainable enterprise formation, underpinned by strategic and long-term investment in research and development. Here, Northern Ireland offers a warning. Within its grant culture, a pervasive attitude of me tooism can further blight development effort. The sight of a marina or heritage centre in one part of the region can prompt another locality to claim its entitlement to a similar investment. In a region marked by socio-sectarian spatial segregation, this proliferation of local economic development and local peace and reconciliation strategies has tended to diffuse a strategic regional approach rather than enrich a focused region-wide agenda. Faced with this predicament, regions, burdened with a legacy of deeplyembedded division that has impeded development, confront a political dilemma. On the one hand, institutions created as part of any peace process need to be inclusive. By the same token, they are likely to contain parties with remarkably different approaches to economic and social questions. Obtaining a consensus about a programme of government and development that is not

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both fragile and the lowest common denominator is a formidable undertaking. Yet, innovative and dynamic development demands long-term strategies that are rooted in stable, yet entrepreneurial, governance. In addressing this dilemma, it is worth remembering that competitiveness is not reducible to output per head of population. Rather, a textured understanding of the concept allows for its integration with other dimensions such as networking, social capital and inclusive government institutions. Thus, social cohesion and reconciliation can be seen to be imperatives for a sustainable way forward, not as optional extras. Of course, many untested claims have been advanced about the symbiotic relationship between durable conflict and local development. For example: .

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The economy has been impaired by the division and disruption. If these end, and thereby give rise to an improved international image and goodwill, and the diversion of resources into improved social and human capital, a repressed economy will be liberated for massive growth. If such a take-off occurs, the equitable distribution of its benefits and peace dividend can accord the poorest communities a greater stake in society, thus diverting their otherwise disaffected youth from the appeal of violent paramilitarism or gangs. More reliance on well-educated human capital to place the area at the leading edge of high-tech and high value-added production can elevate the significance of education, itself an important pathway out of old ideas and shibboleths. A new focus away from political division towards the common pursuit of development will, in itself, bind the political factions into a new unity, or at least greater attention to the solution of economic and social ills will organically reshape politics along a more conventional left-right axis that over time dilutes the intensity of ethnic or ethno-nationalist contention; while finally, Within a more globalised world and its supra-state economic formations, we are in a more post-nationalist era, which renders the old contours of conflicts around identity and belonging less credible and engrossing.

Whatever of the accuracy of these propositions, some people hold to the faith that a new development agenda that invites high levels of civic participation and evokes a sense that the future belongs to those with the inventiveness to create it, can generate a positive energy to challenge the negative gloom of immutable division. This tends to assume that the very process of seeking an overarching and integrated schema for a city-region can motivate protagonists to perceive the cost of being in competition with each other, rather than collaborating within an agreed common planning and development agenda that works to their mutual benefit. However, such optimism underplays the problem of agreeing a strategic plan in a contested city/region, where bitter

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dispute about the equity of previous development plans impacts on contemporary discourse. Nevertheless, integrated approaches to development that tie together the social, economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions, reinforce the imperative for partnership both horizontally in terms of the collaboration of public and private sector agencies and vertically through the significant involvement of the community. On the other hand, the fragmented political loyalties that often accompany deeply divided societies can often imply that any settlement towards peaceful development demands multiple government positions to be distributed among the warring factions to ensure optimum inclusion. Such arrangements, designed primarily to permit multiple-party power sharing rather than the most efficient functionality of governance, can produce a profusion of departments that in turn can inhibit, rather than facilitate, joined-up government. The difficulties particularly associated with acute conflict are complemented by more general problems for development agendas in the contemporary world. For instance, it can be argued that the impulses of polity and economy are pulling in different directions in the new global age. In economics, the drive is to centralise within the security and scale of large blocs like the European Union and the North American Free Trade Association. Yet, in politics, the talk is of subsidiarity, and the drive is to decentralise, bringing government closer to the people in an effort to revitalise political legitimacy. In politics, the pressure for greater democratization and inclusion is faced with an economics that involves the magnification of transnational corporate and financial power, producing an expanded international arena for super-exploitation and unsustainable growth in a world where the ubiquitous market influences not only the economy, but also can subvert the democratic voice. For some, this exemplifies the twilight of sovereignty (Wriston, 1992), while others continue to attribute significant power to the national state amid a more global economy (Weiss, 1998). The view expressed in this book is one that acknowledges the universal reach of market determinants such as competitiveness, while affirming the continued efficacy of local action in a world that is not so determinist and predictable. The state is changed, but not erased (Cox, 1997). Thus, universal processes are mediated in particular ways that allow for historic specificity and contingency of space. Agency as well as structure remains relevant. However, this interplay of the local and global—glocalisation—has to acknowledge that local action is more problematic, requires new formulation, can no longer operate within the pretence of unconstrained national autonomy, but nevertheless remains potentially significant in shaping social outcome. The architecture of this new political economy is evolving, not fixed, and people can still make a difference (Camilleri and Falk, 1992). In such reconfiguration, the shift of public power both downwards and upwards can be under-pinned by the principle of subsidiarity. However, its

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effective operation relies on a fundamental challenge to the orthodoxy of hierarchical, bureaucratic, and technocratic administration systems. Partly, this demands a retreat from the culture of managerialism to embrace the culture of public entrepreneurialism. Partly, it demands new civic infrastructure that nurtures a political imagination beyond single-issue campaigns, and the capacity for sustained and strategic civic involvement at the local and regional level. Such objectives are easier to exhort than to deliver. This is where institutions of governance can make the difference. Leadership in divided societies can don an ethnic or civic mantle. Ethnic leadership addresses, and professes for, its own tribe, and its achievements are assessed at least in part by the reluctant concessions of its opponents. By contrast, civic leadership transcends the appeal of the partisan, constructing cross-community partnerships and networks that yield added value for all. In the wider debate about governance, the basis for renewal has been characterised as a shift from providing to enabling; from representation to participation; from producer to client focus; from exclusive technocratic expertise to incorporation of local knowledge; and from departmental silos to integrated cooperation. Following attempts in the 1980s across many parts of the world to marketise some public services, the more recent period may be seeing the shift from the colonisation of the public realm by private sector values to a greater inter-sectoral cross-fertilisation of ideas. Even where this is happening, the jury is out as to the motivation behind this pluralism, whether it is attributable to the downsizing of the state under fiscal stress, or whether it augurs a genuine redefinition of governance, enfranchising active citizenship and civic leadership (Cerny, 1990). Assuming the more positive potential, the diverse partnerships emerging in this new landscape of governance offer more inclusive scope for a wide set of stakeholders to collaborate for mutual benefit. Entailing a protracted process of building capacities and relationships, this inter-disciplinary and multiagency approach allows for the development of shared strategic visions, behind which structured collaboration can evolve. Of course, even in this favourable scenario for renewed democracy, tensions remain, for instance between the fragmentation that derives from the decomposition into slimmer administrative units and the compelling case for more joined up government. Specifically, in places of great conflict, peace is merely a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for regeneration. Rather, the task confronting everywhere in this increasingly interpenetrating world is to become less selfobsessed and parochial, to adapt eclectically good practice in governance and development from elsewhere, but to customise and democratise it in order to build a genuine stakeholder society. To optimise this potential in conflict-ridden contexts, four components need to be considered:

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The protagonists need to find a working accommodation within the whole of civic society rather than exclusively within the formal political arena. Peace can be negotiated at the top table, but durable reconciliation has to happen on the ground. Equally, conflict zones that have become accustomed to war economies have to become competitive regions. This is not an agenda of privatisation and self-sufficiency, but rather a recognition that dependence on subsidy and/or a massive public sector or the operation of corruption are not tenable solutions to long-term decline and exclusion. However, both inclusion and equality should be at the heart of the competitiveness agenda. This is not merely a moral imperative, but also recognition that highly-skilled and knowledge-intensive people are at the core of a knowledge economy; together with the social capital that facilitates the collaboration/networking necessary to the innovation process. Concentrated deprivation and the accumulated grievance arising from inequalities obstruct rather than mobilise development. Finally, development has to be sustainable and has to enhance, rather than diminish, the quality of the local environment.

Returning to the issue of competitiveness, the world has become more open, more complex and more interdependent. The end result is that international developments have had an increasingly significant impact on national economies and regions and cities have become more open to competition from elsewhere. Accordingly, governments have come to regard competitiveness as the corner stone of economic development policy. Garelli makes the point forcefully (Dunning et al., 1998, p.68): Competitiveness has become to economics what gravity is to physics: one of the fundamental forces which underlie the major events that shape our world. Like gravity, it is a force that one cannot escape. It affects equally companies that need to grow, individuals that want to preserve their jobs and, of course, nations that wish to sustain and increase their standards of living. At the same time, however, there is no international consensus about how competitiveness can be achieved. The Asian model of export-led development sustained by a close alliance among enterprises, government and the banks has been tarnished by recent problems in not just bank liquidity, but also solvency. The United States approach of fiscal prudence coupled with deregulation has produced impressive growth and millions of jobs, but the bottom 40% of US society has paid the price in terms of slow growth in real incomes and greater risk of job loss.

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Even in a more favourable economic context at the start of this century, the difficult link between competitiveness and cohesion was being noted (Northern Ireland Economic Council, 2000, p.1): The past ten years have seen a remarkable rise in the prominence of local development initiatives as governments in all industrialised countries continue to grapple with the seemingly intractable problem of a society divided, often along spatial grounds, into a majority who have adapted to, and prospered, in an ever more flexible and insecure economic environment and a minority that subsists in unemployment or under-employment and relative deprivation. By definition, city-region economies are smaller than their nation states. As a result, they are more open and more dependent on external trade. Success requires an ability to attract external customers. Their labour markets are also more open—declining regions tend to lose knowledge intensive and highly skilled workers, successful regions gain them. Nevertheless, city-regions can have two key advantages (Nyhan, 1999): . .

Cohesiveness and manoeuverability in being able to target high value-added external markets and High competence profile and versatility of its workforce, which gives the capacity to deliver the required goods and services for these markets.

Achieving these advantages requires an integrated approach within the framework of a new development model. Alongside increasing recognition that top-down, centrally-driven programmes are too inflexible to account for the unique circumstances in each local area, in places like Europe there has been a growth of well-organised and increasingly vociferous local organisations determined to contribute to urban and regional development (Moularet and Demaziere, 1996). As observed with respect to Europe, Hart and Murray (2000) note that territorial units like city-regions can operate as distinctive actors in planning and policy-making through multi-level collaborative networks that reach up to central authorities in the European Union, across to similar regions in other jurisdictions, and down to a plethora of local government and civic agencies on the ground. However, in Europe since the mid-1960s, mechanisms to tackle poverty and to stimulate economic growth have been traditionally separate. The basic principle was that macro-economic and regional policies would create the conditions for competitiveness and growth while social integration programmes would enable the disadvantaged to grasp the opportunities of an expanding economy. The growth of structural unemployment and the persistence of long-term unemployment generated a new emphasis on labour

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market, rather than social, integration, but the insulation of economic development and integration measures has remained. In the contemporary situation, however, separate programmes do not address the complex interplay and overlapping of economic and social problems. Thus, there has been repeated emphasis in recent decades on the need for joined-up government, although without spelling out how can this be operationalised without additional layers of bureaucracy. However, the integration of different programmes requires the mobilisation of all possible resources (human, social, economic and political) while retaining popular stakeholding and ownership. Policy integration has a strong regional and local dimension. Stohr (1990) suggests that this process is characterised by autonomously developed local initiatives; local partnership arrangements; goals that are both economic and social; and benefit the entire community. In turn, these ingredients of effective development need to be anchored in the learning region, defined by Stahl (1999 , p. 55) in the following terms: Based on the systematic use of complementary interests, competencies and infrastructures to exploit a bottom-up development of enterprises, institutions and administrations by way of partnerships and networks. Here the focus is on organizational forms that are about networking, partnership, integration, and complementarity, all concepts that seek to transcend division, separatism, and parochialism—the hallmarks of divided city-regions. Moreover, these approaches to competitiveness and development highlight the crucial role of civil society in fostering such social capital, and also infer the debilities that derive from a lack of social cohesion. As noted by Andrews (1994, p. 63): In the context of a modern economy, the underclass is largely bereft of the language and routines of technology and science, making its members inept in dealing with the daily rigours of politics, commerce, and culture in this country. In a very real sense, the underclass becomes estranged from and hostile to—yet is largely dependent on—a middle class it envies but cannot join. In turn the envy and anger of the estranged underclass drives the middle class out of the city, thereby deepening the intellectual isolation of the poor. At that point cities become reservations for the poor which the middle class, through its control of . . . government, must manage in order to preserve its own safety and well-being. Two main models of city-region development can be identified in this regard. The Auction model views the area as a crucible of finite resources and development opportunity. Consequently, within this perspective, different parts and factions feel compelled to bid against each other in an auction for the distribution of planning permission for growth. This rivalry sharpens the more

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contested the area in question, and issues of distribution become entangled in the animosities of the general conflict. Preferable is the Additionality model, one that sees that the region as a whole can prosper best when its constituent parts collaborate for the benefit of overall regional prosperity and quality of life. Rather, each part of the region can seek its own particular competitive niche that complements that of other parts, thereby achieving an added value for the whole region, from which in turn every part can benefit. This additional approach to regional development allows the region to obtain competitive advantage through the collaborative advantage of the connectivity of its different sub-regions and interests. By contrast, forms of development that divide the territory into different ‘spheres of influence’ held by warring factions are more likely to forfeit this critical mass and opportunity for synergy and economy of scale and scope. Such complementarity can only operate within an agreed common planning and development agenda, to the benefit of the region as a whole. Similarly, to be effective, the regional plan needs the support on the ground of local community and sub-regional plans and City Visions. Without such detailed and customised arrangements for the delivery of projects and infrastructures, the wider regional plan can be reduced to generalised aspiration. In short, development cannot work properly amid deep division in cities and regions. Whereas development is about risk and innovation, division is about the comfort zone of old ideas. Whereas development is about inclusion and the optimization of human resources, division is about exclusion and the protection of narrow interest. Whereas development is about responsibility of all to all for mutual benefit, division is about an emphasis on partisan rights of the tribe. Sustainable regeneration is dependent on getting three things right— hardware (the appropriate physical infrastructure), software (education/ training, business formation/attraction and social inclusion) and heartware (a culture characterised by energy, enterprise, co-operation and the desire to get things done). This suggests that the role of the public sector should be redefined from provider to enabler, broker and entrepreneur, and be complemented by a vibrant civil society. These considerations are taken up again in the final chapter, where they are linked into a more developed framework for dealing with division.

Part II Case Studies

Looking at Belfast, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Nicosia, Oldham, and Bradford, and what they can tell us about planning and policy in divided cities.

Chapter 7: Development Amid Division in US Cities: The Cases of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago Three US cities with a common political–economic framework are explored. Each has a different form and role of racial division; how these relate to differences in strategy and outcome is discussed.

Chapter 8: Contested Space, Contested Sovereignty: The Case of Belfast An empirical and analytical exploration of a city caught in an ethno-nationalist conflict.

Chapter 9: Between Sovereignty and Pluralism: Other Divided Cities The cases of Nicosia, Bradford, and Oldham: looking at the differences and similarities of these cities along a continuum of sovereignty and pluralist division.

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

7 Development Amid Division in US Cities: The Cases of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago

Introduction As the basis for American prosperity, the country’s major metropolitan areas are increasingly significant (Berube, 2007). Moreover, population growth has been largely metro-centric: in the 2000s, 77% of such increase happened in these metros, up even from the 70% in the 1990s (Katz, 2010). Whereas in the early part of the 20th century, just over two-fifths (44%) of Americans lived in those areas that now constitute the 100 largest metropolitan areas, by 2009, this share had reached two-thirds. These metro areas contain over threequarters of racial and ethnic minorities, who make up an increasing share of national population. For instance, while in 1970, non-Hispanic whites comprised approximately five in six Americans, and in 1990 made up threequarters, that proportion had decreased to two-thirds by 2010. One reflection of this change is that racial and ethnic minorities constituted 83% of US population growth from 2000 to 2008, a pattern that suggests that the US may arrive at a ‘majority minority’ status by 2042, with its children reaching that landmark by 2023. As a share of total population by 2042, Hispanics are set to account for 27%, blacks 12% and Asians 7%. Significantly, within the 100 largest metropolitan areas, the under-18s attained majority non-white status by 2008 (Frey, 2010). Indeed, 17 metros are already majority minority, a rise from 14 in 2000 and just five in 1990 (Katz, 2010). Racial distribution within the metros is also shifting. For instance, in these areas for the first time, the majority of the racial and ethnic minorities are suburbanites, though there remains a stark spatial contrast, with whites Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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constituting approximately two-thirds of all suburbanites, while their residential share in primary cities is down to 43% (Frey, 2010). Despite this recomposition, urban America experiences the persistence of racial segregation. For instance, a study of 15 major metro regions demonstrates that 71% of blacks live in predominantly black or black-Hispanic neighbourhoods. Moreover, some of the integration evident is not stable, but rather represents a transition to predominantly black or black-Hispanic status. Nor is this a phenomenon of the central city. By 2000, nearly half the residents of colour in medium and large metropolitan areas inhabited the suburbs, making up 27% of the suburban community (Institute of Race and Poverty, 2006). This ‘spreading out’ of diversity (Frey, 2006) also impacts on the suburbanisation (Kneebone and Garr, 2010a) and racial composition of the poor. Between 1999 and 2008, the suburban poor population expanded by 25% — nearly five times the poverty growth rate in the primary city—so that the suburbs hosted almost one-third of the country’s poor, and 1.5 million extra poor than primary cities. In the latter in 2008, one-quarter of the poor was white, compared with 46% in the suburbs, while just under one-third of poor city residents were black, compared with 17% in the suburbs. This pattern is in the context of a general poverty increase (Kneebone and Garr, 2010b, p. 134). From 1999 to 2008, the poor population in the United States grew by 5.2 million people, or 15.4%—almost twice the growth rate of the population as a whole. By 2008, more than 39.1 million individuals lived in poverty, or 13.2% of the nation’s population. That represented a significant increase over 1999 (12.4%) and put the rate on par with that in 1990 (13.1%). In turn, this poverty was related to growth in income disparity over this period. While the proportion of households earning ‘middle class’ incomes decreased by 1.8%, racial income inequalities endured, with the typical black household falling behind US median annual income and the typical Asian household surpassing it by almost a similar margin ($17 000 and $18 000, respectively in 2008) (ibid.). A recent US study (Shapiro et al., May 2010) has calculated the wealth disparity between whites and African Americans by auditing the financial data of the same cohort of families over the period 1984–2007. They concluded that the inequality was accelerating, and had increased fourfold over a generation, due to a range of factors such as regressive taxation, inequities in labour, housing and credit markets, and reliance on debt to get by: ‘At least 25 per cent of African American families had no assets at all to turn to in times of economic hardship’ (ibid., p. 1). As noted by Frey et al. (2009, p. 7): ‘. . . .blacks still suffer some of the highest poverty rates in the nation, but growing racial and ethnic diversity—including among the poor—mean that today African Americans account for fewer than one in four US residents below poverty’. Some also contend that living in a neighbourhood that is both deprived and ‘minority’ can shape the propensity

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to be and remain poor. Using census data from 1990 and 2000, Drake and Rank (2009) show that whereas in general black and Hispanic children are two to three times more likely than their white counterparts to fall below the official poverty threshold, black children are up to 14 times more likely to reside in high poverty neighbourhoods when compared with white children, with figures for Hispanic children slightly less marked. In response to the long-standing association claimed between persistent poverty and concentrated racial segregation (Massey, 2007), a central direction within urban planning and policy in recent times has involved mobility initiatives to de-concentrate the ghetto, in particular through inducing sections of the black poor to move to predominantly white areas, and reconstituting the ghetto with more mixed-income residents. While accruing significant support in the community development and political sphere, these programmes have also provoked criticism: ‘that the primary objective and outcome is to displace poor people and provide unjustifiable subsidies to well-connected developers who profit by the gentrification that ensues; that they constitute another version of urban renewal which undervalues the social capital of even poor communities, destroying the lives of many vulnerable families in the process; and that the entire discussion of concentrated poverty unfairly stigmatises poor people and particularly poor people of colour’ (Hartman and Squires, 2010, p. 5). To explore this discourse further, it is helpful to ground it in the wider planning and policy experience of particular cities. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago, typical of many US industrial cities particularly in the Mid-West, have endured three negative processes in recent decades: their manufacturing dependence confronted national de-industrialisation; population and investment drained in regional shifts from ‘rustbelt’ to ‘sunbelt’; and within the central city area, suburbanisation and related balkanisation into municipalities eroded tax and income bases. Yet to varying degrees, these cities have been heralded as ‘comeback’ models, which prefigure the renewal path for those still trapped in the image and substance of spiralling decay. These patterns are captured well by Beauregard (1993) in his narrative of US urban decline and distress since 1945. The discourse is largely one of the urban as inherently problematic, followed heroically by the struggles for renaissance particularly since the 1980s, focused on downtown retail and office towers, waterfront apartments and marinas, and all the related attempted gentrification of inner city decay. By means of primary and secondary data, this chapter unpacks the promise and problem of the regenerative drive of these three cities in the context of their racial divisions. Their relevance for other multi-ethnic industrial cities is that they have faced the pull of ‘post-industrialism’; and debate about relative allocation of development effort to Downtown, waterfronts, and neighbourhoods, while facing divisions around race and segregation. The chapter looks separately at each city—following a brief history, their planning and

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regeneration agenda is examined within their ‘pluralist’ contest—and then draws together common issues that highlight the challenge of planning and policy in many major US cities. For instance, to what extent have they shown a focus on Downtown and waterfront development to the neglect of neighbourhoods—particularly the poorest ones most populated by people of colour? To what extent has their focus on re-imaging their battered city economies induced them to sideline the awkward issues of race and division, which may be seen as disincentives for new investment?

Pittsburgh: history of partnership? Situated in southwest Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh was by 1870 the centre of half of the world’s glass and iron, and by the 1930s–1940s, further industrial boom positioned Pittsburgh as a premier global steel producer. But by the 1980s, the city had shifted from heavy industry to services, health care, advanced technology, and education industries, while attempting to protect its role as a corporate and financial centre (Greater Pittsburgh Office of Promotion, 1989). The city’s post-war reconstruction—known as Renaissance 1—was concentrated in the Central Business District called the Golden Triangle, and was determined by the business-dominated Allegheny Conference,1 which dealt with a mostly compliant public sector (Sbragia, 1990). Organised communities and labour were also sidelined, an omission rationalised by the regeneration’s characterisation as ‘Downtown development’. In the literature tracing this history, the ‘Partnership’ deliberations are largely recorded as consensual (Berry et al., 1987). Yet, social costs were incurred as the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) vested and cleared land, thereby displacing the city’s poorest. Specifically, some of the current urban malaise is traceable to the urban renewal and highways programmes that tore into black and poor neighbourhoods, displacing many residents into crowded high-rise accommodation—so-called ‘projects’. Notable examples of prestigious developments uprooting communities include the construction of the Civic Arena in the black Lower Hill area, pushing many families into the crowded Upper Hill. Through the use of eminent domain under the 1943 Pittsburgh Urban Renewal Plan, black areas were vulnerable to such gentrification in part because they had come to be designated as not just dilapidated, but also ‘disorganised’ (Crowley, 2005). This continuing experience contributed to the 1969 election of the populist Mayor Flaherty, who elevated the role of community organisations (Sbragia, 1990), and divided Federal aid money from a primarily Downtown orientation to a 50/50 split with the local areas; but all within a more restrained budget.2 His replacement by Caliguiri in 1976 saw the reconstitution of Partnership, and augured Renaissance 11 (Berry et al., 1987, p. 179):

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. . . the neighbourhoods have received attention . . . but the conspicuous and spectacular high rise office complexes in Renaissance 11, like those in Renaissance 1, are the key to the developmental changes. These new structures are symbolic in two respects: in the large growth of office space and employment in the Central Business District, and in the changing nature of Pittsburgh’s economic base from one dominated by heavy manufacturing . . . to a more diversified, service-oriented base, dominated by corporate headquarters. The emphasis was still on Downtown (Toker, 1986). Yet by this stage, the Partnership, operating with a more proactive professional planning service, was promoted as a model of equal exchange and mutuality, wherein ‘neighbourhoods exercise real influence on city government, unlike many cities in which Downtown interests dictate what is to happen in economic development’ (Sbragia, 1990, p. 51). This was contextualised in the 1980s by a combined fall in Pittsburgh’s employment and unemployment, as the economic base was recast, with 10 000 manufacturing jobs lost, and 55 000 service, trade, and finance jobs added. While its manufacturing decline has been acute relative to similar US cities, the spatial dimension of this shift involved concentrated employment in Downtown and the University district of Oakland, with a related drain from the industrial riverfront. Significant growth occurred in health, education and financial sectors,3 and no longer relied upon locally-generated demand, but assumed ‘at least in part, the character of exporting industries’ (Giarrantani and Houston, 1988, p. 66). Thus, ‘Renaissance 11 was designed to redevelop real-estate rather than to restructure the city’s economy. The gleaming skyline . . . . certainly helped the city cope with the economic problems of the 1980s’ (Sbragia, 1990, p. 60). Tax changes and loan scandals dampened the development stimulus.4 Yet by the late-1980s, Renaissance 111 was deemed to be underway. The extent to which labour casualisation accompanied the services growth qualified its benefits to the poorest neighbourhoods.5 Over that decade, the City Council had expended $75 million alongside $1.5 billion private money in Downtown, where office space had been increased by half, and the vacancy rate had increased threefold (City of Pittsburgh, 1990). Pittsburgh’s property sector extolled the outcome. But amid such ‘progress’, city population continued to drain. By the early 1990s, population (369 879) was 55% of its 1940 figure, with the minority share trebling to 28%, and over the following 15 years, the population decline persisted, while the minority share rose (Center on Race and Social Problems, 2007).

Development priorities Following substantial decline in the 1980s, three policy strands were prioritised by the Mayor: ‘I want to see the riverfronts developed; I want

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to see Downtown come alive . . . . 24 hours a day; and mostly I want to see our neighbourhoods maintained and improved’ (City of Pittsburgh, 1990, p. i). Physical-led development was regarded as critical to re-imaging the city. However, greater regard for neighbourhood commercial districts and for non-profit sectors like education/research as the basis for diversification, supposedly blurred the CBD/neighbourhood dichotomy, extending Partnership into neighbourhood renewal (Lorant, 1988). Nevertheless, top businesses emphasised the efficacy of a low tax base favourable to Downtown investment. A leading corporate executive explained that the public sector was not always sensitive to how ‘fugitive’ capital had become, and to the alternative locations available to companies faced with mounting property tax burdens:6 . . . . a multiplicity of (corporate) headquarters . . . . speaks a certain infrastructure, a certain calibre of town . . . you can have the greatest airport in the world. But if this is a terrible central city that causes corporations to leave and relocate in other cities . . . . this city won’t make it if the central city dies. Squeeze the middle class out of the city . . . It’s in the interest of the public sector to make conditions for the private sector as vibrant as it could (sic) . . . If we leave the city of Pittsburgh, let me tell you, it would be an enormous loss of vitality for the centre. Pittsburgh remains a significant corporate-headquarters city. Ahlbrandt noted how its buoyant Downtown had helped it retain a sound fiscal base despite population exodus. Consequently (Ahlbrandt, 1986, pp. 124–125),: City officials have had greater flexibility in working with the neighbourhoods because of the healthy Downtown core . . . . The city is divided into sections, and community planners work with neighbourhood organizations on a wide variety of issues. Education was one issue recognised as pivotal by business. The President of the Regional Industrial Development Corporation commented: ‘The equity issue is extremely important . . .. If our urban schools are inadequate you’re inevitably going to proliferate an underclass’.7 From the 1980s, the City Council and Allegheny Conference invested greater effort towards improving public schools. Yet up to the present, the racial disparity in attainment remains marked. For 2008–2009, 47% of black city school students achieved state standards in maths, compared with 76.3% of white students, and in reading, whereas 46.1% of black students reached the standard, the figure for their white counterparts was 76.8%, despite the city’s Excellence for All programme (Pittsburgh Public School District, 2009). Despite these persistent racial divisions, the city has been keen to ‘booster’ itself as a model post-industrial centre, whose re-invention from ‘smokestack’

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steel city to green city has improved the quality of life for all citizens. Part of this diversification rests in the amplified role of the Arts in recent decades:8 There is a continuing battle over cultural tourism with the public sector economic development people (who’ll say) ‘Oh, a hotel. Those aren’t real jobs . . . . Real economic development is manufacturing jobs’. But the fact is that there’s not a lot of those being created . . . . (The Arts) help create an image in the city, which is attractive for decision-makers, who then bring other . . . jobs. A Downtown Arts District Plan proposed ‘a lively mixture of galleries, restaurants, outdoor cafes, offices, shops . . . . with at least three distinguished theaters at its center’ (Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, 1989, p. 2). Another growth sector identified was finance, though with circumspect implications for job growth.9 Institutions such as PNC, and the Mellon and Dollar banks, make Pittsburgh the US’s fourth largest financial centre. But, amid such investments, concern has been expressed about the demotion of manufacturing.10 Interestingly, the Chamber of Commerce has long appreciated the contradiction between the promotion of hedonistic consumption, under-pinning some services activity, and deferred gratifications inherent in competitive discipline, demanded in the new global economy.11 But URA, keenly pursuing alliance between business and government, has gloried in the success of Pittsburgh’s new economy, exemplified in Downtown renewal:12 The de-industrialisation in the city/region was so vast, and so to throw pocket change at that would have made little impression. I very much disagree that there was little economic impact from the corporate involvement in sustaining Downtown Pittsburgh . . . . real estate development was one manifestation of this continued interest in the city. The jobs in town— many are held by suburbanites. Yet, Downtown is still important to the city’s tax base . . . . The secondary expenditures that spring from the primary employment Downtown are very significant and these are widely distributed throughout the city. The Authority has emphasised its reactive role: (we do not) ‘guide large industrial trends . . . we’re responsive to the market . . . . we try to look as private as we can’.13 But that lack of proactive engagement has meant that the Authority’s neighbourhood involvements have favoured those with leadership and marketability, contrasting city planning geared to socio-spatial balance in development, and a public Authority shadowing the market:14 I’m charged with working largely with the private sector on commercial and industrial real estate development. The fact . . . . is (deprived) communities do not have commercial/industrial areas; they are not producing entrepre-

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neurs . . . . even though I sympathise with the problems of the public housing communities . . . . I don’t really have a handle to get at that. Undoubtedly, in the city’s promotional material, great focus has been on Downtown with its showcase projects, particularly the 14 prestigious property developments under Renaissance 11, regarded as pivotal in re-imaging a place once cast as ‘hell with the lid off’ (Lewis, 1989, p. ix). Downtown retailing was re-invigorated. Nevertheless, some local economists expressed scepticism about publicity heralding renaissance,15 a view shared by some senior planners:16 A great deal of it is boosterism . . . . There’s very little planning that went into it . . . . We’re the first metropolitan area to lose population between 1960 and 1970 . . . . The city is almost half the size it once was . . . . That makes the statistics look good . . . . It’s not quite the comeback city.

Riverfront development Orthodox mixed-use—commercial/leisure/residential—was proposed for the rejuvenation of Pittsburgh’s riverfronts. With a typography and infrastructure geared to manufacturing, the waterfront has presented formidable physical obstacles to development.17 Not only was it replete with ‘properties that were used mostly (for) warehousing and distribution’, but also development was often stalled because the city did not own it all.18 In a ‘land poor’ city, suffering comparative disadvantage with suburbia in terms of development costs, redressing dereliction and toxic pollution complicates goal-attainment, such as a riverfront hi-tech park.19 Ironically, in this context, community interests on South Side with staunch reservations about redevelopment plans, became vulnerable to rebuke from sources such as the business press (Editorial, Pittsburgh Business Times (10–16 June 1991): . . . . riverfront property, now little more than an eyesore, could one day soon boast an entertainment complex, a marina, upscale housing . . . . (which could) stimulate tourism, create jobs, boost the city’s tax revenue and lend more credibility to Downtown as a business and entertainment center . . . . Developers with the fortitude to propose ambitious riverfront projects in today’s horrific real estate market are rare. We would do well not to chase them off. This purported tendency for development to encounter obstacles within neighbourhoods has been cited as a factor behind concentrated Downtown development, where there have been no living communities to oppose.20 Much of what riverfront investment has occurred has been connected to the Central Business District. For instance, the nearly thousand-acre North Shore

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complex, comprising commercial and office development was marketed in these terms (Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, 1990, p. 20): ‘When completed, the North Shore will stand as a unique waterfront jewel, exploiting Pittsburgh and the riverfronts, and adding vitality to the downtown and vicinity’. Property and planning interests were agreed that progress would be modest and halting,21 a factor adduced by some as indicative of Pittsburgh’s weak real estate market, which could never bear the regulatory burden of ‘linkage’ planning:22 ‘If you look at some of the developable riverfront properties, in some places developers would be killing themselves. Not here.’ Such caution is amplified when it comes to commercial projects within neighbourhoods.

Neighbourhood development The Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighbourhood Development (PPND) has offered managerial guidance and project consultancy to the city’s Community Development Corporations (CDCs), while also functioning as a clearing house for Trust and other funds, to allocate to CDCs. Though the PPND has tried to foster comprehensive revitalisation, many Pittsburgh CDCs have concentrated on housing and local commercial real-estate.23 The Corporations act as non-profit making businesses, bringing together a critical mass of neighbourhoods and institutions like Universities/Hospitals to act as stakeholders in local regeneration, while relying on community leadership:24 Where there is leadership to support, we support it . . . . you’ve got to know you’re betting on the right horse. Some of the beneficiaries of early (urban) programmes did not provide viable leadership which endured. Funding selectivity, based on community capacity and performance, has tended to promote successful projects, while disavowing proactive intervention in the worst-off areas.25 Thus, at least three classifications among community-based organisations emerge in the city: top-notch CDCs; weaker CDCs; and ‘conventional’ advocacy groups. Since public/Trust and private money gravitates towards those regarded as most sophisticated and professionalised, the process risks fragmenting the community sector, de-politicising the CDCs, and marginalising further the most distressed communities.26 One of the favoured CDCs in this respect is East Liberty Development Inc., operating in what has been dubbed ‘Pittsburgh’s Second Downtown’. It exercises major influence over the revitalisation of the Penn Avenue Commercial District, successfully redeveloping a landmark building—the Penn-Highland.27 A different scenario is evident in the Hill District, a low income, black neighbourhood. Despite its location between the burgeoning University-Oakland area and bustling Downtown, it has not been able to form a ‘growth corridor’ linking the two to its advantage.28 Thus, some public

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officials have been insisting for some decades that such areas were ‘crying out for gentrification’. But this presupposes unrealistic demand in a city so depopulated:29 . . . . when looking at Pittsburgh, you have to remember the soft residential market we’re dealing with. We want to see people with higher incomes move into some of these neighbourhoods to use that type of economic integration to service neighbourhood revitalisation . . . . The benefit from successful CDCs is their pre-figurative demonstration of large-scale social entrepreneurialism. In recent decades, they have been able to draw in serious bank money because their diversified financial base, through Trust/public funds, cushions private credit risk.30 One doubt concerns whether they become in the process indistinguishable from orthodox developers,31 despite their broader remit.32 Because of Federal dollar cut-backs to urban centres, CDCs became capital-formation organisations, busy assembling funding packages for commercial projects. From one perspective, this can be interpreted as the ‘privatisation’ of community development. Ironically, the largesse behind Great Society programmes like Model Cities achieved little, given the weak community organisational structures. Now these are strengthened, public money is scarce. Across its 88 neighbourhoods, City Council support for community development has long been squeezed, since Federal cut-backs have demanded that city expenditure concentrate on basic services. Thus, groups have not been able to appeal for funds on the basis of disadvantage alone, but rather on more ‘economic development’ criteria, while the select minority with appropriate capacity have been able to convert into quasi-private operations.33 Despite such pressures, city-wide advocacy networking has endured, but most evidently in one-issue campaigns, such as monitoring the Community Reinvestment Act.34 Ironically, progress here in pressuring banks to distribute loans widely has been lessened by de-localisation of lending institutions amid globalisation of finance.35 But again there has been a racial dimension to this. Notable differences in capacity to leverage investment funding pertain between those neighbourhoods like Oakland, which have been getting some spill over benefit from the Downtown/waterfront development, and the concentrated black communities of the Hill District and Garfield-Homewood.36

Diversification without bifurcation A central regeneration challenge is how to re-mix local economies in ways which avoid labour market polarisation. Cities like Pittsburgh, steeped in ‘male’ manufacturing, and dominated by one industry—steel—have struggled to surmount their legacy: weak entrepreneurial tradition; conservative banks accustomed to ‘reliable’ large firms; and current challenges of higher

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female labour participation as industry shrinks.37 While in the past, its riverbank mill towns contained the usual suburbanisation patterns, in recent decades Pittsburgh has confronted the social devastation and physical desolation of abandoned steel plant along the adjacent Monongahela Valley. Set in a regional context, Pittsburgh requires a tax-sharing and vision-sharing approach amongst its neighbouring 137 municipalities, many of whose residents work and leisure in the city without bearing full service costs. On this, interviewees broadly agreed, though none was confident about its political feasibility. Similarly, sustainable diversification demands more than property development. Yet, ‘money chases real estate’ and economic development poses problems for politicians: not all understand it; it doesn’t yield the short-term gains they seek; and insofar as it targets incentives at the worst problems, it encounters the will of capital: ‘industry isn’t going to move to where it doesn’t want to move’.38 In the 1980s, the Allegheny Conference advocated a regional economic strategy, which emphasised: renewed physical infrastructure; formation of seed capital fund; investment in human resources; enhanced ‘place marketing’; and entrepreneurship promotion. But much focus was placed on nurturing high-technology business, linked to local universities, in an approach designed to be private sector-oriented and market driven. This was followed by Strategy 21 (Allegheny Conference et al., January 1988), a report which recommended as top priority, major expansion of Pittsburgh Airport; a transport hub to globalise the city. By 1990, over 800 regional firms manufactured or applied advanced technology products, primarily in areas like software engineering and biomedics, and this has progressed up to recent times (Briem, 2004). The role of the universities has been critical. CMU created the US’s first Robotics Institute, while Pittsburgh University has been at the leading edge of biotechnology and bioengineering. This advanced computer capacity contributed to Pittsburgh’s early entry into fibre-optic communications. In turn, the university role was linked to the proximity of sponsors from a corporate-headquarter city, so that whereas Pittsburgh was once a centre of production of raw materials like coal and steel, the raw material of the new economy has been as ‘intellectual power . . . . Having the intellectual assets of two research Universities and the R&D centres of the now by-gone manufacturers . . . . is what is very important.’39 The Pittsburgh High Technology Council has sought to nurture and network technology-intensive companies, while fostering computerisation as a means of revitalising existing ones, developing a critical mass to lend the high-tech sector an identity. Redundant riverfront sites have offered opportunity to spatially cluster this support in a ‘signature location’. New coalitions, including the universities, have diffused the traditional structure of ‘partnership’; and parts of the adjoining Oakland neighbourhood have achieved some leverage on the universities, particularly with respect to jobs and course access.40

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Two processes continue to spur proliferation in the sector: the universities attract people with experience and vision from other ‘Silicon Valleys’; and some of the ‘de-layered’ research engineers from local large corporations are given to form their own software companies. But the university role remains contentious. For instance, the city’s commercial expansion of health services—linked to university research capacity—confronts the pressure for more socialised medicine in a country where health costs are burdening even middle-income families. Moreover, the integrity of Universities’ over-riding mission to promote knowledge can be compromised if in pursuit of profitable aggrandisement, it pushes real-estate ambition with scant regard for adjacent neighbourhoods:41 (Pittsburgh’s Universities) are the largest employer, largest economic generator . . . . what happens if the residential integrity of your neighbourhood disappears? (Universities) need to have a sense of concern about the community, the city, about being good neighbours . . . . Advocates of this shift to high value-added employment discount as facile the dual-labour market theories about such diversification polarising cities into residents with routine low-paying jobs and those generously remunerated.42 URA has recognised the problem for some time, even if its policies have yet to redress it (Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, 1990, p. 1): The city’s people as a whole are poorer now, relative to the region and the nation, than a generation ago. If economic development is to be meaningful to Pittsburgh it must benefit the city’s people, and especially minority and other economically disadvantaged groups. Likewise, economic development benefits will be questionable if they are limited to the Golden Triangle and other major employment centers, and do not improve the quality of life in the city’s neighbourhoods. In ranking the city’s three development goals into the 21st century, the Allegheny Conference has been clear since the 1990s:43 . . . build on the wonderful neighbourhoods. Riverfront development—a bit of a luxury—would follow that; and let Downtown development take care of itself. That’s a market function . . . . Downtown is compact enough—it’s a walkable Downtown—and it has enough critical mass to stop an exodus of firms to the Airport. But a different ranking has been evident from URA, and back in the early nineties, a leading official opined that ‘the opportunity to develop Downtown is essential to the totality and continues to be first. Riverfront development is coming about piecemeal. We don’t have the resources for a master plan . . . .

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neighbourhood development is spotty . . . . its on a minor key . . . .’44 At that time, a senior planner concurred that Downtown still required strategic re-investment to counter the pull of suburbia and the Airport expansion. This would involve reallocation, though most funding would continue to replenish the neighbourhoods’ ‘quiet renaissance’: 45 To the extent that we don’t get outside funding like the State or Federal government, we’ll be shifting our own capital resources more into the Downtown . . . . I see it as a short-term strategy . . . . Downtown contributes a quarter of all real estate tax in the city . . . . needed for the services in the neighbourhoods; it is a source of jobs . . . . although the job base Downtown is primarily suburbanite . . . . so we need to do something about employment in the Downtown of city residents. Yet, the net contribution of the city core has been subject to contradictory argument. At the height of the attention to Downtown, a leading realtor recounted incidence of tax avoidance there, while later applauding its irreplaceable fiscal support for city services.46

The Pittsburgh narrative in the noughties From the late 1980s through the 1990s, manufacturing employment in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area remained fairly stable, at around 150 000 workers. However, by late 2008, this had reduced to 96 700, representing only 8.4% of the area’s employment. Repeating its achievement of the mid-1980s, the city was rated in 2007 as America’s Most Liveable by Places Rated Almanac. In 2009, it was deliberately selected to host the G-20 summit as an exemplar of ‘green’ urban renaissance from a smokestack past. Its brownfield acres of former steelworks around the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers continue to offer prospect for major new development. Specifically, its eclectic plans in this respect have accommodated both the super-regional suburban style open mall in the Waterfront initiative, alongside the new urbanist design of Southside Works,47 a 130 acre site comprising a dense mix of: condominiums; ethnic restaurants; hotel and conference centre; artist studios and galleries; 1 million square feet of office space; and specialist retail. Built in the early 2000s, and located on the site of a former steelworks, with its own quasi town square, this revitalisation of the southside riverfront is happening barely one mile from Downtown. But to what extent is such a significant development accommodating mixed income and racial use? The condominiums seem targeted at high-income professionals; the office space is presented as being appropriate for firms geared to intellectual capital and the proximity of university campuses; and the retail is mostly upscale. Nevertheless, the adjacent Southside community—mainly blue-collar and

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racially diverse—did campaign for certain planning principles to underpin the development process: their right of participation; the need for master-planning to ensure the protection of scale and character with the surrounding area; the need for the goods and services sold to complement rather than duplicate existing provision; and the assurance that the riverfront would remain an amenity with public access. But clearly, these principles are necessary, but insufficient, to ensure not just a mixed-use but also a mixed income and racial composition. Turning to the seminal black neighbourhood of the Hill District, there have been recent attempts to build on its rich history of jazz and the arts, and its contemporary logistical assets, such as its convenience to the Cultural quarter and to Downtown. The URA and local community partnerships have been in the process of developing a master plan for the greater Hill District, addressing strategic directions for new land use, renovation, conservation, and transportation. Mixed tenured/priced housing is a key part of the proposed restoration of the wider area. For the Lower Hill District, preference was expressed about bringing back the street grids in places like Webster and Wylie Avenues to travel directly into Downtown, as they previously did before the arrival of the massive Civic Arena, now available for demolition. The plan is to offer scope for community and city collaboration with the Pittsburgh Penguins in developing the 28 acre hinterland of the new multipurpose Consol Energy Center. Conceptually, it is about integrating the new arena into the neighbourhood, and integrating the neighbourhood into the centre of the city, with optimum community participation in the planning. But whether attention and resources will be devoted to ensure a re-cast sustainable Hill District is one test of the city’s commitment to both diversity and equality.

The issue of race In all of this renaissance narrative over recent decades, scant attention has been paid to racial disparity. Despite repeated affirmation of ‘partnership’, the modest role accorded to African Americans in these partnerships is notable. Since it lacks a significant Hispanic population, the Pittsburgh region is less diverse than the nation as a whole. In the period 1980–2000, the whites’ share of city population decreased from close to three-quarters to just over twothird, while the African American residents increased their share from 24 to 27%, with Asians and Hispanics increasing from a very low base. During this time, the whites’ share of the metro area decreased more modestly from 92 to 89%, with a related small increase in African American presence, from 7.1 to 8.1% (Center on Race and Social Problems, June 2007, University of Pittsburgh). While the African American population in the city has been steadily increasing, their socio-economic position relative to whites indicates a

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continued marked racial disparity. Whereas whites have home ownership rates of 60%, for African Americans, it is 36%. In a city with a total population share below poverty at 20.4%, compared with 12.4% for the country as a whole, poverty rates for African Americans are 2.5 times white rates, leaving just over one-third of African Americans classed as below poverty. Less than one-third of African American families with children are married couple households, compared with two-thirds of white families, and over half Hispanic families. Expressed differently, nearly seven in 10 African American families with dependent children are single female-headed. The share of black children living with their mother only is over three times the rate for white children. Despite its substantial city population, whites comprise only 39% of public school intake, compared with 59% by African Americans. For African American 16–19 year olds, the high-school dropout rate at just under 12% is 2.5 times the rate for whites, and the share neither in school or work is 3.5 times the white rate. Unemployment rate for African American males is over twice that of their white counterparts (17% compared with 8% in 2000, and for women the same figures were 14 and 8%). African American median household income is approximately two-thirds that of whites. While comprising 67% of city population, whites have 78% of aggregate income in the city. With only 18% income share, African Americans make up 27% of city population. All of these inequities are framed within a pronounced spatial segregation.48 African Americans constitute the most segregated minority group in the city, so that two-thirds of them would have to move for their group and whites to be equally distributed (Center for Social and Urban Research, March 2004). But this divide in Pittsburgh, as elsewhere in the US, is increasingly presented as more differentiated than the old clear black–white disparity. A contrary view is presented in a labour market study that examines the influence of this traditional racial divide, relative to that of the ‘new diversity’ (Emeka, 2009, p. 157). The results suggest that over 80% of the impact of race and ethnicity on unemployment can be caught simply by reference to the black-white dimension: ‘Despite the increasingly diverse racial and ethnic composition of entry-level labour markets in the United States, it is black exclusion that seems to drive the effects of race and ethnicity on unemployment’. Following examination of the evidence, Emeka (2009, p. 168) is drawn to conclude: black men and women are uniquely disadvantaged in metropolitan entrylevel labour markets, and their disadvantage accounts for the vast majority of the effects of race/ethnicity on one’s ability to get his or her ‘foot in the door’ of the US labour market. The pronounced pattern of black exclusion uncovered here . . . . lend support to the position that to the extent that a ‘color line’ exists in the United States it is drawn most sharply between black Americans and all other Americans.

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Travelling through those predominantly black neighbourhoods, such as Northview Heights and Perry South, in July 2009, this racial disparity was very evident visually in terms of decrepit housing condition and dilapidation of local environment. Yet, this issue is still not high on the agenda for Pittsburgh’s urban development.49

Cleveland—‘mistake on the lake’? In 1978, Cleveland collapsed into default—the only top US city to do so since Depression years—during the era of populist Mayor Kucinich, whose hostility to corporate interests caused senior CEOs to select and finance their own Mayoral candidate—Voinovich.50 His 1980 election heralded a businessfriendly environment, starting with a task force of 90 executives recommending ‘efficiencies’ for city government, which proceeded through Federal grants and tax abatements to accommodate a series of prestigious Downtown projects.51 Amongst the landmarks were: major hotels; convention center; the new BP headquarters; a $400 million Tower complex, comprising restaurants, movie theaters, a new commuter rail station, and 120 shops —‘the markings of a truly sophisticated urban forum’; and extravagant financial centres (Miller, 1990, p. 54): Did no one notice that the 57-story Society Center, ballyhooed as the city’s new tallest building, was overtaken within months by its competitor’s announcement of its 60-story Ameritrust Center? From 1979 to 1986, office space inventory increased by 35% to comprise ‘70% of total available supply in the metropolitan area’ (Cleveland City Planning Commission, 1988, p. 12). This emphasis on Downtown was reflected in the symbolism attached to its resurgence with major focal points of revitalisation being Playhouse Square, the Downtown Lakefront, and the Warehouse District/Flats areas. Retail expansion was targeted at office workers and business tourism (Cambridge Systematics Inc., 1987). The towers re-fashioning the skyline were seen as signalling conversion to high valueadded services like legal, finance, and business supports.52 Alongside Downtown, development focus was on: Lake/Riverfront potential near the CBD; a Dual Hub Corridor linking Downtown with University Circle; and in the neighbourhoods, concentrating ‘commercial activities at strategic sites’,53 and supporting community-based planning. Yet, it was argued that instead of a re-industrialisation strategy, urban policy should prioritise the CBD, as a centre of corporate headquarters, finance, retail, business and legal services. This blueprint was being advanced by a coalition of politicians, developers, corporate executives, private foundations and media, under the name of public-private partnership. At this time, city

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planners emphasised profitable service-based activity: ‘Industrial activity in Downtown Cleveland is likely to continue to decline over the plan period and industrial firms occupying prime locations are likely to continue to experience intense competition for space from office, retail, housing, and entertainment uses.’ (Cleveland City Planning Commission, 1988, p. 9). Some questioned the priorities involved: (the process) ‘has resulted in an imbalanced development strategy for Cleveland. Downtown development has overshadowed the redevelopment of the city’s neighborhoods’ (Keating et al., 1989, p. 121). Against this, some contended that the prominent corporate role filled a void since: ‘Cleveland has no middle class living in the city limits’.54 Besides, activating renewal in the city core would make quicker impact:55 It’s really much easier to build a building Downtown than it is to revitalise a neighbourhood . . . . Downtown has changed in 7 years or less. No neighbourhood is going to turn round in anything less than 17 years . . . . The city’s version of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Conference—Cleveland Tomorrow, a promotional organisation comprising CEOs from the top 50 corporations—disowned any characterisation of its regeneration being based on abandonment of manufacturing and traditional neighbourhoods:56 This organisation has never seen the service sector as an answer. It is a complement . . . . That’s why we’re spending a lot of effort on new centres of research, new centres of manufacturing . . . (Services) become healthier if manufacturing is healthy . . . . The ‘comeback’ stories are centred around physical products—Tower City etc . . . . Those are manifestations. The real comeback story is that we created an ability for ourselves to start addressing our problem. In this effort, business claimed sensitivity to community needs,57 if only because widespread urban poverty was unattractive to investors.58 A former City Planning Director remained unconvinced. The proper public sector role was to side with the least economically-enfranchised, not to forfeit tax revenue for schools on subsidies (which often involved displacement and similar ‘zero-sum’ outcomes), and to subjugate redistributive obligations to the detriment of shattered neighbourhoods:59 What we’re doing in Cleveland is building some new buildings without necessarily creating any new wealth. We’re giving away the property taxes and the market is not growing . . . . simply shifting in Downtown from last year’s building to this year’s . . . . each mayor since the 60s, regardless of their philosophy . . . . (or) their platform was dominated and ultimately controlled by business interests. (If continued) outside of enclaves of glitzy

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development in Downtown . . . . gentrified neighbourhoods here and there . . . . the rest of the city will be a basket case. Cleveland was successful in the 1980s in attracting UDAG. But of total spend, 81% was devoted to commercial/office development, 86% of which was located Downtown. Just over 16% of funding went to neighbourhoods. This approximated national distribution—only 15% of UDAG funds were spent on ‘neighbourhood facilities’; most went to Downtown projects—especially to hotel developments (Krumholz, 1991). An expert in the city’s economic development during much of this period applauded this allocation as compensatory for previous anti-business policies:60 For years we had an urban populist attitude which was damn the banks, damn the major industries . . . . The big corporations were driving Cleveland into the ground, when in reality the big corporations were the only thing keeping this city afloat . . . . There was nobody going out to encourage outside investors . . . . My style was ‘let’s make a deal’. Lets go out to the private sector . . . . Let’s go out there and hustle . . . . In order to keep those jobs we had to approach the ego of those banks and say ‘how would you like to have the largest building in Cleveland . . . .?’ The efficacy of this proactive engagement with developers was endorsed by city governance, and not perceived as generating opportunity cost for neighbourhoods. If the investors turned away from Downtown, they were thought to seek suburban destinations rather than alternative urban space.61 Besides, it was argued that the ideological environment favoured accommodation with property interests, a reality that increasingly dawned on some community activists:62 The City Planning Commission continues to be . . . . a development-oriented department. Social equity planning is not significantly on the agenda . . . . non-profit neighbourhood-based development corporations changed their orientation to in effect guide and facilitate physical redevelopment . . . . The nationally-competitive nature of UDAG-bidding leaned towards largescale projects capable of impressive leverage—more suitable for Downtowns than neighbourhoods. Indisputably, however, substantial unemployment and poverty persisted despite this urban entrepreneurialism. City unemployment rates by the close of the 1980s resumed their 3% gap with the national rate, having doubled that gap in the recessionary peak. But this was contextualised in continued population loss63 and related dwindling of the workforce. In the 1980s, the rapid growth in executive employment by-passed those in unfavourable spatial and skill positions: ‘Current job growth in Cleveland is largely confined to the Downtown area’s professional and business services

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sector’ (Coulton et al., 1990, p. 9). Of the net non-manufacturing total job gain of 85 400, the employment growth areas were in finance, insurance, real estate, retail, and general services, accounting for 90 900 jobs. In this sectoral shift, the predominance of ‘blue-collar occupations among males in Cleveland’s poor areas suggested that they had been vulnerable to further manufacturing declines in the 80s.’64 Moreover, the poor became increasingly insulated from the non-poor. In the 1970s, the number of poverty areas in Cleveland doubled, and more than doubled again in the 1980s (Coulton et al., 1990).65 Whereas Cleveland’s poor population grew in the 1980s by nearly 19%, the share of the poor living in high poverty areas rose from 31% in 1979 to 42% in 1988.66 Such concentrated and chronic deprivation created a process of social impoverishment. As Cleveland continued to see poverty expenditures absorb higher shares of local government budget, demand came from some that greater public spending should be vested in economic development, requiring commensurate reduction in poverty spending, so that faster economic growth resulting from more business activity could bulge the tax base and reduce poverty. Civic perspectives on development reflected these distinctions. For instance, one supported continued stimulation of the city’s convention industry ‘including efforts to build hotels and develop other Downtown recreation, entertainment and commercial areas’, while arguing that financial incentives should only be donated ‘when public sector goals and policies are clear and specified’.67 Another study linked the development slant to poverty growth:68 Nationally, Cleveland ranks second in the amount of poverty concentrated in its urban core and tenth among 55 major urban areas surveyed in its level of socio-economic hardship . . . . the generally one-sided development taking place . . . . in large part limited to light manufacturing and the service sector, is a factor that should be taken into consideration when evaluating the use of public economic development incentives. The 1980s view that scarce resources needed to be deployed where most jobs could be generated tended to under-estimate the social infrastructure for sustainable economic development.69 The poverty lobby itself stressed targeted economic improvement and customised family-support programmes in distressed neighbourhoods, largely dominated by the black community.70 However, a leading community activist was sceptical that the issue was simply about switching resources, rather than a fundamental re-think about community regeneration:71 I don’t believe in ‘trickle down’. But, on the otherhand, I don’t believe you can have a strong city without a strong Downtown . . . . Community development is swimming up-stream (against) the macro-forces which are

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grinding these neighbourhoods down. The fact of the matter is that it’s a global market-place. Either the locality becomes a contributor to the global situation or it’s a backwater . . . . The neighbourhood movement in America has been trying to preserve an out-moded romantic view of the neighbourhood. Until it gets real about the big economic forces which are shaping the future of this country it’s going to continue to be a heart-warming series of anecdotes about the little things we get done. Greater opportunity for the CDC-type of community force to get a seat at the table among the ‘shakers and movers’ derived from a confluence of its conversion to a more corporate culture and recognition among business that 1980s-development had limits, which needed to be transcended. As a leading realtor remarked, amongst key factors driving all the redevelopment:72 . . . . there was a tremendous ease in credit availability. Funny money . . . . That with the tax structure Federally . . . . made zero-equity development possible . . . . Developers were able to develop with a very modest amount of up-front investment . . . (Now) you can’t borrow unless you have provable documentable tenants in place that will to a large extent support your debt service . . . . Even real estate interests, critical of an anti-business city bureaucracy in the past, conceded: ‘They’ve given away a lot of free rent, a great deal of concessions to get these people in . . . now the question is: will they survive?’73 Never mind addressing the relatively neglected neighbourhoods, this speculative development demanded that Downtown be developed into an ‘Urban Excitement Center’, attracting custom because it incorporated mixed-uses such as housing, retail, arts, waterfront amenities, and such like. Thus, a Downtown Cultural District—Playhouse Square—was formed, and sought corporate and public funding not only on the premise that it offered quality entertainment appreciated by business executives, but also that it was itself an important economic regenerator, boosting city image and adjacent real estate values and occupancy rates.74 Similarly, Lakefront development adjacent to the city core proceeded: private facilities like marinas75 alongside ‘public’ amenities like an aquarium, Maritime Museum, and Rock n’ Roll Music Hall of Fame, steered through a Development Corporation, established as a partnership between government, business, and philanthropic community leadership. But it was converted from a mainly private to a mainly public-oriented scheme,76 accommodating ‘public access institutions with an educational mission on public property . . . . institutions that provide a service to the community . . . . not an entertainment complex . . . . not for Yuppies either.’77 Yet, public accountability was qualified, almost as if these developments were seen to have an ‘economic’ component, involving corporation deal-making with

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developers, and a ‘social’ component, comprising quality control from the city’s Planning Department: ‘planning should . . . . by setting overall goals reduce the risk to a developer’.78 This ‘partnership’ model was endorsed with different slants by different constituencies. The Citizen’s League acknowledged that ‘the real world’ of American economy was the free enterprise system. Balance derived from government public responsibility and corporate social responsibility.79 The Labour movement, while sceptical of business motivation, was well integrated into the various business networks, such as the Growth Association and the Roundtable, and tried to arbitrate the range of contradictions it confronted— bemoaning deindustrialisation while keen to organise in the service sector; supporting teacher opposition to abatements, which denuded school funding, while keen to maximise construction employment associated with development; and complicit in promoting Cleveland’s ‘resurgence’, while sympathetic to investment-starved neighbourhoods.80 Partly, these contradictions were mediated through the movement’s ‘social’ wing, which focused on community issues.81 Booster organisations argued the community benefit of city core development. New buildings had re-committed a corporate presence, very important from a philanthropic perspective.82 ‘Enlightened’ business interests regarded partnerships as sites, where the contest between subsidised private-sector driven development could be mediated by sufficient attention to decaying neighbourhoods to avoid urban instability.83 The ‘partnership trade-off’ between accumulation and legitimation was averred by a leading business proponent:84 If we didn’t have all these new buildings down here, which are filling up gradually, we’d have a much smaller employment base . . . . You develop a mind-set on the part of the business leadership. They know that in order to have the Downtown development accepted by the people out there, they’ve got to do some out-reach to the neighbourhoods . . . . They have a common interest in making the place where they live prosper and function well. The Foundations were drawn into co-funding business-oriented partnership ventures, which some critics challenged in terms of equity and holistic regeneration.85 One Foundation official regarded community leadership as vital but scarce, amid the absence of affluent city residential areas and the faltering orchestration of a weak civic infrastructure:86 The building of Society Center is not something that rebounds to the favour of the general citizenry . . . . The leadership is so much of a carpet-bagger leadership. Nobody lives in the city . . . . even the community organisers . . . . That’s the most startling thing to me coming from Pittsburgh . . . . The fact that they could get away with doing all this without the neighbourhoods

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rising up in arms . . . . is amazing . . . . But it’s a clear sign of how demoralised, despoiled and leaderless (they are). (Changing schools is critical, but) it’s hard in a place as blasted as this, where deep down people don’t have a faith that these institutions are fixable. Back in the early 1990s, a former senior figure in the City Council expressed the limitations of political power in directing regeneration, beyond mild indicative planning:87 A lot of people think it is the politicians who do the investment. We don’t. It is the private developers . . . . So there was no plan that we followed to do Downtown in lieu of neighbourhoods . . . . (Linkage was not easy) If you didn’t want them they could go to another city . . . . They didn’t have to go through that kind of nonsense . . . . That’s how you produce, you develop your Downtown sector . . . . But when you say ‘public-private’, its private money. What do you get out of it for the public? You’ve got to deal across the table . . . . If the public official is not strong enough to extract for his constituency those benefits which are necessary, he is at fault. But evidence of the city’s difficult struggle against decline continued during the 1990s (Keating and Krumholz, 1999), with population dipping further, poverty and jobless rates remaining high, most neighbourhoods deeply segregated by race, and public schools, whose intake was mostly minority and poor, persisting with high dropout rates and low attainment on standardised tests.

Cleveland’s recent development Despite this massive effort at regeneration over two decades, the development of mega signature projects such as the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland Browns Stadium, Jacobs Field and the Gund arena, and the related boosterism as a ‘comeback city’, Cleveland heralded the noughties in a fragile state. By 2009, its population continued to plunge to 430 000, compared with 478 000 in 2000, and less than half its peak of 914 000 in 1950: major infrastructure restoration was needed, such as its decaying major bridges; its last steel plant was mothballed, though its last auto plant was still operating; major Downtown redevelopment continued in areas like the Euclid Corridor; the city suffered continued job loss and high poverty rates, together with between 10 000 and 15 000 housing foreclosures and related vacant land; its underperforming public schools struggled for resources amid declining student rolls; the closure of dozens of Catholic churches across the city provided another indicator of the reduced city share of white residents; and meanwhile, regional sprawl persisted, and the racial divide continued to be off the policy agenda.88

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At 29%, poverty levels across the city are over twice the US rate of approximately 13%. But racial disparity is marked. Close to 36% of the black/African American population fall below the poverty line, double the figure for ‘white alone’ (18%). Half the unemployed are in poverty, and job prospects for many are dismal, with high levels of educational under-attainment evidenced in the figure of 35.6% that have qualifications less than ‘high school graduate’ (US Census Bureau, 2008). The city still lacks a coherent vision, outside major ‘parcelled’ developments like the University Circle, Cleveland Clinic and Downtown. So much of the political conversation continues to be about Downtown or other major projects like the Airport, while nobody of any political leverage lobbies for the public schools to be ‘regionalised’ in funding and operation, and the foreclosure crisis is devastating in areas such as ‘Slavic’ Village. Here, an area historically shaped around its long-departed textile and steel mills and its Polish and Czech immigrants since the mid-19th century, has been hit hard by the sub-prime housing debacle. Street after street is scarred with abandoned, boarded, and vandalised houses amid litter and garbage. Close to one-third of the community is now African American, and they have suffered acutely in this regard. Yet, nearby such a discarded community is the recently developed Mill Creek, a predominantly white, professional area with high quality ‘new urbanist’ development to offer ‘urban living with suburban flair’.89 Such contrasts abound in the city. To address the productive use of the thousands of vacant lots, there has emerged a ‘shrinking city’ initiative.90 Prompted by Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI), this ‘re-imagining’ of Cleveland promotes a short-, and long, -term vacant land strategy, based on a green development approach that includes not only green space and parks, but also community gardens that offer scope for ‘urban agriculture’, particularly for ‘food desert’ neighbourhoods that have no easy or affordable access to fresh fruit and vegetables. Arguably, however, this ‘shrinking city’ strategy, this deliberate move from smart growth to smart contraction may be read as resignation to the unlikely prospect of re-densification of what were once major urban centres like Cleveland. As in Pittsburgh, new ‘partners’ have been appearing in recent decades. Pre-eminent amongst US medical institutions, the Cleveland Clinic is the city’s major employer. It is also now a developer.91 In the University Circle District, adjacent institutions of Universities and Museums are marshalling their economic significance. Case-Western Reserve is considered a pivotal research-University ‘anchor’; the University Circle Development seeks to strengthen this major medical and research complex as a central economic generator for the city-region. It is argued that the creation of a critical mass of science and engineering capacity, in a way which systematises the interface between industry and academia, will inevitably produce local economic dividends—the ‘holy grail’ many US cities are pursuing on the basis of putative exemplars like Boston’s Route 128.92 In the Cleveland area,

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optimisation of marketable research in medical technology, electronics and optics in forms which move from invention to innovation to diffusion, is hoped to improve productivity, product development and new firm formation. But reservations qualify such expectation. First, local genesis of technological breakthroughs does not automatically deliver local appropriation of benefit. Intellectual property can be problematic to patent. Development through technology transfers and imitation may yield more dividend for some local economies than the substantial investment demanded for significant innovation. Second, effectiveness in technology application and adaptation is itself contingent on producing graduates with leading-edge know-how and workers with flexible generic skills—not a task helped by Cleveland’s under-achieving and segregated public school system. This might suggest that maximising the social as well as private rates of return on technology capacity requires government attention to education ‘basics’ as well as the higher education sector. Such attention cannot ignore the stark fault line of race, even if it remains important to understand race as socially constructed rather than as a deterministic and constant universal variable in the city.93 Yet, convincing evidence has yet to emerge of a transformative plan for the city’s public schools, overwhelmingly populated with African American students. It also infers that the communities contiguous to campus have opportunities for re-invigoration. As the city’s premier hub of innovation in education, health care and culture, and as a critical anchor institution, University Circle Inc. embraces a catalytic role in the development of the wider Uptown district, and in making better links both with adjacent black neighbourhoods and with Downtown. This shift from an insular to an engaged institution can be traced to the race riots in the city in 1967/1968. The once adversarial relationship with communities is now more positive. For instance, the Circle is keen to promote the scope for green collar jobs in neighbourhood laundry co-ops that can clean hospital linen, solar panel production and application, and urban agricultural schemes that also can teach children the benefits of healthy food.94 In addition, it is eager to play its part in the restoration of that part of Euclid Avenue—a spinal route to the city centre—that offers a gateway to the Circle. Ambitious plans are taking shape to: renovate buildings; develop new urban, mixed-use housing schemes; re-design a Plaza at the junction of Euclid and Mayfield; improve streetscapes with public art and landscaping; create better signage for connectivity; and link parks and other public spaces to extend access, develop bike trails, and generally enhance the aesthetic and ecological content. Cleveland’s Mid-Town Corridor Project has been interesting in this respect. Located between Downtown and University Circle, it was characterised as a traditional neighbourhood of light industry, offices, and declining retail shops. The Project aimed to re-create a business climate, in which commercial stakeholders can operate in security, stability and financial support from its

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Enterprise Zone status.95 Marketed as a business park adjoining medical, educational and cultural hubs, its prospectus was primarily targeted at property developers and commerce, premised on the concept that deteriorating neighbourhoods can be rescued from blight only if they can be mainstreamed into the market system. The formula for these kinds of regeneration drives has been quite universal: cushion development risk; improve infrastructure, aesthetics and accessibility; amplify the plus of current underdevelopment—labour supply, medium-cost land, car-parking, etc. The premise is simple: paraphrasing a reflection common in Third World debates, if there is anything worse than capitalist exploitation, it is capitalist indifference. Communities that mean business are meant to be open for business. But again, the issue of how such agendas can be operated within deeply divided cities, which have both an historic and contemporary fault-line of race, rarely hits the radar screen. For some local urban scholars, racism remains pervasive in a place that still lacks a coherent common vision,96 and the divisions and overwhelming crisis of foreclosure reflect the fundamental paradox in American society between a politics that affirms a democratic philosophy of community and equality, and an economics that extols individualism and inequality.97 But the three linked issues of Cleveland’s social challenge—under-performing public schools, neighbourhood safety, and the spatial concentration of substantial poverty—can only be tackled when people stop running away from each other into further suburban outposts. As an interesting reflection of this exodus, new shopping malls continue to emerge in outer developments 30 miles from the central city, while downtown malls like the Galleria—a prestigious showpiece that was exalted as evidence of Cleveland’s renaissance on the author’s first study tour in 1989—now struggles for commercial viability. Turning this pattern around assumes a ‘smart growth’ alternative to proliferated municipalisation that can facilitate multiple county tax-sharing.98 Travelling in the summer of 2009 through languishing black neighbourhoods, many so close to the Downtown, the massive extent of vacant land, linked to housing foreclosures and desertion, the scale of the socio-spatial inequality in the city was visually apparent. Twenty years previous, on a first encounter with the same areas, the extent of devastation and desolation was less marked. Whatever benefits all the prestigious Downtown and lakefront developments have brought to the city, their ‘trickle down’ to these bereft communities is difficult to detect. Pockets of revitalisation, such as University Circle, struggle to make an impact on the compounding problems of foreclosures and continued sprawl into an ever expanding suburban fringe, with all the deleterious effects on the city’s under-resourced public schools. It exposes the flawed legacy of projectbased development since the 1980s in the absence of a credible strategic plan for the whole city.99 Study tours in the city,100 video presentation, and discussions with researchers,101 and visits102 to particular community

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projects, in 2009, offered incisive insight into the significant challenge facing a shrinking city, scarred with high rates of poverty, racial segregation and inequality, and extensive land void.

Chicago: the ‘spectacular’ city In the field of urban studies, Chicago, as the third most populous US urban centre with 2.8 million people in the city and 9 million in the metropolitan area, has been iconic in many respects: its skyscraper built environment; its association with a distinctive urban sociology that addressed the influence of ethnic diversity, and with forms of community activism exemplified in Alinsky’s concepts of ‘people power’. Moreover, its tradition of ambitious and comprehensive city-building that exudes urban optimism has been rooted in Burnham’s pioneering 1909 Plan of Chicago, with its expansive grid development and major infrastructural and ‘public space’ projects (Smith, 2006).103 However, following its remarkable growth from the early 20th century, Chicago experienced the typical post-war de-centralisation, with centrifugal forms of suburbanisation and manufacturing job re-location. Mayer and Wade (1969, p. 426) have noted: ‘As a result, the City of Chicago’s share of manufacturing employment in the metropolitan area dropped from 71% in 1947 to 54% in 1961. By 1965 over half the industrial jobs were to be found outside the city limits of Chicago.’ Alongside these patterns of urban sprawl, the city itself underwent post-war urban renewal, and the combined effect produced a significant loss in the city share of regional population. AbuLughod (1999) recounts how Chicago lost nearly half of its manufacturing jobs from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. In a significant 15 year period, from 1981 to 1996, manufacturing employment in Chicago reduced from 28.4% to 17.6%, while jobs in finance, insurance, and real estate increased from 6.1% to 10.3%, and services employment rose from 21.2% to 37.1%. These economic shifts were mirrored in population flows. While the city’s population of 3 million in 1980 dropped to 2.78 million in 1990, it increased back to 2.89 million in 2000, an increase of 4%. But the increase of people living in the Loop, Chicago’s Central Business District, was from 6462 in 1980 to 16 388 in 2000, a two and a half-fold rise (Hyra, 2008). Thus, while many American cities have seen this process of hollowing out of jobs and people as auguring a major decline in their central business districts, this fate has not afflicted Chicago. In the last two decades, downtown Chicago has been significantly recast. Under the centralist direction of Mayor Richard M. Daley, over $5 billion has been invested in grand public projects, particularly along the lakefront from Navy Pier through to the half billion dollar Millennium Park to the Field Museum and Soldier Field and round to an expanded McCormick Place, all designed to amplify city capacity for recreation, culture, heritage, and tour-

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ism. Advocates of this inventive urbanism emphasise the democratic and interactive content of free public arenas such as Millennium Park, with its bold architecture, public art, and urban landscaping transforming a decrepit site into Chicago’s version of New York’s Central Park. Moreover, they note how these magnet attractions have stimulated revenues in terms of city tax and employment, residential property values, hotel occupancy, restaurants and retail in this East-side area of ‘the Loop’ (Uhlir, 2005). Creating an impressive ‘cultural mile’ in Central Michigan Avenue to complement the commercial retail centre of the ‘magnificent mile’ in North Michigan Avenue, such signature projects have co-habited a commercial core with a swathe of office and residential developments that reflect the growth of private sector business and financial services, and a re-awakened appeal of downtown living (Spirou and Judd, 2009). Accompanying these dramatic urban statements have been strategic programmes of environmental improvement, including significant tree and flower planting, to ‘green’ and beautify the central city. But this is no simple resurgence of ‘Downtown’. Rather, Chicago’s city centre is being transformed in socio-spatial ways well-described by Sassen (2004, p. 25): Many large headquarters are moving out, while there is a boom in the number of small firms that specialize in foreign-oriented services. Office buildings are being turned into apartments, and warehouses into lofts. Restaurants, theatres, and boutiques spring up to cater to the new, affluent downtown dwellers. Downtown itself swells and grows, gobbling up onceseedy districts on its fringe . . . . Such massive reshaping of social space has invited criticism that major public investment has been expended to improve the city’s facade, while its racial inequities and related festering problems of affordable and social housing and under-performing public schools are relatively neglected. Indeed, some go as far as to insist that these plans that extol the city as spectacle and theme park deliberately demarcate the prosperous area stretching from the Gold Coast in the north to the gentrified parts of Michigan Avenue in the south from the concentrated spaces of poverty and race in places like the city’s Southside, home to a significant share of Chicago’s African Americans. For instance, Abu-Lughod (2007), in charting the history of how the increasingly dense ghettos on the South and West Sides deepened racial segregation in the city, remarks how recent developments such as those around downtown and lakefront have served to buttress this social and ethnic separatism. One reflection of this is the impact on particular low-income black neighbourhoods (Hyra, 2008, p. 43): After forty years of population decline, the Near South Side, directly south of the Loop, and north of Bronzeville, had a nearly 40% increase in population between 1990 and 2000 . . . . (It) has been transformed from a

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decaying industrial center to a chic professional neighborhood . . . In 1990, Near South Side median household income was $6804, well below the poverty line. By 2000, the household income had jumped over 400% to $34 329, a clear sign of the Loop’s southern expansion and gentrification.

Race and division In recent history, the ‘inter-regnum’ between the two decade reign of the first Mayor Daley, as city boss up until 1976, and the similar pre-eminence of his son up to the present, saw a series of urban regimes, including the contentious Mayoralty of Harold Washington from 1983 to 1987. As the city’s first African American leader, his election as a champion of neighbourhood development arose out of a two-way split in the ‘white’ vote. As noted by Spirou and Judd (2009, p. 9), his tenure was marked by his: ‘. . . running battle with a hostile city council dominated by entrenched politicians from the ethnic wards. The ‘council wars’, in which white machine politicians mounted a sustained campaign against Washington and his allies, produced an outpouring of racist invective so virulent that Chicago became known as “Beirut by the Lake”. The intensity of the racial warfare raised concerns not only about whether Washington would be able to implement his programs, but even whether Chicago was governable’. Upon his assumption of power in 1989, the current Mayor Daley has consolidated an alliance with Downtown corporate and real estate interests that has focused major investment in city centre and lakefront development, while allocating project funding to a broad-based set of black and Latino groups to help diversify his political base.104 Chicago is no longer simply a black and white city.105 It is now 36% black, a slight reduction of city share by 1.9% since 1990; 31% white, reduced from 38% in 1990, meaning that the white population declined by nearly 15%; and 28% Hispanic, with the remaining 5% largely Asian. A notable change was the increase of Chicago’s Hispanic population by nearly 38% over that decade (Wilson and Taub, 2007). Its metro area ranks fifth among the US’s most residentially segregated metropolitan areas. As stated by Forman and Kryson (2008, p. 2): ‘In the city of Chicago, black-white separation has been high for decades, with the dissimilarity index peaking at 92 in 1970, and remaining as high as 81 in 2000’. This segregation provides the spatial frame for persistent racial inequalities (Sampson and Morenoff, 2004). Katz (July 2006) puts it bluntly: ‘. . . the problems of racial separation and concentrated poverty go hand in hand. Extremely poor neighbourhoods are disproportionately inhabited by racial and ethnic minorities’. From 1990 to 2000, the share of Chicago’s black households with incomes above $50 000 doubled from 14 to 28%, and those earning over $100 000 rose from 1 to 6%. This context of an expanding black middle class provides the backdrop for the black gentrification evident in parts of the city. For example, an ethnographic study

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of the changes in a traditional black neighbourhood, North KenwoodOakland, notes the territoriality that the spatial transformation induced (Pattillo, 2007, p. 11): . . . . the discourse among black residents concerning the imminence of whites’ arrival is more extensive and more telling than their actual presence. North Kenwood-Oakland was less than 1 percent white in 1990, and 1.2 percent white in 2000. Still, residents are convinced of an impending white offensive. A study of race and housing in the Chicago region (Lukehart et al., 2005) concluded that 94% of black residents and 83% of Hispanic residents live in ‘low opportunity’ communities, that is those offering poor access to good housing and jobs. For instance in the period 1995–2000, the ‘highest opportunity’ communities had 34 times as many created jobs within a 10 mile radius as the ‘lowest opportunity’ ones. ‘Comparisons across a variety of quality of life issues, ranging from crime to asthma, the amount of recreational space, and civic participation, find similar disparities’ (p. 2). Chicago has been long notorious for its grim public housing. In the words of Popkin (2010, p. 44): Decades of failed federal policies, managerial incompetence, financial malfeasance, and basic neglect had left its developments in an advanced state of decay. Conditions inside the developments were appalling, with crime and violence overwhelming and gang dominance nearly absolute. Faced with this durable spatial concentration of race and poverty, and the decline and neglect of its infamous high-rise public housing projects, Chicago has adopted since 1999 a radical programme, known as the Plan for Transformation. Part of a federal-sponsored initiative to reform distressed public housing in the US—referred to as HOPE V1 (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere)—the Chicago version included the demolition of all 53 high rise buildings, and involved almost 21 000 of the city’s 39 000 units of public housing. At its inception, the city’s Housing Authority planned to create 25 000 housing units in mostly mixed-income developments, and by the end of 2009, the plan was on course to have revitalised 71.7% of this target, with total completion expected by 2015 (Chicago Housing Authority, October 2008). But the aim is not simply to change the conventional perception and operation of public housing, with more efficient occupancy rates, rent collection, and maintenance of property values. While a central formal objective is to improve housing choice for low-income families, this is tied to a ‘moving to work’ economic purpose, whereby workforce development and related services can assist public housing residents achieve financial independence and ‘family self-sufficiency’. Other supplementary

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supports include counselling and guidance in accessing services, such as daycare amenities. Such a strategy includes a ‘compliance’ programme for former tenants of demolished projects, since they are obliged to earn their ‘eligibility’ for allocation to the higher quality replacement units by fulfilling the ‘work requirement’. With some exemptions, such as those needing ‘safe harbour’ from domestic violence, adults of working age have to be involved in job training, education, and/or regular employment for a minimum of 15 hours per week in the first 18 months, and for 20 hours per week thereafter. Other criteria include evidence of law-abiding behaviour and absence of, or treatment for, drug dependence. In this respect, the citizens ‘right’ to decent housing, regardless of income, is superseded by a ‘responsibility’ to show qualification for social housing, via a positive disposition and capacity to co-habit neighbourhoods with those of higher income. With demolition and lower density comes scope to relocate some residents, by granting them vouchers to be used to access the wider rental market, a process of dispersal of some existing tenants and attraction of new residents that is hoped will help build a diverse community in new mixed-income, stable neighbourhoods. For those former residents who ‘select’ to re-locate to the private market, using a housing choice voucher scheme, a set of ‘mobility’ services are available to advise about home caring skills, financial management, and ‘good neighbour’ and ‘family obligations’ aspects of community building. In terms of income thresholds, at least 75% of the new families under the voucher scheme and 40% of the new families under the public housing programme have to be ‘very low-income’—that is on admission, the household has an annual income below half of the area median income, adjusted for family size. To ensure a mixed-income character to new developments, tenure mix is to include a locally appropriate combination of public housing, affordable and market-rate units. The concept of ‘building community’ in mixed-income developments includes four dimensions: (1) the prospect of positive social interaction among residents across incomes; (2) the creation of a safe, inclusive, and diverse community, under-pinned by quality housing and amenities; (3) the scope for individual improvement in aspiration, access to opportunity, socioeconomic well-being, and civic responsibility; and (4) the potential for reducing prejudiced and racist attitudes and behaviour among residents. A recent assessment of progress in these aspects suggested that there were three main hindrances to achievement: the way the forums and social events designed to promote engagement appealed to sub-populations and thus were subject to uneven residential participation; the persistent perceptions of difference among residents, and the related inclination of owners and tenants to interact mostly within their own income group; and the practical obstacles to building a more diverse sociability, such as limited time and energy, and

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continued fear among some owners about the crime potential in the lower income districts of the development (Chaskin et al., 2009). Complementing this broad approach to community change in Chicago, the MacArthur Foundation committed a 10-year $150 million investment in a New Communities Program (NCP) in 16 distressed neighbourhoods, designed to comprehensively renew them into mixed-income areas with improved standards of safety, cohesion, educational attainment and economic security. Operating through the Chicago office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the scheme has claimed some success after its first five years (Fanton, 2007, p. 2): . . . . against a composite of indicators, half the NCP neighborhoods have improved while the city as a whole has declined; home prices have increased in all neighborhoods; school achievement is up in about a third of the communities; and the graduation rates are up in two-thirds . . . . Notably, the rate of business growth was up between 21/2 and 3 percent in all of the NCP neighborhoods, against a citywide decrease of about half a percent annually. MacArthur’s initial grant of $21 million has helped LISC and its community partners to leverage an additional $225 million into the neighbourhoods, and it has been estimated that the second tranche of $26 million in 2006 will attract public and private investment of $500 million. Involving a comprehensive approach to development that links housing, education, health, jobs, safety, recreation, transport, and so on, and that taps into an area’s assets, the concept promotes a market-based framework for strategic regeneration (LISC, 2008). In summary, the model involves: a main long-term and flexible investor (MacArthur); a proactive intermediary agency (LISC) that sponsors, coordinates and leverages; a credible community organisation that acts as the lead local partner connected to other relevant local stakeholders; integrated planning processes that attract the collaboration of other urban planners; the production of local plans that provide the scaffolding for both immediate accomplishments (‘doing while planning’) and long-term investment; and the building of multi-agency relationships for delivery, tied to specific objectives and benchmarks. By 2009, LISC was claiming that 14 community-based plans had been produced, with over 4000 residents involved in the process, and stronger networks within and among the communities had been forged. Centrally, it was about creating a ‘community of neighbours, a vibrant and interesting place, where families of diverse backgrounds and incomes can grow and prosper in an atmosphere of mutual support and respect’ (LISC, May 2005, p. 3). One indicator of community change identified is that areas such as Humboldt Park and West Haven are witnessing more decisive efforts to address racial and ethnic difference. For example, West Haven, an area traditionally home to low and moderate income African Americans, was once dominated

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by the grim 12-block public housing settlement, known as Henry Horner Homes. Since it has been flattened to accommodate mixed-income development, the area is attracting more racially diverse newcomers of middle and upper income (MacArthur, 2007a). Another example comes from the African American Quad Communities of Kenwood, Oakland, Douglas and Grand Boulevard on the city’s Mid-South lakefront, home to 80 000 residents— having seen a population decline of 120 000 over 40 years from 1960. Once residence for blacks of all economic backgrounds, it was transformed in the latter half of the last century, due to the combination of federal-city urban renewal, and the desegregation processes attending civil rights legislation that made it possible for better-off blacks to abandon inner city environments. Even with a loss of housing stock—5664 units went in the 1990s—the vacancy rate was nearly one in four by 2000, at a time when nearly four in 10 of the families that remained were below the poverty line (LISC, May 2005). In such a context, these communities are attempting to regenerate in ways that make residence there appealing again to urban professionals, while wary of the displacements that can accompany gentrification.

Rethinking the ghetto? Initiatives like the New Communities Program have stressed the importance of enhancing community capacity for engagement, deal-making, leveraging, communicating, planning, and evaluating (LISC Chicago, 2008). It is argued that such leadership tools will improve appreciation of the community as a whole system, and thereby the traction for a results-based community development that operates in tandem with the Plan for Transformation.106 Advocates of these policies, designed to connect the poor into the socioeconomic mainstream, suggest that successive compensatory urban programmes targeted at such impoverished areas over four decades have failed. They have either made little impression on the social exclusion attributable to the spatial intensity of class and race, or have inadvertently served to accentuate dependency and crime. Rather than further similar ameliorative investment, this radical approach would both de-concentrate poverty and attract into these once inauspicious areas mixed-income residents, whose presence would enhance stability and marketability. Critics of the policy have charged that both the social analysis and political intent are flawed. For one thing, the policy is circumspect about referring directly to the issue of race and its division, preferring instead to employ a proxy such as income. It demonstrates limited understanding of complicated social networks in such areas, including the gangs, whose behaviour can be as much about survival as aggression amid the delicate ‘diplomacies’ of callous street life (Venkatesh, 2000). A grim account of such social circumstance in Chicago neighbourhoods like the South Side emerges in a study by Levin et al. (2004, p. 4):

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. . . high levels of drug and alcohol abuse; a large number of youth and adults participating in the illegal drug trade; high crime rates and levels of gang involvement; insufficient and substandard housing stock; a lack of quality youth activities and after–school programs; a lack of jobs that pay a living wage; insufficient job training programs that prepare people for living wage employment; an increasing number of former offenders returning to the community who face barriers to finding employment and housing; high rates of HIV/AIDS; poor infrastructure; a lack of City of Chicago services (missing garbage cans, irregular garbage collection, infrequent rat abatement in alleys); a polarized political climate; and ineffective policing, police corruption and brutality, and racial profiling. Despite this grim condition, Steinberg (2010, p. 221) rejects the putative social force attributed to concentrated poverty per se, claiming that proponents of this theory fail to substantiate its exceptional impact beyond structural determinants of deprivation, and its distinctive pathological influence on the behaviour of poor people. For him, the analysis indicates an ideological bias that demonises the racialised poor as inherently aberrant: Why is it, one might ask, that social scientists valorize the solidarities of white ethnics as ‘Gemeinschaft’, whereas in the case of racial minorities, these same solidarities are disparaged as ‘hypersegregation’ whose only remedy is ‘deconcentration by demolition’. In similar vein, Wilson (in Venkatesh, 2000, p. x) emphasises the political genesis of the ghetto in cities like Chicago, with its roots in racist discrimination that implicitly meant planning for separate and unequal development. Often, physical infrastructure like train tracks and expressways were used to partition the projects off from surrounding neighbourhoods, as in the bleak 28-block complex in Chicago, known as Robert Taylor Homes: . . . . the location of public housing projects in neighbourhoods of highest poverty concentration is the result of federal toleration of extensive segregation against African Americans in urban housing markets, as well as acquiescence to organized neighbourhood groups’ opposition to public housing construction in their communities. Nominally, a strategy of ‘scattering’ the problem offers all tenants a right to choose their residential location. But the eligibility criteria applied to select suitable candidates for the redeveloped units in their former community clearly circumscribes ‘choice’ (Wilen and Nayak, 2006). Such limitations are endorsed in a series of studies that tracked the fate of the displaced in Chicago’s programme (Bennett et al., 2006). For example, Fischer (2003) noted

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that up to 2002, 80% of those so moving went to communities that were over 90% black, and almost 70% were re-locating to high-poverty neighbourhoods. However, a more recent study, charting up to half way in the overall programme, has detected improvements in living conditions for many in replacement housing, alongside their greater financial struggle in dealing with burdens such as utility bills (Popkin, 2010, p. 58): . . . . residents who successfully relocated with a voucher have benefited in important ways: they are living in better housing in neighborhoods that are lower-poverty on average, and dramatically safer; their mental health has improved; and their children are having fewer behavior problems. But as in the early phases of the Plan, even though there are important gains for movers, there are also very real reasons for concern. Voucher holders are experiencing economic hardship that may place them at risk for housing instability. Moreover, this recent study confirms that almost all the re-located have been moved to areas that are predominantly African American. According to Street (2007, p. 234), this pattern ensures that most end up in other pauperised neighbourhoods, though . . . at a greater and ‘safer’ distance from expanding affluent and predominantly white downtown neighborhoods where powerful real estate and commercial interests reap windfall profits by developing former black public residential sites. Unable to afford rents and mortgages and meet other standards (full-time employment and good credit rating) to apply for ‘replacement’ CHA units in new ‘mixed-income developments’ built on some old CHA sites (e.g. Cabrini-Green), 3200 CHA families were re-located with ‘Housing Choice Vouchers’ under the Transformation Plan between 1995 and 2002. Of those re-located (or evicted), 82 percent ‘moved’ to neighborhoods that were at least 90 percent African American. But, perhaps, the most acute dilemma concerns the limited success in improving the prospects of the so-called ‘hard to house’—families addressing acute problems of illness, criminal records, drug dependence, and weak labour-market attachments—who did not ‘earn’ automatic entitlement to be allocated any decent new housing: (Popkin, 2010, p. 60): . . . . given the legacy of discrimination and segregation in Chicago that created the terrible conditions in CHA housing, we owe these most damaged families a serious and intensive effort to address their needs and help them move on to better, safer communities—especially if we hope to improve outcomes for the next generation.

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For these most vulnerable families, there has been little progress (Popkin, 2006). Yet, as a vital part of the ‘informal’ city, whatever their marginal relationship to both state and market, their resilient response will contribute significantly to the production of the urban in Chicago in a similar way that informal communities operate in the Global South.107 Even for those families permitted to return to their former neighbourhood, the new units are often not sized to accommodate the traditional extended family structures. Large households remain common, but four bedroom units are not, and the Housing Authority (CHA) (October 2008, p. 81) itself acknowledges the problem: Although the CHA is rehabilitating some larger units, as well as constructing new units in mixed-income/mixed-finance developments, there are not enough of these larger units available due to the costs associated with building and the limited land availability to construct units of that size. Thus, a substantial share of the informal, everyday life of public housing residents is challenged if not excluded from the requirements for residents qualifying for a unit. Similarly, deconcentration and desegregation through HOPE V1, without the concomitant socio-economic opportunities, will likely prove insufficient (Popkin, 2010). Importantly, the creation of mixed-income settlements can involve the diminution of affordable rental property. Across the US, these strategies were being launched at a time when such shrinkage was already underway. In the period 1993–2003, the stock of low-cost rentals fell by 1.2 million units in a country where one-third of households rented their homes (MacArthur, 2007b). In response to Chicago’s programme, tenant protest has been seen as muted, a dearth of activism that has been attributed, in part, to the difficulty of resisting an overall federal strategy that has been adroitly represented as propitious to both tenant and city interest. Partly, it has been seen as an outcome of the competitive and individualist basis of re-housing selection, and the related displacement of some former residents, processes of dispersal that frustrate collective defiance. But this interpretation under-estimates both the narrow political space to challenge a strategy that is at least addressing the condition of public housing after decades of neglect and decline, and the actual informal responses of tenants that cannot be accurately characterised as passive, if reluctant, compliance.108 For some critics, this ‘informal’ eviction strategy can be interpreted as a deliberate move to create gentrification opportunities in inner city communities. In Chicago, much new development has been adjacent to an expanding Central Business District, or in the case of the replaced dismal projects in North Side’s Cabrini-Green, adjacent to the affluent Gold Coast.109 In the immediate era before the recent near financial meltdown, such investments were part of a ‘tax-income financed’ property bonanza. With undue hyperbole, some analysis suggests that this policy constitutes a specific tactic in

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the macro project to rescale the state within a neo-liberalised economy (Hackworth, 2007). Contrary to this critique of the state’s purpose, a more differentiated view suggests that HOPE V1 interventions generate conflict and ambivalence among all the stakeholders involved, including the poorest tenants. In a recent ethnographic study of the politics of race and class in Chicago, Pattillo (2007, p. 107), while sceptical about the ‘mixed income route’ of HOPE V1 ‘because it is consonant with urban elites’ interests in recapturing the middle class for the city’s tax base’, notes the complicated feelings involved (ibid., p. 109): Poor residents . . . . both favor income mixing and desire more low-income rental housing; they don’t like the vacant lots but worry about getting pushed out once those lots are all filled up, and they have mixed opinions on the question of having neighbors with lifestyles similar to their own. Such discerning analysis better captures the ambivalence and convolution of the policy than the over-determinist interpretations from absolute critics, who depict it as a city government ploy to manage racialised inequities in ways that do not detract from a re-branded ‘spectacular’ city.110 For instance, the ‘social connector’ programme attached to the Plan for Transformation aims to offer supportive educational, training, and counselling services to residents, even if it cannot offer the one single thing that would turn around the condition of many residents, namely living-wage jobs. Nevertheless, the policies of ‘community change’ based around greater income diversity generate a conflictive response that embodies both hope for creating sustainable communities of choice alongside fear of gentrification, and the dissolution of traditional neighbourhoods associated with some household dispersal.111 Interviews with leading personnel in the civic agencies associated with the agenda—such as the MacArthur Foundation and its LISC-based intermediary, the New Communities Program—indicate the thoughtful and diligent way they hope to exploit this potential for community empowerment.112 For them, it is all about connection. Effective interaction precedes sustainable transformation. Thus, the engagement process itself is critical113: forming a ‘big tent’ of the broadest constituency; building resilient relationships among these stakeholders; agreeing a shared covenant around which to mobilise action; dividing responsibilities to optimise efficiency and inclusion; and monitoring, rewarding and celebrating achievement (LISC, Chicago, undated). As explained by the Director of the New Communities Program, the city has to get away from a concept of affordable housing that effectively locks poor people into poor neighbourhoods. In her view, one key to this involves recognition that markets are universal and natural. But concentrated high poverty neighbourhoods will struggle to attract the market. Mixed income residence changes both external perception and local capacity. To achieve this

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demands long-term vision for taking planning beyond the physical into a more integrated ‘quality of life’ dimension—building community rather than just building houses. This place-making respects the way African American and Hispanic communities often want to retain ethnic character, while emphasising the importance of building amenities in the neighbourhoods that attract and hold residents of middle income. Beyond such increased social diversity, greater racial diversity will happen organically, as with a white artist cadre moving into the Hispanic Pilsen community. But multi-ethnic co-habitation of an area does not in itself deliver diversity. Rather, investment in leadership and institutions are essential to anchor real cohesion. She accepts that the city’s Plan for Transformation did not anticipate the impact on the ‘recipient’ communities faced with an intake of displaced ‘voucher’ tenants. Without the requisite investment in social infrastructure, such communities feel great pressure.114 One explanation115 in this regard is that it is easier to calculate the costs of demolition and re-build than to estimate for building community capacity. In this view, planning and policy targeted at depressed communities tend to infer quick remedy, despite: the scale and duration of problems associated with chronic poverty and joblessness; the disproportionately modest resources allocated for resolution; the lack of consistent intervention; and the political culture in the US, which tends to see help for the poor as close to dreaded socialism. Whereas for decades, the blocks of public housing on the South Side were isolated, enclosed and distressed, now with the prospect of attracting back some suburbanites to city centre living, this area is being re-cast as attractively near to downtown and lakefront. In this way, market forces may inadvertently create greater diversity. But there is nothing in the Plan for Transformation that seeks deliberately to extend racially diverse neighbourhoods, and the target of mixed-income settlement does not automatically produce communities of mixed race. Indeed, some residents have come to view the whole process ‘as an attempt to force poor African Americans into the far-off suburbs while rich whites grabbed the land’ (Popkin, 2010, p. 44). Some community organisers116 also feel that ‘screening’ procedures and the support system directed at public housing tenants imply a didactic message: we have to teach you to behave properly. As such, some tenants, particularly African Americans, can consider it an offensive process that offers little choice. Thus, within the new ‘mixed’ communities, there can still be effective segregation. Other community organisers stress how regardless of the social engineering behind the drive for mixed-income communities, forms of segregation are changing. From this view, outside the deep racial boundaries in South and West Side, the once strong ethnic lines in the city are diluting, since certain attachments that grew out of work, organised labour, church, and neighbourhood have lost their traction through economic re-structuring, decline in religious affiliation, and the greater mobility and cross-city networking among youth.117

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Alongside the issue of segregated housing, there is the enduring struggle around under-performing schools in poor neighbourhoods. Some would insist that city government is according this some attention, showing innovative effort, through initiatives like Charter schools, to address chronically failing schools in ways that do not accept race as an excuse for under-attainment.118 Similarly, through inter-disciplinary and collaborative partnerships involving community, church, university, and professional agencies, the racial inequalities in health are increasingly being linked to the city’s marked socio-spatial inequities.119 Thus, while the agenda around the creation of mixed-income communities has produced: physical improvements; a re-integration of much of the new housing into the traditional neighbourhood grid; more choice for some of the poor to experience safer environments; improved support systems for accessing opportunity; and more responsive service-delivery, the sheer scale of the remaining problems around race, class, and space is formidable.120 As expressed by Wilson and Taub (2007 p. 182) in their study of four Chicago neighbourhoods: . . . since urban neighborhoods are divided racially, ethnically, and culturally, the potential for ethnic conflict in the larger city is always present because groups are far more likely to focus on their differences than on their commonalities. Although they may be comfortable in their own monolithic neighborhoods, and although many of their members work in integrated employment settings, these groups are likely to view one another as competitors for political, social, and cultural resources. In their reservation about the ‘integration’ policy, many interviewees emphasised: its reduction of public housing stock; the typical raised rent levels for remaining tenants; the raised land values that can accentuate the displacement features of gentrification; the fracturing of good community infrastructure and solidarities that can accompany massive demolition programmes; the way that dispersing the poor into other fragile neighbourhoods can be a ‘tipping point’ that risks the survival of those areas; the contested focus on ‘proper’ neighbourhood standards of behaviour; and the reluctance to address the issue of race and division more directly, despite the fact that African Americans constitute up to 94% of Chicago’s public housing (Hyra, 2008). Moreover, some of these integration programmes can inadvertently discriminate against disadvantaged groups, as Massey and Denton remark in their study of ‘American apartheid’ (1993, p. 227): ‘Inevitably, many deserving black families with high aspirations for residential mobility are kept out so that a few privileged whites and blacks can enjoy the benefits of an economically stable, integrated neighborhood’. Interestingly, this potential for intra-racial conflict is at odds with the views of people like Wilson (1987), who have advocated the regenerative role

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of middle class blacks who return to urban black neighbourhoods. In this regard, Hyra comments (2008, pp. 131–132): . . . the actions of the black middle class contradict what many researchers have described as their coming ‘home’ to these communities to facilitate racial uplift, unity, and pride, since their actions influence the displacement of poor African Americans. In light of Wilson’s work, this finding has important implications, as it suggests that the arrival of the black middle class is not clearly advantageous for the ‘underclass’. For many in the black middle class, ‘coming home’ refers to returning to culturally significant spaces where poor blacks are no longer welcome. Of course, all these issues need to be viewed in the context of the long legacy of ‘white flight’ from the city, and indeed some inner suburbs have been experiencing a ‘second round’ of such flight in recent decades. Thus, it is important to frame responses in terms of smart growth and more metropolitan planning, ideally under-pinned by more tax sharing between the central city and surrounding municipalities. In this sense, sprawl is not simply an environmental issue. It is a race issue. Planning frameworks in the post-war US created a predominantly white suburbs and poorer urban core, with the poorest being usually people of colour. Without a metro-politics and related tax-sharing that tackles housing, schools, transport, and economic development on a more balanced regional basis, there will continue to be a high risk of racial bias in development patterns (Powell, 2010). One problem is that there is no single regional government agency to champion the efficiency and equity case for looking at a range of issues, such as diversity, the mortgage crisis, the schools issue, and so on, across boundaries of local administrations in Greater Chicago.121 Without this perspective, and the related prospect of a more sustainable economic development, there is a risk that nearby towns and inner suburbs will react negatively against Chicago displacing some of its public housing residents onto them. Given their own de-industrialisation, social difficulties, and foreclosures, they may be inclined to regard any new arrival of low-income people as likely to accentuate their depressed housing and labour markets. Moreover, there can be a reflexive association of ‘affordable housing’ with the idea of a ‘burden’ on community, or with the issue of race, whereas a balanced housing stock, in terms of tenure and access, across the region may help promote the strengths of diversity.122

Divided city: whose regeneration? There has been a long-standing debate in urban regeneration about the difference between development in a place, and development of a place.

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Whereas the former is content with physical and economic improvement within an area, the latter is concerned about enhancing the life chances of residents. This distinction is particularly relevant to assessing the beneficiaries of the efforts to re-make cities since the 1980s, as indicated in this research on these three cities. For instance, alongside the conventional racial inequities in this process, to what extent does class trump race during the re-development of a black community? For some, the answer is clear, even if expressed in over-generalisation (Hyra, 2008, p. 160): More affluent Americans, such as real estate developers and homeowners, prosper, while those of modest income are displaced to increasingly segregated and impoverished areas. Thus, the new urban renewal is different: the intersection of race and class, as opposed to race alone, define who benefits and who does not. In response to inquiry about whether they considered regeneration had occurred since the early 1980s, most interviewees in the three cities answered in the affirmative, though this was noticeably more positive from business and statutory actors than from community respondents. Interestingly, of those who agreed that there had been an urban ‘comeback’, there was considerable enthusiasm among all sectors for the contribution made by the changed skyline Downtown, boosting the image of the city. This suggests that the dismissive attitude of some urban researchers towards ‘imaging’ a city may under-estimate the value attached to visual appearance and city status held by people who live and work in the urban environment. The notion of where ‘your’ city comes in the pecking order of all cities is keenly felt in the US by many active in regeneration. Given America’s more mobile society, many in business, planning, academia, and even community action, have travelled to many other US cities—and that tendency to compare and contrast is evident. But as Wilson and Taub (2007) note, American urban neighbourhoods, especially in large metropolitan areas like Chicago, seem likely to remain divided both racially and culturally. Some set this stark separatism in a wider paradox. Bishop and Cushing (2008, pp. 5–6) suggest that despite its experience of greater diversity, in recent times the US is seeing people sift neighbourhoods to select their residence among like-minded others, neighbourhoods that offer the comfort of cultural homogeneity: As Americans have moved over the past three decades, they have clustered in communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and, in the end, politics . . . . Americans were busy creating social resonators, and the hum that filled the air was the reverberated and amplified sound of their own voices and beliefs.

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From this view, the polarised culture wars and the acute political partisanship that putatively characterises contemporary America, derive from this tribal socio-spatial segregation and its in-bred ideological conformity: (ibid., p. 37) Politics, markets, economies, culture, and religion have all moved along the same trajectory, from fragmentation in the nineteenth century to conglomeration in the twentieth century to segmentation today. But one deficit in this interesting analysis of what they call ‘the Big Sort’ is that it under-states the limitations on mobility and choice available to significant sections, such as the urban poor, and in particular, African Americans. Business interests attributed more of a ‘high risk’ to Downtown investments than did the community sector, many of whom regarded Downtown development as having had an opportunity cost for neighbourhoods. Business and public officials emphasised that such investment was essential to counter suburban ‘pull’. However, when considering the redistributive benefits of this city core emphasis, many business and statutory people remained confident that the multiplier—the ‘trickle down’—would improve everyone’s prospects, whereas community interests displayed greater scepticism. The need for a more coherent strategic intervention in city re-building is widely shared, though business is less enthusiastic towards such comprehensive planning. Asked for a viewpoint about a ‘linkage’ development policy, the community sector interviewees registered greater favour than their statutory or business counterparts, who tended to be wary of any regulatory burden that imposed greater investment costs than competitor cities. A sense loomed in such responses that in regenerating from a weakened base, efficiency and equity could be in contest, and that the fiscal and other exigencies of cities determined priority for the former goal over the latter. This issue struck at the heart of the divergence of views between the community activists, and their supporters, and other key players. In the three cities in the 1980s and 1990s, real estate was pivotal to the regeneration agenda. The built environment was improved in those places— city core, waterfronts, university/cultural districts, and selective neighbourhoods—which could make themselves most marketable. But the symmetry between townscape renewal and sustainable economic revitalisation was questionable, while the tension between privatism and redistribution accentuated. By the 1990s, the limits of this development package became apparent, with greater recognition of the centrality of human capital. But, for the most part, the issue of racial division kept a low profile in their discourses about urban regeneration. All the cities shared certain travails and opportunities. The ‘balkanisation’ effect penalised their tax base and minimised capacity for city/regional planning.123 Public costs exacted by such development extend beyond subsidy

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and tax abatement. The proliferation of undifferentiated tax incentives blunts their potential effect, while reassuring cities they retain capacity for action, even if that action has little demonstrable impact (Rubin and Rubin, 1987). But this ‘deal-making’ culture also colonised elements of the community sector, which saw its best bet in ‘partnering’ with corporate and Foundation dollars. Such inclusion helped to re-configure Partnerships. No longer monolithic structures fashioned in the image of orthodox political and business elites, their diffusion has been driven by the arrival of new players, such as universities and CDCs. Evidence from the primary data generated here tentatively suggests a more pluralist engagement among socio-economic forces—though one which still marginalises the most battered neighbourhoods, particularly those of African American persuasion. Mutual sensitivity was apparent among different sectors to each others’ respective concerns and constraints, though the policy articulation emerging from these alignments seemed still tightly circumscribed by the logics of privatism. Nevertheless, this remains a contention vigorously contested by the corporate sector:124 . . . . we really don’t have any power to do anything . . . . we have to persuade public leaders . . . . I think that a private sector organisation which attempts to run roughshod over a city will fail. That’s the secret of Pittsburgh’s success. It’s a rare thing to get groups of businessmen together to focus on a city rather than just their businesses. Though their markets are global, they recognise that they will be able to attract employees better if the city is liveable. But there is also a tale of two cities in each city when it comes to race. In each case, race features differently. For instance, with just over half of Cleveland’s population black, this share is nearly twice that of Pittsburgh’s, itself just over twice the national average. Cleveland’s demographics have been significantly shaped by ‘white middle class flight’,125 which in turn has impacted on service-resourcing, particularly detrimental to public schools, whose deterioration in turn has generated further affluent white migration. This divergence is linked to a distinctive experience of suburbanisation, more limited in Pittsburgh partly because its topography restrained the scope. This has ensured that Pittsburgh has been able to maintain a better residential social mix than Cleveland. Superficially, economic diversification has been similar: all three cities moved to post-industrialism, and amplified capacity in high-value services— medical, financial, and legal—while pursuing a ‘high-technology’ response to a more knowledge-based economy. But closer examination reveals some differentiation. Cleveland has been more advanced in legal services, less so in finance, while Pittsburgh’s overall shift from manufacturing has been more pronounced. Chicago has been most able to pursue a trajectory of ‘the global city’.126 Tax abatement has been a more prominent issue in Cleveland. This,

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in turn, is attributable to its political regime. Having one of the few Republican Mayors in Reagan’s America did Cleveland no harm in its successful bids for UDAG dollars, which were more influential in its Downtown revival than in Pittsburgh’s.127 The ‘vocabulary’ of regeneration—for instance, partnership, underclass— is familiar to the ‘shakers and movers’ in the three cases. Problems of fragmented planning are widely appreciated, though viable solutions seem elusive amid a series of paradoxes. For instance, each city requires an intensive focus if revitalisation is to be prioritised and a momentum maintained. Yet, it is widely accepted that sustainable urban recovery relies on a wider regional focus. An interesting feature in all cities is the widely shared sense of the familiar American narrative: the dream of the suburbs has drawn the best from the city, leaving wastelands among the glories of Central Business Districts: but the ‘frontier’ spirit can be re-awakened and these urban wastelands can be re-settled. This narrative is explored by Beauregard (1993) in his historical analysis of how deep-rooted this version is in the popular discourse about US urban decline, and his conclusions about the ambivalences Americans demonstrate towards the city, were echoed in many of the voices heard here in these cities. This suggests that those concerned with revitalising American cities have to tap into this deep vein in American popular imagination to re-kindle concern about the fate of central cities as a vital national resource. Again, the extent to which African Americans have been written out of this scripted American Dream is apparent in the continued relative neglect they endure in all three urban environments. Two other points can be made briefly: first, the formidable challenge involved in re-making older cities benefits from an optimism of will about the capacity for change. Whatever its other failings, there is a noticeable energy and ‘can do’ mentality inherent in American culture, prone to think of solutions rather than of problems. This quality of spirit is not readily transferable to different cultures, as the Thatcher revolution discovered. Nevertheless, it remains an important factor in any equation about regeneration. Second, urban research requires the application of many methods. But one which may be under-represented is what could be called ‘walking the city’—in other words, a repeated series of closely observed strolls throughout different areas of the city under scrutiny. Though prone to impressionistic bias, the sustained process brought out features not readily captured by other techniques. For instance, Pittsburgh and Chicago have in the main a better quality of ‘walkability’ and ease than Cleveland. Again, this is an issue of ambience and permeability that cannot be packaged easily by off-the-shelf development models. But it is an important aspect of a city’s well-being, and its prospect for connectivity. In summary, while Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland have endured similar global, national and regional trends, their particular circumstances

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have shaped their options and capacity for response. Clearly, history, politics and geography all matter when it comes to individual city revitalisation in the US. But so also does the distinctive role of race.

Notes 1. ‘City representatives participated in planning sessions, but the Conference formulated the essential program and submitted its plans to the city for approval and implementation’ (Stewman and Tarr, 1982, p. 73). 2. Interview with Executive Director of Downtown Promotion agency (1 July 1991). 3. Interview with Director of urban research centre, 25 October 1989. Note: He emphasised the pivotal research and development role of local universities in diversifying the economy both in terms of high technology and health and information-based services, which he argued had been ‘key generators of jobs’ since 1984. 4. Interview with President of Real Estate umbrella agency (12 June 1991). Note: he remarked that ‘the Savings and Loans scandal is being blamed on bad loans. There were not many bad loans. What Congress did was change the tax law in 1986, and all of a sudden, those who had developed property for economic benefits did not have reason to continue’. 5. Interview with researcher, University of Pittsburgh (25 October 1989). 6. Interview with CEO of major corporation located prominently in city centre (28 June 1991). He extolled the agglomeration economy of having top businesses clustered in a Central Business District. But he felt that informal business networks now operated; the formal role of the Allegheny Conference had been reduced. 7. Interview with Director of a major Regional Development agency (20 May 1991). 8. Interview with former senior City Planner, later senior figure in Cultural agency (28 June 1991). Note: He emphasised the importance of public officials finding common ground with developers, without whom the grandest civic plans would never occur. Corporate patronage of the Arts was critical in this respect. But public authority had to be appraised of the economic significance of cultural activities: ‘. . . . you are drawing people in to spend money in the district just as sports teams do, and they’re always looked upon as big economic regenerators . . . . This is augmenting Downtown development . . . . and that means that public money can go to neighbourhoods more . . . .’ 9. Interview with Vice President and Senior Economist of city bank (12 June 1991). Note: He commented; ‘I’m not sure that its going to be all that much of (an employment) growth sector for the simple reason that banks . . . may have too many people working already . . . . especially with mergers and consolidations.’ 10. Interview with Director of a major Regional Development agency (20 May 1991). While he acknowledged that conversion from railways and rivers to highways and airports ‘liberated physical facilities like riverfronts for new development’, he was wary that the bias towards services-based diversification under-estimated the imperative to re-form a manufacturing base, tapping ‘new forms of energy such as intellectual capital’ from local universities. 11. Interview with Vice President of a Business Promotion Agency (May 1991). Note: He emphasised the limits of ‘particular’ urban regenerations outside the context of the US’s global position: politically eminent and economically declining. But, he appreciated that tackling structural weaknesses such as the budget deficits through fiscal

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12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

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squeeze meant ‘devolving responsibility down to states and cities, where a disproportionate share of the poor lived’. Interview with Director of Economic Development in a public development agency (21 March 1991). Ibid. Note: He said: ‘The fact that civic private leadership is now much more diffuse, is to our benefit . . . . Where there is a meeting of objectives between public objectives and private civic leadership, there is opportunity for action, and there are many’. Ibid., Note: He commented: ‘ During the 1980s, there was a growing ability for the city to spend resources in neighbourhood development because there was a growing ability there to use that investment . . . . Until relatively strong development organisations emerged from the neighbourhoods, it was hard for us to be involved . . . . It has to be hard-nosed. It has to work . . . In terms of economic development, it has to make market sense.’ Interview with Senior Academic, University of Pittsburgh (2 May 1991). Interview with Senior Allegheny County Planner (11 June 1991). Interview with Senior Urban Studies Academic, Carnegie-Mellon University (27 October 1989). Interview with President of a metropolitan Realtors agency (12 June 1991). Interview with officer of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (27 October 1989). Interview with senior official, Pittsburgh City Council (3 May 1991). Interview with President of a metropolitan Realtors agency (12 June 1991) and with a senior Realtor (11 June 1991). Interview with the Programme Director of a major city Foundation (20 May 1991). Several Interviews with the Director of Evaluation of a city-wide community network (May/June 1991). He took the author on several trips across the city to view at first hand community projects. Two things stood out: the concentration on social housing as the key regenerative engine and source of managerial and financial expertise for many of the CDCs; and the fact that the more commercial real-estate development was concentrated in the least disadvantaged of the distressed neighbourhoods. Interview with Executive Director of a city-wide community network (20 May 1991). Note: the Director was extremely helpful. We had many interviews over May–June 1991, and visits to see different community projects. Notably, the immediate neighbourhoods around Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon Universities in Oakland had the prospect of leveraging university resources because the universities needed their cooperation in their real-estate development plans in the vicinity. But, the largely black public housing complex in West Oakland continued to be marginalised. Interview with Director of an agency assisting communities with planning and development (21 May 1991). Note: He emphasised the way resources and support for the average ‘advocacy’ group were over-stretched in the city. In general, he confirmed the hierarchical pattern of ‘fortunate’ CDCs down to modest, struggling local groups. Interview with the Director of Evaluation of a city-wide community network (20th May 1991). Note: He acknowledged that there were ‘Tier One CDCs’, which were sophisticated, well-resourced, making diverse interventions in larger communities, comprising more socially-mixed neighbourhoods; and ‘Tier-Two CDCs’, operating modest housing schemes in smaller, more residentially-based areas. Interview with Director of a Community agency (May 1991). Interview with Senior Allegheny County Planner (11 June 1991), op. cit.

188 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space Interview with official in a city development agency (2 May 1991). Interview with Executive Vice President of a major city bank (28 June 1991). Interview with senior Social Studies academic, University of Pittsburgh (13 June 1991). Second Interview with the Executive Director of a city-wide community network (1 July 1991). Note: the Director emphasised: ‘We’re trying to convince a lot of groups not to become developers, but to stay community planning and advocacy groups . . . . A lot of the problems communities face are not necessarily real estaterelated.’ Interview with official in Pittsburgh City Council involved in community development (11 June 1991). Interview with seasoned community campaigner (28 June 1991). Note: His organisation monitors the operation of the Community Reinvestment Act, which is designed to foster a comprehensive spread of domestic and commercial loans across the whole community. The institutions are compelled to publish annual figures to demonstrate compliance. He stressed: ‘When we begin to look at where the banks’ bad loans are, its ‘spec’ buildings, its shopping plazas . . . . it’s been at the expense of inner city commercial strips . . . . There’s gold out there (in the neighbourhoods). You have to mine it . . . . It’s not difficult to be rich in America. But you’ve gotta understand how the game is being played.’ Interview with President of a city bank (14 June 1991). Note: He remarked that as European and in particular Japanese financial sectors agglomerated, they would pose a competitive threat to US finance. Japanese expansionism in the US was a reflection. The long-standing local character of US banking was affected. Interview with Program Director of a research agency, University of Pittsburgh (July 2009). Interview with Regional Economist in a city bank (28 June 1991), and with Programme Director of a research agency, University of Pittsburgh, Ibid., (July 2009). Interview with President of a regional development association (14 June 1991). Note: His organisation constructs ‘regional validations’, i.e. rationales for why certain industries should be in the Pittsburgh area, on which basis it then proactively markets the advantages to companies in targeted sectors. Interview with the Executive Director of an agency concerned with Pittsburgh’s future economic development (1 July 1991). Note: the Director emphasised that ‘Renaissance’ now in Pittsburgh had to be more human resources-oriented, and had to disown the ‘built-in nostalgia that we lost the good jobs. People fail to remember what the injury rate was, the horrible conditions . . . .’ Interview with Executive Director of a city-wide community network (1 July 1991), op. cit. and with the Director again, op. cit. (July 2009). Interview with University Consultant (13 June 1991). Interview with the Executive Director of an agency concerned with Pittsburgh’s future economic development. op. cit. (1 July 1991). Interview with senior official in the Allegheny Conference on Community Development (22 May 1991); The official recalled: ‘The Airport was a 20 year dream. Land was acquired against much opposition . . . . We believed that it would be the single most important economic regenerator in the region, and it’s turning out to be true. But, then we now ask: ‘is this going to be such a magnet that it is going to compete with Downtown?’. . . .’ Interview with Senior Official, Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh (10 June 1991). Interview with Senior Planner, Pittsburgh City Council (1 May 1991). Note: The proposition that most is spent in neighbourhoods is true, allowing for the totality of

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46.

47.

48. 49.

50.

51.

52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57.

58.

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services. But, in particular Downtown projects, public subsidy has been notable. Data in City of Pittsburgh (September 1989), Progress in the Neighborhoods: 1983–88, shows that amidst Renaissance 11, two Downtown projects received $30 million. Interview with leading City Realtor (1 July 1991). Note: He remarked: ‘The Business Privilege Tax, everybody provided services in Pittsburgh pays, a lot of companies either get exemptions, or they process their business through a non-Pittsburgh accounting firm, . . . . (and) the tax is something they’ve apparently been very casual in enforcing or friendly in waiving’. Later, responding to the argument that focus on Downtown could disadvantage neighbourhoods, he said: ‘If I were some community activist . . . . pounding my fist on the table about this, any administration could quickly point out how much tax is paid Downtown compared to (the neighbourhood) and in fact it is a good thing these trophy buildings were built here. Because if they weren’t, if they were built out by the Airport . . . . then the school budget . . . the sanitation budget would be (affected).’ A site visit to this whole area in July 2009 indicated the substantial progress made, with chic apartments, restaurants, and boutiques, lending an ambience of a vibrant urban locale. A dissimilarity index of 60 or above is regarded as evidence of markedly high segregation. Interviews with Program Director of a research agency, University of Pittsburgh, op. cit. and with the former Executive Director of a city-wide community network op. cit. (July 2009). Interview with prominent city business person and leading member of both a city Foundation and a city promotion/development body (7 June 1991). Note: He was a long-standing mover in the city. He recalled that in the era of populist Kucinivitch, the business elite banded together and determined: ‘Hey, we’re not going to let this town go down the drains. We’re going to get in there and work with local government, get somebody elected as mayor who understands economic development, job creation . . . .’ Interview with Director of Research in city promotion/development body (7 June 1991). Note: the Director recalled the tradition of Cleveland being at the butt of national jokes: ‘mistake on the lake’. From the first study visit to the city in 1989, it was apparent that the city’s development agenda gave priority to re-shaping the Downtown in these terms. Ibid., p.57. Note: This includes measures the City operates through Local Development Corporations (LDCs), such as the Storefront Renovation Program. In an interview with a Design Specialist, Department of Community Development, City of Cleveland (7 May 1991), he explained that the investment was intended to stabilise neighbourhood commercial strips, something like UDG in the UK. Interview with Executive Director of a city Foundation (6 June 1991). Ibid. Interview with Senior Associate of a city promotion agency (23 April 1991). Ibid. He recounted that his agency got publicity when it was involved in flagship Downtown projects like the $300 million plus Gateway Stadium proposal, but got less coverage for similar sums it helped to channel into neighbourhoods. He also emphasised that ‘Cleveland’s neighbourhoods declined over 50 years. We’re not going to fix them in five’. Interview with the CEO of a major corporation in the area (and a central business figure in the city’s ‘growth coalition’) (25 June 1991). Note: He commented: ‘The disparity of income and . . . . of employment are too great to avoid a problem . . . . When you try to decide . . . . where should I put my company, you take a look at the various

190

59. 60.

61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66. 67. 68.

69.

70.

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space advantages that city has to offer for your employees to prefer living in that city over another one . . .’. While this meant that cities had to acquire distinctive attractions like major sports stadiums, and in the case of Cleveland, facilities like the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, he also appreciated that there was a great risk that over-building due to ‘artificial stimulating tax philosophies . . . . created a real problem . . . . increased the amount of debt of everybody’. Interview with former senior City Planner, and presently a senior academic, Cleveland University (16 April, 1991). Interview with senior businessman, and formerly senior city official involved in economic development (7 May 1991). Note: He was adamant about the efficacy of tax incentives in Cleveland’s soft real estate market: ‘I constantly hear this argument that these are taxes that would have gone to our schools. No, they wouldn’t have. The taxes never would have happened in the first place . . . . Either you’re going to go with development or you don’t go, because then you’re caught in the middle. You’re not getting the message across to your consumer—to investors—that Cleveland is open for investment. My policy would be that for the first 10 years anybody could get tax abatement. Just come in here and build. Ten years from now I know I’ll start getting investment that wasn’t here 10 years ago, and then I’ll have it for another 50 years . . . .’ Interview with Senior Development Officer (16 April 1991). Note: He supported public subsidy in the following terms: The Gallieri (a new prestigious Downtown shopping mall) is a good example . . . . built by a fairly wealthy developer . . . . But, developers are rich and that’s just the way it is. But their projects stand alone and they have to get finance . . . . They don’t use their own money. That’s the way developers act . . . . UDAG made it go’. Interview with senior activist involved in city planning (19 April 1991). US Bureau figures quoted in Growth Association Cleveland (1991), The Greater Cleveland Fact Book 1991, Cleveland, show that city population dropped from a peak of 914 808 in 1950 to 524 600 in 1990. The decade of greatest loss was the 1970s, which witnessed a decline from 750 879 to 573 822. Chow, J. and Coulton, C. (November 1990), Labor Force Profiles in Cleveland’s Low-Income Neighborhoods, Center for Urban Poverty and Social Change, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, p.13. Note: Poverty areas are those in which 40% or more of the population is poor. Paglin, M. (Fall 1989), ‘Estimating Poverty at the Local Level: applications to Cleveland and its neighborhoods’, Regional Economic Issues Review. Governmental Research Institute and The Citizens’ League of Greater Cleveland (May 1989), Focus: the final report, Cleveland, p.19. The Citizens’ League Research Institute Public Economic Development Incentives Task Force (August 1990), Economic Development Policy and Public Economic Development Incentives, Cleveland, pp. 26–27. Interview with senior economic researcher, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland (23 April 1991). Note: The economist argued that the corporate movers felt ‘you’re not going to have a viable Cleveland without a viable Downtown’. But the growth rate was not strong enough to absorb the city’s surplus labour. Meanwhile the huge problem of education and training was not receiving requisite attention. Interview with Director of a Poverty Research Institute (22 April 1991). Note: The Director did not feel that Downtown and Neighbourhood development had to be contradictory. She did acknowledge that there were various models for neighbourhood improvement. For instance, with respect to the CDC approach, led by the umbrella Neighborhood Progress Inc. (NPI), she remarked: ‘You can see a businessman’s mentality in NPI because it’s very much investment-oriented, it’s very

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71. 72.

73.

74. 75.

76.

77. 78.

79.

80.

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much re-building a neighbourhood climate conducive to business . . . . They’re not terribly interested in improving the cultural life . . . . or the social fabric . . . .’ Interview with President of a neighborhood network organisation (17 May 1991). Interview with prominent city realtor (6 June 1991). Note: He explained the devices available to sweeten development and cushion risk. For instance, ‘losses on real estate were deductible from ordinary income. So an investor could invest on paper in a property that was losing money on paper and he could have a personal gain from a cash standpoint. Thus, paper losses could be deducted from his personal income tax. The net savings in tax was a return on his cash investment. There were many billions raised nationally in syndications that were based exactly on that . . . .’ Interviews with leading Realtor (7 and 17 May 1991). Note: He said that in negotiating with potential outside investors, and addressing their concerns about their potential location, issues like schools, demographics, lifestyles, financing, incentives and links with City Hall are all important: ‘I never hear about high unemployment’. But, he felt that the way to improve Cleveland’s worst areas was ‘to keep the companies here and to get the corporate people involved . . . . When I see (some) in Council talking about neighbourhoods first, I think you’ll have a hard time supporting that from a corporate side’. Interview with Senior Officer, Cultural Organisation (9 July 1991). Interview with businessman involved in marina development (9 July 1991). Note: His company had been developing the marina component without incentives such as tax abatement, because he assessed the economics of the project to be sufficiently buoyant, due to ‘overwhelming’ demand for this leisure facility. In interviews with the Director of Organisational Development in a waterfront agency and a senior academic who was involved in the waterfront development (24 October 1989), the plans were ambitious for $1 billion investment and 9000 jobs, justified as a city-wide economic regenerator still in terms of ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’. In an interview with the Acting President of the waterfront agency (12 July 1991), the scale and direction seemed to have changed somewhat. He emphasised that after the city’s retail and office expansion, the waterfront had to find its niche in water-related amenities which complement Downtown attractions. Interview with Acting President of the waterfront agency. Ibid., (12 July 1991). Interview with Executive Director of a coalition of interests related to Cleveland’s waterfront development. The Director commented that their preference was for the waterfront to be transformed into ‘one big public park’. But they recognised that compromise with developers was essential, and thus concentrated their pressure on maximising public benefit, which they felt could be best advanced by an integrated master plan. Interview with senior figure in The Citizen’s League of Greater Cleveland (7 June 1991). Note: this interviewee was formerly a prominent officer involved in policymaking at the City Council, and recalled: ‘What I saw happening that concerned me was economic development for many of the people who worked in government could only be translated into real estate development’. Yet, she remained positive about public subsidy: ‘if there are not incentives, business is not going to build those buildings in the city . . . .’ Interview with the Executive Secretary of a major trade union operating in the region (6 June 1991). Note: He exemplified the pragmatism of US unionism: ‘The theory that the private sector’s always willing to help, I think that’s a lot of baloney. Privilege never gave anyone anything. You have to take it from them . . . .’ Explaining Labour’s involvement with business-based partnerships: ‘Labour has to take ad-

192

81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91.

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space vantage of the opportunities. Sometimes you may not get across. But, they know you’re there.’ Interview with the Executive Director of a Labour movement agency (12 July 1991). Note: He emphasised how difficult he had found it to convince city government of the need for a broader view of economic development: retention as well as new development, older industrial areas as well as Downtown. Grant-aid was not a policy. ‘You need public policy that ties together economic development, community development, education and training’. Interview with the Executive Director of a major ’booster’ organisation in Cleveland (17 June 1991). Note: He contended that being ‘headquartered’ in a city forced business leadership to use their skills and funds to address basic issues pertaining to urban well-being. He was confident that the development agenda would ‘trickle out’: ‘The focal point I guess of the eighties was to build these buildings and to reestablish a revitalised Downtown. The focal (sic) of the nineties . . . . is to address the socio-economic issues like poverty’. Interview with the Vice President of a Cleveland Bank (12 July 1991). Note: He asserted that remedial action against vast city disparities was essential: ‘If you don’t do that and get results you’re going to have riots, civil strife . . . . any (group) disenfranchised, they’re not going to take that very long’. Yet, again he was sceptical about any change contradictory to the logics of the current economic system: ‘What can organisations do without changing the dynamics of investment?’ Interview with prominent city business person and leading member of both a city Foundation and a city promotion/development body. op.cit. (7 June 1991). Note: He was a strong advocate of partnership: ‘You can’t do anything of scale by the public sector alone or the private sector alone.’ Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (April 1991), The Cleveland Foundation and the Disadvantaged: top-down solutions for the toughest problems. The report was referenced in Crain’s Cleveland Business (19 April 1991) as finding that only 25% of the Foundation’s grants were directly targeted at the disadvantaged. Led by a committee, judged to be dominated by white males from the corporate sector, it was said generally not to support advocacy groups. Interview with Executive Director of city Foundation (7 May 1991). Interview with former senior figure in the City Council (6 June, 1991). He gave the example of the large developers, Jacobs: ‘When Jacobs were doing the Tower development, they made available to us talent for neighbourhood development. Jacobs are not residential developers . . . . They build shopping centres. They build offices. You’re asking the private guys to walk into an area that the government has pulled out. They no longer find it feasible to re-build neighbourhoods. So you say ‘you guys gotta go in and do this’. There’s no reason why they should . . . .’ Interviews/discussions with senior urban studies academic in Cleveland (mid-July 2009). On a study tour of such areas in July 2009, this kind of contrast was stark. Interview with former senior City Planner, and presently a senior academic, Cleveland University (July 2009). Note: the irony is that while the Cleveland Clinics expand their ‘economic’ base, there is a growth in Cleveland’s medically uninsured, due to Medicaid not keeping pace with poverty growth; the shift to service employment, which carries less health care cover than manufacturing; and the acute rise in health costs pushing up health insurance premiums. See: Austrian, Z. and Cleeton, D. (Spring 1989), ‘The Medically Uninsured: a focus on the Cleveland Metropolitan Area’, Regional Economic Issues Review, pp. 21–28.

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92. Interviews with several officials in Boston Redevelopment Authority (16 October 1989); the Authority attributed their buoyant 1980s economy a great deal to a proximate R&D mileaux, but appreciated its dependence on defence contracts at a time of ascendancy for defence spending. 93. Interview and subsequent set of discussions with Cleveland-based academic specialising in spatial and urban theory (July 2009). 94. Interview with senior official associated with the development of University Circle (July 2009). 95. Interview with leading official of the Mid-Town Corridor (October 1989). 96. Interview with former senior City Planner, and presently a senior academic, Cleveland University. op. cit. (July 2009). 97. Interview and subsequent set of discussions with Cleveland-based academic specialising in spatial and urban theory. op. cit. (July 2009). 98. Interview with senior official associated with the development of University Circle. op. cit. (July 2009). 99. Interview with senior official associated with the development of University Circle. Ibid. (July 2009). 100. These study tours in July 2009 were facilitated and guided by Professors Helen Liggett and Dennis Keating from Cleveland State Universities, and both ‘guides’ were very informative and clearly committed to the welfare of the city’s most vulnerable communities. 101. For example, an interesting discussion on population shifts and new housing patterns with a demography specialist in a Cleveland university; and on social and educational challenges in contemporary Cleveland with an educationalist in a Cleveland university (July 2009). 102. For instance, thanks to a Housing Specialist with a Community Development Corporation, for her explanation of the regeneration in that community (July 2009). 103. There was an interesting panel discussion—including Carl Smith—on the continued relevance of Burnham to ambitious public space projects in contemporary city planning in Chicago, at a public meeting, in the Harold Washington Library Center (4 August 2009). 104. Several interviews/discussions with noted urban scholar in Chicago (May/June 2009). 105. Awareness about the racial nuances in the city was raised by attendance at many seminars and workshops during the period 2008–2009, including the regular meeting of the ‘Chicago School’ of urban scholars from the city’s universities; and the seminar series organised by the Great Cities Institute. To mention just one of these: Dr Finney, Community Planner and Chairman, The Woodlawn Organization, spoke on the theme: Challenges for the African American Male in the 21st Century (12 March 2009). 106. Interview with senior official knowledgeable about the New Communities Programme (14 July 2009). 107. Interview with doctoral student (4 August 2009), exploring the comparative relevance of her research in cities like Kolkata to the agenda for re-shaping urban space in Chicago. 108. Discussions with the Director, Great Cities Institute, during the period 2008– 2009. 109. Participation in workshop moderated by Janet Smith, professor and researcher (UIC), entitled The Cabrini-Green Diaspora Comes Home, and subsequent study tour of Cabrini Green, as part of the Urban Affairs Association 39th Annual Meeting on the theme of Contesting and Sustaining the City, Chicago (4–7th March 2009). Compared with a previous visit in 1995, this site visit illustrated the significant physical transformation in the area following demolition and re-build.

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110. Interview with senior urban academic (11 June 2009). 111. Interview with Director of Great Cities Institute, UIC (20 May 2009). 112. Interview with senior official knowledgeable about the New Communities Programme, op.cit. (14 July 2009); and a senior officer in a city Foundation (28 July 2009). 113. Interview with the Executive Director of a community-based agency (18 August 2009). He is a leading community organiser, who has been keen to raise the practice of community action from at best exercising vetoes over unwanted development to making positive change happen through smart mobilisation and networking. Involvement with this community expert dates back for over a decade, and includes exchange visits of social partners between Belfast and Chicago. 114. Interview with senior official knowledgeable about the New Communities Programme, op.cit. (14 July 2009). 115. Interview with senior officer in a city Foundation, op. cit. (28 July 2009). 116. Interview with leading neighborhood program Director (15 June 2009). 117. Interview with expert on community capacity (16 June 2009). 118. Interview with community organiser (31 July 2009). Subsequent visits with him to two Charter schools in predominantly poor black neighbourhoods, on 12 August 2009, demonstrated both the challenge to, and commitment from, the school leaders. 119. These efforts became evident from participation in meetings and workshops, including: UIC Neighborhoods Initiative Divisional Meeting (28 July 2009); and the Faith and Health Consortium of Metropolitan Chicago (11 August, 2009). 120. This was brought home in many walks through depressed communities, and was very well explained by study tours in the city, with assistance from a senior urban academic and a community organiser, and on one very comprehensive study visit around Chicago neighborhoods (18 August 2009), led by a community health specialist and a public health official. 121. Interview with specialist on metropolitan planning in Chicago (11 August 2009). 122. Interview with housing specialist in the Chicago metropolitan area (11 August 2009). 123. Interview with official involved in neighborhood revitalisation in Cleveland (7 May 1991). Note: Addressing his need to generate neighbourhood funding, he bemoaned the proliferation of relatively affluent towns outside city limits. It be-devilled integrated decision-making, representing ‘an extreme provincialism . . . . as though there is a shield that prevents all the negative aspects of urban living from coming into their community’. 124. Interview with senior official in the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, op. cit. (22 May 1991). 125. Galster G. (1990) White Flight from Racially Integrated Neighbourhoods in the 1970s: the Cleveland experience. Urban Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 385–399. 126. Note: This pattern was confirmed by interviews with leading economists, for example a Senior Economist and an advisor, both with a Cleveland bank (12 July 1991). 127. Interview with a leading official in a Cleveland bank (10 July 1991). Note: While suggesting that such subsidies had encouraged speculative development, he affirmed that UDAG and other incentives were critical in his own bank’s location decision: ‘We were debating moving out of the city . . . . Because we were able to get this favourable financing . . . . we not only maintained all of the employees that were

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currently working in Downtown Cleveland, we brought in a number of employees (from our suburban branches).’

Thanks are due to many people who assisted in this chapter’s research. For their academic guidance, I would like to mention: David Perry; Dennis Judd; Tom Lenz; Norman Krumholz; Helen Liggett; Dennis Keating; and Sabrina Deitrick. Of course, they are not responsible for the analysis contained herein.

8 Contested Space, Contested Sovereignty: The Case of Belfast

Introduction: an unresolved sovereignty contest Since its existence, the integrity of Northern Ireland as a region of the UK has been subject to periodic challenge. In its most serious expression, this resulted in a period of uninterrupted violence between 1969 and 1998, in which around 3700 people were killed and, at least, a further 40 000 injured. In economic terms, the cost of this conflict has been estimated at around £1 billion per year, a figure that added substantially to the total cost of regional public expenditure and to the level of subsidy required to sustain it from the British Exchequer. Although Northern Ireland’s is among the most researched internal conflict, there are multiple interpretations, and disagreements about its causes, nature, and impact. However, some of its key dimensions can be described as follows: .

.

It is fundamentally a dispute about sovereignty; between those who want the area to remain within the United Kingdom and those who want it reunited with the rest of the island, i.e. part of the Irish Republic. To the extent that the sovereignty contest is emphasised, the solution to the conflict cannot lie solely in an internal redistribution of power or economic resources. The fundamental challenge is to the existence of the state rather than whether it has been governed equitably. Inevitably, however, issues of equity and social justice overlap and interpenetrate the sovereignty dimension. For some, grievances around socio-economic issues, political rights and civil liberties justified the challenge to the state, even the use of violence. For others, such grievances were misrepresented to legitimise a violent conspiracy—demands for

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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reform were no more than the thin end of a wedge designed to undermine the state. Such divided opinions are a reflection of a divided society also evidenced in substantial patterns of residential segregation and the lack of mutual engagement between communities that live cheek by jowl. This is, in part, caused by mutual fear and suspicion—all sides to the conflict suffered sufficiently to fear their enemies. Such problems point to the way in which the conflict is not just a sovereignty contest but also a conflict between two indigenous communities, who, in racial terms, are impossible to distinguish. However, some interpretations emphasise the role of sectarianism, a form of supremacism likened to racism, in perpetuating division and catalysing violence. Thus, what one community sees as the exercise of its traditions and culture is seen by the other as a form of triumphalism. A further dimension of the conflict is the disputed role of the security forces as they responded to political violence. There have been persistent accusations about the suppression of civil liberties, the excessive use of state violence and the collusion between the state and some paramilitary organisations. Conversely, there is the view that such accusations have been part of a strategy to politically paralyse the state’s capacity to suppress violence.

In addition to these dimensions, Northern Ireland’s core manufacturing industries saw decades of serious decline and, historically, its unemployment levels were amongst the highest of UK regions as was the proportion of its population living on low incomes. Even without the conflict, it would have been described as an underdeveloped, peripheral region of the EU, but the socio-economic conditions and political conflict fed off each other. These dimensions are presented not in any attempt to suggest a definitive view, but to point to the complexity of the situation and to emphasise the difficulties of its resolution. They also point to the ways in which Belfast represents a conflation of the sovereignty and pluralist dimensions of divided cities. Until the Balkans conflict, it appeared unique within the post-war history of Western Europe—a violent nationalist conflict within a stable, sovereign European state. It should be noted, however, that Northern Ireland has several comparators—the Balkan and Israeli–Palestinian disputes have similar dimensions—and, in terms of the scale, its violence is relatively low level—800 000 Rwandans died in 100 days of inter-tribal conflict. Nevertheless, the complexity of the dispute suggests that the transition to a fully peaceful society that has moved beyond the legacy of conflict will be long rather than short term. The past decade, however, has seen remarkable, but uneven, change. In particular, a seemingly intractable conflict has been transformed—the major paramilitary factions either disarmed or committed to ceasefire, the formerly

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most bitter of political enemies joined in a volatile government arrangement. This has been accompanied by a faster rate of economic growth, a rise in average incomes and a decline in the regional poverty rate. The New Policy Institute’s (2006) social exclusion report for the region concluded that poverty in Northern Ireland had fallen faster than elsewhere while the rate itself (the percentage of households living on less than 60% of median household income) was about the same as the UK as a whole. Its update report (2009) suggested that income poverty was lower than in England or Wales, but the rise of worklessness was greater than for other parts of the UK, while housing need resulting from repossessions had increased steeply. Positive change during the 1998–2008 decade has been associated with the Northern Ireland ‘Peace Process’. In one sense, the key drivers for this were external rather than internal. Traditionally, each side to the conflict looked to the British and Irish governments respectively as their main sources of support and protection. However, after the Downing Street Declaration (1993) both governments took a united position and worked jointly to find an internal solution. Key sections of civil society within Northern Ireland (business, trade unions, the voluntary and community sector, and women’s organisations) mainly supported such efforts. The British–Irish accord placed important parameters on political manoeuvring. In addition, neither unionist nor nationalist politicians could actually deliver their core promises to their respective electorates. Nationalists were not able to deliver a united Ireland despite almost a century of campaigning, including 30 years of violent struggle. Unionists were unable to secure the union with Britain as a fixed, all-time certainty. Instead, the two governments imposed a framework within which the political parties had to find a compromise that obliged them to share power. The imperatives to compromise were both above (the two governments) and below (their inability to deliver their respective missions to their electorates). To a considerable degree, this was successful. The two governments made significant efforts to facilitate an internal accommodation that, despite frequent crises, led to political devolution. This was accompanied by substantial new investment (including a unique European Union funded Peace Programme) to address the effects of the conflict. Together, these have succeeded to the point where Northern Ireland has been highlighted as a successful resolution of a seemingly intractable conflict. Yet, it can be argued that the political settlement remains fragile, subject to periodic crisis while the legacy of conflict remains deeply rooted in segregated communities and ongoing political violence. Moreover, patterns of discrimination and community differentials—a contributing cause of the conflict—have been reduced, but not eliminated. Nevertheless, the character of political violence has been transformed. This is illustrated by looking at three periods around the signing of the Good Friday Agreement: 1990–1994, prior to the first of the paramilitary ceasefires;

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Table 8.1 Security-related deaths. Source: calculated from data on www.psni.police.uk.

1990–1994 Yearly average 1995–1998 Yearly average 1999–2003 Yearly average

Police (RUC/PSNI)

Police Reserve

Army

UDR/RIR

Civilian

Totals

20 4 5 1 0 0

10 2 1 0 0 0

23 5 3 1 0 0

22 4 0 0 0 0

326 65 92 23 66 13

401 80 101 25 66 13

UDR/RIR: Ulster Defence Regiment/Royal Irish Regiment.

1995–1998, the years leading to the Agreement; and, 1999–2003, five years following it. Before the ceasefires, the average number of security-related deaths was 80 per year, of which the overwhelming majority was civilians (Table 8.1). Each successive period saw a decline in the number of security-related deaths. Indeed, between 1999 and 2003, no member of the security forces was killed. So violence continued, but the most serious violence (resulting in deaths) dramatically declined with no fatalities amongst the security forces at all for 5 years after the Agreement. In contrast, the number of security-related injuries for certain groups increased after the ceasefire (Table 8.2). The annual average for police injuries increased in each period. The average for army personnel fell. The trend was more ambiguous for the Ulster Defence Regiment/Royal Irish Regiment, although, in general, it was downward. Similarly, the average for civilian injuries increased in the second period and fell back in the third, though it remained higher than before the ceasefires. Over these periods, ceasefires and subsequent political agreements changed the nature of political violence rather than eliminated it. Figure 8.1 suggests that political violence may be distinguished along axes of organised or disorganised (carried out by formal organisations or by disorganised, ad hoc groups), and strategic or opportunistic (designed to achieve strategic political or military goals or unplanned/arising out of particular situations/ confrontations). The data presented on security-related violence suggest that it became more disorganised and opportunistic rather than strategic and organised. The latter is more serious and results in the most deaths (deaths unequivocally fell) and is Table 8.2 Security-related injuries. Source: calculated from data on www.psni.police.uk.

1990–1094 Yearly average 1995–1998 Yearly average 1999–2003 Yearly average

Police (RUC/PSNI)

British Army

UDR/RIR

Civilian

Totals

818 164 1621 405 2305 461

955 191 267 67 139 28

131 26 38 10 68 14

2679 536 3319 830 3113 623

4583 917 5245 1311 5625 1125

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Organised

Opportunistic

Strategic

After the ceasefires

Before the ceasefires

Disorganised

Figure 8.1 Contours of political violence.

also most responsible for deaths among the security forces (the main targets of republican paramilitaries). Thus, the shifts in the violence data suggest that one of its major components (organised strategic violence enacted primarily by republicans) was dramatically reduced. But other forms of political violence increased, particularly ‘low-level’ violence at the interfaces of residentially segregated communities. For example, a consultation document on improving community relations in Northern Ireland (A Shared Future, January 2003) summarised the situation: ‘Violence at interfaces between communities continues to affect lives, property, businesses and public services’. A report on a community survey from the Belfast Interface Project (2004) cited similar findings—over 60% of all respondents felt that violence against their area from the ‘other’ community had increased since 1994 with only 13% feeling that it had decreased. However, the situation changed again in the following 5 years when those dissatisfied with the IRAs rejection of violence became increasingly active. For example, in 2009 dissident republican groups killed a member of the Police Service, Northern Ireland (PSNI) and two members of the British Army. In addition, they were responsible for seriously injuring other security force members. The 22nd Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) (November, 2009) commented (p. 5): The overall level of dissident activity was markedly higher than we have seen since we first met in late 2003. The seriousness, range and tempo of their activities all changed for the worse in these six months. Thus, despite the commitment of mainstream republicans to a political rather than military process, fringe elements have been determined to continue the ‘armed struggle’. Although worrying, the overall level of political violence remains lower than in previous decades (26 deaths between March 2003 and

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500 400 300

Civilians

200

Security forces

100

02 20

87 19

19

69 19 72

0

Figure 8.2 All security-related deaths between 1969 and 2009. Source: generated from data on www.psni.police.uk.

August 2009, IMC, p. 21). This can be seen in Figure 8.2, which depicts all security-related deaths between 1969 and 2009. The decade that saw the highest number of security-related deaths was the 1970s, particularly following the introduction of internment in 1971. In that period, fatalities amongst security-force members as a proportion of the total were particularly high, although civilians have always made up the majority of victims.1 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the number of fatalities remained at around 100, tailing off substantially in the new century. It should be noted that security-related fatalities are a good predictor of security-related injuries and are thus a useful surrogate for the overall level of political violence. A further feature of the Northern Ireland situation has been the persistence of community division. As Jarman (2002, p. 16) comments: . . . the hardening of territorial boundaries and conflict between communities has further increased the scale and the depth of segregation between the two major communities. In a survey undertaken in 2001 (reported in PSC, 2003), respondents in six Belfast areas were asked how things had changed since the ceasefires: .

. .

Fifty two percent of those living in predominantly Protestant areas and 47.9% in predominantly Catholic areas concluded that these relationships had worsened; A mere 14.5% of those in Catholic places and 11.5% in Protestant places indicated that social and economic conditions had improved; and Just over a third indicated that conditions were similar or unchanged.

The aftermath of long-term conflict is real and affects the lives of many citizens. First, there is the legacy of political violence, primarily the human costs of victims and their families. Then, there is the exacerbation of residential segregation as people seek safety with their own ‘kind’. Such places

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perpetuate the break-down of inter-community relationships and intercourse and put a heavy burden on public services. Many of the areas most exposed to violence were also the more deprived so that there has been a conjunction between violence, segregation, and deprivation. Belfast offers manifestations of all such phenomena, the analysis of which is the central thrust of the chapter. First, it examines the scale of political violence in Belfast during the period, arguing that certain places in the city saw the most intense exposure of the entire conflict. Next, it explores patterns of deprivation and segregation, focusing in particular on those areas that had been most subject to political violence. Then, it explores the impact of such phenomena in reinforcing urban divisions. Finally, it argues that while Belfast is very different from other UK cities in the causes, scale, and impact of its conflict and divisions, it nevertheless offers insights for those engaged in divided cities elsewhere.

Space and political violence The Northern Ireland political conflict was overwhelmingly concentrated in Belfast—about 40% of all deaths and injuries occurred within a city that had around 20% of the regional population. The total number of conflict-related deaths2 in Belfast between 1969 and 1999 amounted to 4.13 per 1000 population, significantly higher than any other district council area (Armagh, including South Armagh, had 2.48). Even following paramilitary cease fires and the Good Friday Agreement (1998), the city retained a high share of residual violence. Figure 8.3 describes Belfast’s share of security-related fatalities between 1991 and 2003.

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Belfast%

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Figure 8.3 Security-related deaths in Belfast as a percentage of all security-related deaths. Source: constructed from data provided by North & West Belfast Health Action Zone (2004).

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70%

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Belfast as % of Northern Ireland

Figure 8.4 Security-related injuries in Belfast as a percentage of all security-related injuries. Source: constructed from data provided by North & West Belfast Health Action Zone (2004).

Over the entire period, the percentage of security-related deaths occurring in Belfast was greater than its population share, with the exception of 1998, the year of the peace agreement. In 1995, three quarters of all security-related deaths occurred in Belfast. In 2000, the share was more than half. Moreover, there is no discernible trend. While the cease fires did not produce an overall reduction in political violence, they were associated with a fall in the number of fatalities. However, even looking at security-related violence, excluding deaths, it can be seen that Belfast accounted for a high percentage (Figure 8.4). In general, Belfast’s share of injuries is even greater than for deaths. Indeed, after a fall between 1997 and 1998, there was a steady rise until in 2002, the share was just over 60%. Given the patchwork quilt of residentially segregated spaces in Belfast, characterised by interfaces and peace lines (physical barriers constructed between communities to inhibit violence), and their impact on events such as political parades, it is unsurprising that the city accounted for the biggest share of all security-related violence in the region. Nevertheless, in subsequent years, the city’s share of political violence did decline. The PSNI database (www.psni.police.uk, 2010) indicates that in 2009–2010 Belfast accounted for about 18% of all shooting incidents and just over a quarter of all bombings—although the totals were historically low—78 and 50 incidents respectively. However, its share of other forms of violence remains relatively high—between 2006 and 2009, the four Belfast sectors (Belfast North, South, East and West) accounted for a third of all racist crimes and almost a half of all sectarian crimes. Moreover, its pattern of spatial segmentation (many small residentiallysegregated spaces adjacent to each other) is different to other Northern Ireland cities. Not only have these adversely affected the quality of life in the city, they

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also make institutions less efficient in serving the population and induce a set of ‘diseconomies of division’—the less than optimal functioning of labour, capital, property and housing markets. Equally, while the association between conflict-related deaths and spatial deprivation is less than absolute, a number of key areas, like Belfast, demonstrate an acute relationship between deprivation, residential segregation and violence. The conjunction of these three phenomena present challenges to planners and to policy makers in the fields of urban regeneration, social inclusion and community cohesion. Political violence was distributed unevenly across the city. A central problem for understanding the spatial distribution of political violence is that its location is frequently different from where the victim lived. This was particularly true for members of the British army; very few of whom actually lived in Northern Ireland, but who made up a substantial proportion of all victims. Equally, those who died in explosions or were victims of sectarian killing were rarely in their own areas. Conversely, those living in particular areas seemed to be disproportionately at risk. To allow for such spatial effects, the data on political violence in the city distinguishes between incidents that took place within an area and the inhabitants of a local area who were victims, some of whom will have died elsewhere. However, the spatial, and temporal, concentration of conflict-related on both indicators is apparent (Figure 8.5).

(a) 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Local victims Area incidents

West

North

East

South

NonBelfast

(b)

20.0% 15.0% 10.0% 5.0%

Share of resident deaths

19 6 19 9 7 19 2 75 19 7 19 8 81 19 8 19 4 8 19 7 9 19 0 9 19 3 96 19 99

0.0%

Figure 8.5 (a) Spatial and (b) temporal concentration of conflict-related fatalities. Source: calculated from Morrissey and Smyth (2001) and Cost of the Troubles database (2001).

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Just over 1600 people died as the result of political violence in Belfast. Figure 8.5 depicts their distribution across the city over four city sectors and across three decades (1969 and 2001). The city is divided into its parliamentary constituencies. A non-Belfast category had to be included since some victims who lived in Belfast died elsewhere while some of those who died in Belfast did not live in the city—note that the number of victims from outside Belfast who died there was relatively high (over 300) mainly as a result of deaths among members of the security forces. The pattern over time (each year’s share of the total number of deaths over the period) is marked by a concentration of fatalities, and therefore political violence generally, in the first half of the 1970s, moving to a ‘steady-state’ conflict in the 1980s and early 1990s and tailing off thereafter—similar to the pattern for the region as a whole. The pattern across the parliamentary constituencies shows a concentration in the north and west of the city. Given that each constituency has a similar population (around 70 000), the risk associated with living in the north and west was about twice that of south and east. Almost two-thirds of all victims were civilians; neither members of the security forces nor paramilitary organisations. Another 18% were members of the security forces—more soldiers than police—and 14% were paramilitary members—more republicans than loyalists. In insurgency situations, it is normal that civilians make up the bulk of causalities, what is less usual is that the number of security force deaths outnumbers that of the insurgents. It should be said here that very large numbers of paramilitary members end up in prison rather than dead, but even so, the ratio is exceptional when compared with other areas of conflict—the Middle East or Latin America, for example. The predominance of civilian victims was also true in parliamentary constituencies, but varied—for example, 59% in the west and 72% in the south. In the west and north, a higher percentage of victims were security force members—over two-thirds of all security forces members died in these two areas. It is also possible to identify the respective roles of security forces and paramilitary organisations in contributing to conflict-related deaths (Figure 8.6). Paramilitary organisations were responsible for more deaths than either local security forces or the British army. Republicans were responsible for almost 600 fatal incidents (greater than local residents because of their concentration on members of the security forces). It should be noted that the totals for local residents include shooting, bombing and even interparamilitary feuds. Loyalist paramilitaries were responsible for the highest number of local resident deaths since their targets were republicans, at times the nationalist population generally and their own members, again via internal feuding.

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700 600 500 400

Incidents

300

Residents

200 100 0 Not known

British Security Forces

Northern Ireland Security Forces

Republican Loyalist paramilitaries paramilitaries

Figure 8.6 Perpetrating organisations in Belfast, 1969–2001. Source: calculated from Cost of Troubles database (2001).

Moreover, while Belfast had the highest number of violent incidents, it also had a particular concentration of sectarian killings (individuals killed simply because they were identified as being of a particular religion—60% of all conflict-related deaths in Belfast) and these were overwhelmingly concentrated in the North and West of the city. Part of the explanation lies in the complex mosaic of different religious territories within the city. Heartlands of Nationalism and Loyalism, like the Falls and the Shankill, are literally side by side. North Belfast, in particular, has a complex set of small segregated spaces amongst which tension is frequently high. The friction along such interfaces has been exacerbated by demographic change especially in the north and west of the city where the Catholic population increased while the Protestant population declined. Certain ‘traditionally Protestant’ spaces found they were under pressure from Catholic expansion. In a situation of Republican challenge to the state and inter-communal conflict, these changes were a recipe for greater violence. The geographic proximity of people with different religions and contesting political views meant that the civilian population was easy prey, particularly since people had to cut across ‘other’ territories as they moved about the city. The particularly severe impact of political violence in the north and west of Belfast was revealed in a report compiled for the local health and social services trust (Hamilton et al., 2002). This used a Northern Ireland survey on the impact of political violence and selected out respondents who lived in these areas of Belfast to compare with those from the rest of Northern Ireland. Almost 40% of north and west respondents reported severe or very severe experiences of conflict-related violence compared with 12% of respondents in the rest of Northern Ireland. Twelve per cent strongly agreed that their experiences ‘made it difficult for me to trust people in general’ compared

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Table 8.3 Death rates resulting from political violence, percentage of Ward population registered as ‘Catholic’, 1991 and Composite Deprivation Rank. Source: Calculated from Cost of the Troubles Database (2001), Northern Ireland Census (1971,1991) at www.nisra .gov.uk and the North & West Belfast Health Action Zone database (2000). Fatality rate per 1000 population (1969–1999)

% of Ward population Catholic 1991

Composite Deprivation Rank


10.93 10.88 10.55 10.23 10.22 9.71 7.96 7.76 7.32 6.64

92 90 18 93 94 86 43 92 80 49

1 6 4 7 11 2 5 14 17 26

1.30 1.18 1.15 1.04 0.86 0.75 0.67 0.53 0.46 0.35

5 2 40 29 8 1 1 1 2 4

51 44 39 50 41 45 31 35 40 47

Highest Falls Ardoyne St Anne’s Clonard Whiterock New Lodge Ballymacarret Upper Springfield Water Works Cliftonville Lowest Stormount Knock Rosetta Stranmillis Ballyhackamore Orangfield Bloomfield Sydenham Belmont Cherry Valley


‘The North and West Belfast Health Action Zone constructed an aggregate deprivation measure based on three deprivation studies in Belfast (Jarman, Townsend and Robson) undertaken at different times to get a more textured picture of the spatial distribution of deprivation.

with 4% elsewhere. Seven per cent strongly agreed that their experiences ‘caused me not to want to have anything to do with the other community’ compared with just over 1% in the rest of Northern Ireland. The complex spatial patterning of violence in Belfast is emphasised when wards, rather than parliamentary constituencies are examined. Table 8.3 focuses on 20 wards which had the highest and lowest (respectively) local resident death rates.3 Belfast has 51 wards and the disparity in death rates between those that experienced the highest and lowest deaths rates is apparent. The risk of living in Falls, St Annes, Clonard or Whiterock was more than 10 times greater than for those living in most of the wards in the bottom set. With the exception of Ballymacarret (East Belfast), all the wards with highest death rates were either in West or North Belfast. The presence of the former amongst the high death rate group can be explained by the existence of a small Catholic enclave whose interface with the surrounding Protestant community was subject to periodic

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violence. The ward data confirm the high, spatial concentration of political violence within the city. Two other aspects are worthy of note: .

.

First, wards with highest death rates also tended to have high percentages of Catholics. Seven of the 10 had more than 80% of their population recorded as Catholic in the 1991 Census. The exceptions were St Annes and Cliftonville, both in inner north, the locale of the most intensive inter-community violence. Oddly, the disparity in fatality risk between Catholics and Protestants is greater in south and east than in the west or north. Although many more victims came from the latter two, they made up significantly greater percentages of the local populations, thus affecting the at risk calculations; Second, the higher death rate wards also tended to be the more deprived. In Table 8.3 a composite deprivation index used by the North & West Belfast Health Action Zone was employed to rank the two sets of wards. Six of the 10 in the upper group were also amongst the 10 most deprived wards in the city. Conversely, six of the 10 in the lower group were among the 10 least deprived.

In Belfast, an additional feature of the spatial distribution of political violence was its proximity to peace lines or interfaces—the former are physical barriers designed to ‘prevent’ intercommunity violence, the latter boundaries between residentially segregated communities that live cheek by jowl with each other. Figure 8.7 maps conflict related by the postcodes of victims in north and west Belfast and positions them relative to the various peace lines in the area. The proximity to peace lines is apparent—almost three-quarters of resident deaths occurred within one kilometre corridors on each side. At the same time, north and west Belfast is a relatively small space and its inner urban areas are dominated by peace lines. A large degree of the spatial concentration exhibited in the diagram reflects the disproportionate share of violence that occurred in the inner city. Nevertheless, peace lines have been not merely symbols of a divided city, but magnets for inter-communal violence. In short, political violence was not only spatially concentrated, but played out in areas that were both disproportionately Catholic and among the most deprived. Such areas also tended to be residentially segregated (in 1991), but areas with low death rates were similarly homogeneous in religious composition. Moreover, even though the most serious forms of political violence abated after 2000, its accompanying phenomena of residential segregation of spatial deprivation endured.

Residential segregation and spatial deprivation after the conflict This section explores one of the key consequences of urban political violence— the growth of residential segregation. A religion variable in the Northern

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Figure 8.7 Peace lines and conflict-related deaths, North and West Belfast 1969–1999. Source: PSC (2003). Reproduced by permission of PSC Management.

Ireland Census was only introduced in 1971, thus permitting the analysis of segregation at ward level. In 1971, Belfast was already a segregated city with more than half of its wards made up 90% or more of one religion. The decade 1971–1981 saw an increase in residentially segregated wards corresponding with the most intense political violence. While the number of 90% plus wards declined thereafter, it should be noted that the number reporting a religious affiliation also declined after 1981. Indeed in 2001, a new variable (‘community background’ or the religion an individual was brought up in) was inserted in the Census questionnaire to better capture the ethno-religious composition of the region. The 2001 Census offers the most recent picture of residential segregation in the city. Since the Census data were collected, there have been further population changes. Mid-year population estimates suggest that the city’s population fell by around 10 000 between 2001 and 2006. Moreover, the inflow of economic migrants from other parts of the European Union increased after 2001, changing the ethnic character of some parts. However, residential

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segregation has to be analysed in terms of small area statistics to reflect the patchwork quilt of geographic communities across the city and the data on post-Census changes are not available at that level. The Census thus still remains the best source for profiling segregated spaces. The term segregation has been variously defined in Northern Ireland. One approach identifies a population threshold of an area as belonging to a single religion or community background. Thus, it might be said that 75% or 90% of the population of an area belongs to a single religion/community background and thus the area is residentially segregated. However, the important characteristic is the pattern of such concentrations when the population is divided into two dominant groups and this can take various forms: Figure 8.8 suggests that segregation patterns may be described both in terms of the evenness or clustering of the distribution and the degree of exposure or isolation of the two groups. These axes generate four kinds of segregation as shown in the diagram and Belfast exhibits examples of all four. When a population threshold is used to define residential segregation, Belfast has different patterns of segregation in different parts of the city. However, there are other ways of measuring the phenomenon. In general, these capture the degree to which the population composition of small areas varies from that of the city as a whole. The Dissimilarity Index calculates the aggregate difference between small areas and the whole city, while the Segregation Index calculates how populations would have to shift to give each small area a similar composition to the city as a whole. Arguably, these are more robust measures of residential segregation since they are based on the actual population composition and do not rely on arbitrary thresholds like 75 percent or 90 percent. However, they give indices for the city as a whole and are thus particularly useful in comparing, say, how residentially segregated Belfast is compared to other Northern Ireland cities like Lisburn or Derry. Here the intention is to construct a profile of residentially segregated spaces within Evenness

Exposure

Isolation

Clustering

Figure 8.8 Patterns of residential segregation. Source: French (2006).

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the city and thus utilises the less rigorous, but more useful, threshold indicators. Where possible, data are presented at Super Output Area level (SOA). This spatial unit was created for the Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure (2005) as an alternative to wards to generate areas of similar size containing populations between 1500 and 2500. This enabled more reliable spatial comparisons than is possible with wards which have substantial variations in population size. However, data at SOA level are only available for the 2001 Census and the 2005 Multiple Deprivation Measure. Thus, capturing changing patterns of segregation over time still has to be done at ward level. In order to explore the character of segregated spaces of Belfast, three exercises were undertaken: .

. .

The first analyses the distribution of population within the city by community background/religion in 2001 and, where possible, identifying changes since previous Censuses; The second examines a socio-economic profile of segregated spaces to explore the links between segregation and socio-economic status; The third looks at the association between segregation and deprivation based on two studies of multiple deprivation (1994 and 2005).

Profiling segregated spaces In 2001, the composition of Belfast’s population differed from that of the whole region (Table 8.4). The respective percentages of the city’s population who were of Catholic and Protestant community backgrounds were similar (a 1.6 percentage point difference), while those of neither background made up more of the city’s (compared to the region’s) population (4.2% compared with 3.1%). However, despite the relatively equal population composition by community background, the small spaces of the city remain essentially segregated. Almost a quarter of Belfast’s SOAs were 90% or more of Catholic community background—a further 8% were between 75 and 89%. A smaller share (18%) was 90% or more of Protestant community background, but over 20% Table 8.4 Community background in Northern Ireland and Belfast, 2001. Source: NI Census (2001), Table KS07B, www.ninis.nisra.gov.uk.

Northern Ireland Belfast

Catholic community background

Protestant community background

Other community background

None

43.8% 47.2%

53.1% 48.6%

0.4% 0.8%

2.7% 3.4%

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90% or more Catholic community background 30.0%

75% – 89% Catholic community background

25.0%

65% – 74% Catholic community background

20.0%

50% – 64% Catholic community background

30.0% 10.0%

90% or more Protestant community background

5.0%

75% – 89% Protestant community background

0.0%

65% – 74% Protestant community background 50% – 64% Protestant community background

1

Figure 8.9 Residential segregation at Super Output Area Level. Source: calculated from NI Census (2001), Table KS07B, www.ninis.nisra.gov.uk.

were 75% or more. If residential segregation is defined at the 75% threshold, seven in 10 of Belfast’s 150 SOAs fulfil the criterion (Figure 8.9). Analysis of change in this pattern of segregation is complicated by the fact that the pre-2001 Censuses used only a religion variable and significant numbers of responses did not state a religion. Nevertheless, Table 8.5 presents data on residential segregation from the 1971, 1981 and 2001 Censuses derived from a dataset explicitly generated for this purpose.4 The dataset contained no data for the 1991 Census but the data on the religion variable for Belfast’s wards were extracted from the Northern Ireland Census. The variable used is religion and those in the ‘not stated’ category were not included in the calculations. It is recognised that this distorts the picture of segregation since many of those who did not state a religion in 1971 and 1981 would have been included in the community background variable in the 2001 Census. In the 1971 and 1981 Censuses, the percentages not stating a religion correlated strongly and positively with the percentages who declared that they were Catholic (0.94 and 0.84 respectively), but strongly and negatively in the 2001 Census (  0.74). It is thus likely that the number of wards recorded as being 75% Catholic in the 1971 and 1981 Censuses are underestimates. Conversely, Table 8.5 Wards with 75% or more of one religion, 1971–2001. Source: specially constructed dataset on Northern Ireland Censuses and Northern Ireland Census 1991.

Catholic Protestant Total Total as % of all Wards

1971

1981

1991

2001

11 31 42 82.4%

14 30 44 86.3%

13 23 36 70%

15 20 35 68.6%

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the number designated as being 75% or more Protestant in the 2001 Census is likely to be an underestimate. Even with these limitations, the table gives an indication of the dynamics of segregated spaces. Table 8.5 suggests that segregation at the 75% level for wards in 1991 and 2001 was less than in 1971 or 1991, but was relatively stable over the 1990s. In 2001, Belfast was still a segregated city with more than two-thirds of wards containing 75% or more of a single religious denomination—but less so than two decades previously. In order to profile Belfast’s segregated, small areas, SOAs were differentiated as mainly Catholic community background (75% or more Catholic), mainly Protestant community background (75% or more Protestant) and mixed community background (no less than 30% or more than 60% of either community background). This typology created 54 mainly Catholic SOAs, 58 mainly Protestant and 26 mixed—12 SOAs did not fit into any of these categories. These sets of SOAs were then examined in terms of their demographic and socio-economic characteristics. The primary interest lies in identifying whether segregated spaces have different socio-economic characteristics from each other and from non-segregated spaces. Accordingly, Figure 8.10 compares the employment characteristics of each set of SOAs. With regard to full-time employment, the non-segregated SOAs (with one exception) generally had higher percentages than the other two. The mainly (a) 60.00 50.00 40.00

Mainly PCB

30.00

Mainly CCB Mainly CB

20.00 10.00 0.00 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57

(b) 14.00 12.00 10.00 Mainly PCB

8.00

Mainly CCB

6.00

Mainly CB

4.00 2.00 0.00 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57

Figure 8.10 (a) Full-time employment and (b) unemployment rates of the 16–75 Population, 2001. Source: Northern Ireland Census (2001), Table KS09A, www.ninis .nisra.gov.uk.

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100.00 80.00 Mainly PCB

60.00

Mainly CCB 40.00

Mainly CB

20.00 0.00 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57

Figure 8.11 Percentage of 16–75 population without qualifications, 2001. Source: NI Census (2001), Table KS13, www.ninis.nisra.gov.uk.

Catholic SOAs had lower percentages in full-time employment. Equally, the unemployment rates for both mainly Catholic and mainly Protestant SOAs were higher than in mixed SOAs (not simply because of higher numbers of SOAs in the former two), while the rates for mainly Catholic SOAs were higher than for mainly Protestant. This suggests that mainly Catholic SOAs do have greater economic disadvantage than mainly Protestants, but that both are more economically disadvantaged than mixed SOAs. This pattern is confirmed by an examination of educational attainment rates (Figure 8.11). In a world where tackling poverty has become increasingly synonymous with facilitating access to employment, qualifications have become a key variable in determining individual opportunity. Both mainly Catholic and mainly Protestant SOAs had very high rates of their working age populations without any qualifications (correspondingly, they had very low rates with level 4 or 5 qualifications). Indeed, the position of the mainly Protestant SOAs was marginally worse. In contrast, the mixed SOAs had lower rates without qualifications and substantially higher rates with high level qualifications. The implication is that forms of economic disadvantage are concentrated in segregated spaces, though marginally more so in mainly Catholic ones. This leads naturally to a consideration of segregation and deprivation.

Segregation and deprivation For almost three decades, Belfast has had disproportionate concentrations of the region’s most deprived population. In 2001, 21 of Belfast’s 51 wards were in the most deprived decile. Put another way, Belfast’s wards accounted for 45% of the region’s most deprived, even though it contained only 17% of the regional population. In 2005 Belfast again had 21 of Northern Ireland’s most deprived wards—the situation was essentially unchanged (Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure, 2001, 2005). To take the analysis forward, the spatial unit has to be changed to Super Output Areas. In 2005, 52 of Belfast’s SOAs were in the most deprived decile—58.4% of the Northern Ireland total.

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Table 8.6 The most deprived Wards in Belfast in four deprivation studies. Source: Belfast City Council report, ‘Poverty in Belfast’. Reproduced by permission of Belfast City Council. Townsend 1991

Robson 1991

Noble 2001

Noble 2005

Ardoyne Clonard Crumlin Duncairn Falls Glencollin New Lodge Shankill St Annes Upper Springfield Whiterock

Ballymacarett Clonard Duncairn Falls Island New Lodge Shaftesbury Shankill St Anne’s The Mount Woodvale

Ardoyne Ballymacarrett Crumlin Falls New Lodge Shankill St Annes The Mount Upper Springfield Whiterock Woodvale

Ardoyne Ballymacarrett Crumlin Duncairn Falls New Lodge Shankill The Mount Upper Springfield Whiterock Woodvale

In 2010, 51 were in the most deprived decile—47.3% of the total (Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure, 2010). Like the other phenomena reviewed here, deprivation has been concentrated, historically, in certain parts of the city. For example, it is possible to look at the Belfast wards5 that have been most deprived in successive studies of deprivation. Table 8.6 lists the 11 (quintile) most deprived wards in Belfast in four deprivation studies over a 15-year period. One was undertaken by a prominent academic, the others were commissioned by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency from units in Manchester and Oxford Universities. Over this period, despite one set of boundary changes and four different methodologies for measuring deprivation, the same wards appear over and over again—two wards appear in all four and six wards appear in three of the studies. Earlier, the wards with the highest conflict-related death rates were identified. Falls, with the highest death rate, appeared in all four deprivation studies, as did the New Lodge. Ardoyne, Ballymacarret, Upper Springfield and Whiterock appeared in three. The persistence of deprivation in some of the wards that also had the highest conflict-related death rates has been a central feature of the urban space. This section employs the Super Output Area scores from the Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure 2005 to identify the most deprived parts of the city and then examines their composition in terms of community background derived from the 2001 Census. Table 8.7 describes the community background of the most, and least, deprived deciles within Belfast. The city contains 150 Super Output Areas—each decile has 15 Super Output Areas. Around two-thirds of the population of the most deprived decile were of Catholic community background, while over half of the population of the least deprived decile were of Protestant community background. Just over 14% of the city’s population of Catholic community background lived in the most deprived decile compared with just over 6% of those of Protestant community background. Interestingly, only 1% of the population of the most

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Table 8.7 Deprivation and community background. Source: calculated from Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure (2005) and NI Census (2001), Table KS07B, www. ninis.nisra.gov.uk.

Most deprived decile Least deprived decile

Catholic community background

Protestant community background

Others

65.4% 37.5%

33.3% 56.5%

1.0% 6.0%

deprived decile was neither of Catholic nor Protestant community background compared with 6% in the least deprived. Indeed, 14 of the Super Output Areas in the most deprived decile were 90% or more either Protestant or Catholic community background—no Super Output Area in the least deprived decile was segregated to this degree. The relationship between segregation and deprivation can be seen at individual Super Output Area. Figure 8.12 compares the Multiple Deprivation scores for each Super Output Area in each of the sets defined earlier. Remembering that higher scores signify greater levels of deprivation, it can be seen that, in general, the distribution of scores within mainly Catholic Super Output Areas is higher than for Protestant Super Output Areas, even though some of the latter have scores at least as high as in the top of the former. There are many fewer mixed areas, though these are concentrated at the lower end of the distribution suggesting that such areas have less extremes of deprivation than those either mainly Catholic or mainly Protestant. How have the patterns of spatial deprivation between religions changed over time? Because of differences in spatial units and methodologies employed, some caution must be expressed about making such a comparison.

90.00 80.00 70.00 60.00

Mainly PCB

50.00

Mainly CCB

40.00

Mainly CB

30.00 20.00 10.00 0.00 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57

Figure 8.12 Multiple Deprivation Measure scores in Belfast. Source: Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure (2005), ninis.nisra.gov.uk.

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The method employed here to compare the results from an earlier deprivation study (Robson et al., 1994) with those from the 2005 report was to: .

. . .

.

Select the smallest spatial unit used in each (enumeration districts in the former and census output areas in the latter) to capture as many ‘pockets’ of deprivation as possible; Rank them from most to least deprived; Select the top decile of most deprived and the bottom decile of the least deprived; Calculate the respective percentages of all Catholics/of Catholic community background and Protestants/of Protestant community background in the most and least deprived deciles; Calculate the share of the populations in the most and least deprived deciles that are either Catholic/of Catholic community background or Protestant/ Protestant community background.

The results of the exercise are presented in Table 8.8. In both years, Catholics or those of Catholic community background made up a majority of those in the most deprived decile and a minority of those in the least deprived decile. However, the percentage of all Catholics living in the most deprived decile fell by four percentage points, while the percentage living in the least deprived decile grew by over four percentage points. Two features of these findings stand out: those of Catholic community background are more likely to appear within deprived Super Output Areas; deprived spaces are more likely to be segregated than non-deprived spaces. Moreover, there is a significant association between deprivation and political violence in Belfast. If the ward death rates per 1000 population are correlation with the Belfast deprivation scores that were generated in 1991 (Robson et al., 1994), the coefficient is 0.7—in short, the level of Table 8.8 Comparison of religion and spatial deprivation, Belfast, 1991 and 2005. Source: calculated from Robson et al. (1994) and Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure (2005) Deprivation 1991

Percentage living in most deprived decile Percentage living in the least deprived decile Share of the most deprived decile (ENDs or OAs) Share of least deprived decile (ENDs or Oas)

Deprivation 2005

Catholic

Protestant

Catholic community background

Protestant community background

18.0

5.6

13.9

6.5

5.4

14.2

9.9

12.0

67.3

32.7

66.4

32.1

19.5

80.5

41.5

51.5

Contested Space, Contested Sovereignty: The Case of Belfast

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deprivation in a local area predicts about half its experience of political violence. These data hint at the nature of socio-economic change in Northern Ireland—continuing Catholic disadvantage feeding an impression of no change but marginal deterioration in the position of Protestants engendering a sense of loss. Yet, these changes occurred in the context of an ambitious framework of equality and anti-poverty measures.

Summarising the divided city .

.

.

.

.

.

Between 1969 and 2001 Belfast, with less than a fifth of the population of Northern Ireland, suffered more than two-fifths of all security-related fatalities and a proportionate share of security-related injuries. In the years following the Good Friday Agreement, the number of securityrelated fatalities did substantially decline but injuries increased, particularly for civilians and members of the PSNI. The share of all security-related injuries in Northern Ireland occurring in Belfast averaged 50%. The most obvious effect of this violent history is residential segregation as people seek the safety of their own kind. This has increased to the point where, in 2001, around half of the city’s population lived in wards that are either 90% Protestant or 90% Catholic community background. In its most extreme form, segregated neighbourhoods live cheek-by-jowl on either side of interface walls or boundaries. These are frequently flashpoints for intercommunity violence, although this is also the result of wider social tensions which are shared by others and often emanate from beyond the interface. Solutions, therefore, cannot be found exclusively within such locations, but have to be city-wide. Community attitudes are insular and defensive. There is substantial evidence in local research of mutual fear and suspicion. Identities are asserted defensively and via exclusion rather than openly and via engagement. Yet, the historical evidence suggests that no one community has a monopoly of grievance or grief while conflict resolution theory points to the need to think about constructing the future rather than holding onto the past. Still at the edge of the main division within the city, there would appear to be a growth in ethnic or racially-motivated incidents and such issues are of growing importance. As a result of the above, the development of Belfast as the region’s capital city is inhibited by what might be called the ‘diseconomies of division’. Conflict and division affect the city’s image as an investment location. Considerable resources, which could be devoted to social need or urban regeneration, continue to be applied to deal with security issues. Services and amenities face the extra cost of delivering to divided communities. The

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segmentation of housing and labour markets reduces the efficiency of the operation. In short, there are significant economic, as well as human and social, costs in a divided city.

Tackling division and deprivation: a difficult agenda In Northern Ireland, the social inclusion (deprivation) and community cohesion (division) agendas have been relatively independent. There has been an implicit assumption that area-targeted interventions should focus on the most deprived as objectively identified by multiple deprivation measures even when these create inter-communal competition for urban resources. Moreover, the evidence that local development will assist community cohesion is scant. For example, the Special European Union Programmes Body that was responsible for the Northern Ireland Peace Programmes commented (2004, p. 29): It has also been put to us that ‘economic measures also tend to assume that poverty and underdevelopment were “causes” of the troubles which must now be addressed’. This is a false perception. It is arguable that the economic measures are actually causing conflict by creating competition for resources amongst and between communities, reinforcing existing divisions. Equally, community relations (cohesion) policies developed in response to inter-community violence. Yet this was inextricably bound up with other kinds for which a community relations perspective had little relevance, i.e. the challenge to the nature of the state itself. The severity of political violence, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, created both an urgent imperative for community relations work and extreme difficulty in conducting it. This led some to believe that community development (sometimes called single identity work) was the only feasible and practical form of activity—preparative work for future cross-community engagement. Some despaired that the preparative period seemed never ending. As Murtagh (pp. 3–4) comments: Single identity work in a Northern Ireland context is designed to build community confidence to a stage where cross-community contact and reconciliation can be attempted at some point in the future. Yet this is a spurious and uncertain connection, and there is little in the way of significant empirical evidence to suggest that this happens in practice . . . The challenge for community relations work is to build cross-cutting understanding, networks and trust in areas and among groups where the stock of social capital is weak. The government strategy for community relations (A Shared Future, 2003) posed the alternatives of accepting the reality of division and segregation

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while managing their most negative consequences or promoting rapid progress towards a more integrated and shared society. The majority of consultation responses to the strategy endorsed that latter approach but ‘there was an acknowledgement that due to the legacy of violence and continued political uncertainty, many could not endorse this aspiration’ (OFMDFM, 2004, p. 1). Underpinning the mission statement of A Shared Future was a model of community relations work developed by the Future Ways organisation. This focused on three inter-linked constructs as its core approach (Eyben et al., 1997, p. 21): . . . equity, diversity and interdependence (EDI) have often been pursued separately rather than as part of a coherent strategy, resulting in different agencies, pieces of legislation, and funding bodies dealing with individual strands with no effective co-ordinating body. The assumptions underpinning this construction are ultimately about relationships, engagement and trust. It is thus transparently embedded in social capital theory, and suggests that embracing the challenges of community relations are not a matter of choice (Morrow, Jan 2004, p. 12): . . . the issues of justice (equity), our right to be different (diversity) and our common predicament (interdependence) are the crucial issues which will define the progress of the peace process. . ..In all of this, we will need a culture which learns from failure rather than condemns experiment. Yet, the equity/diversity/interdependence framework may be criticised as failing to recognise that each of its core concepts may be subject to contradictory interpretation. For example, are the two religions in Northern Ireland actually interdependent or independently dependent on an external source (the British government) for resources, jobs and security? The appreciation of diversity assumes there is some underpinning, binding factor that enables one to recognise that those who are different or have different interests are, nevertheless, in some sense alike, e.g. the concept of citizenship. But it is difficult to see how citizenship could fulfil such a role in an environment of contested sovereignty. Equally, what is fair crucially depends on perspective— unionists and nationalists have fundamentally different perspectives about what is happening in Northern Ireland and therefore fundamentally different conceptions of what is fair. The Belfast City Council’s draft Good Relations Strategy 2010–2013 (April, 2010) avoided some of these difficulties by emphasising the need for the city to compete in a global economic environment and therefore being a vibrant and attractive environment in which to live, work, and invest (albeit reaffirming the equity/diversity/interdependence framework). It thus sought to embed

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community relations in a broad competitiveness agenda in which relationships are as important as research and development to the competitive city (‘To become an outward- and forward-looking city-region, Belfast must re-orientate its priorities from obsession with short term safety, and the inward focus that brings, to a concern to attract others and a confident engagement with the world.’ p. 11). It proposed new forms of intervention that were not embedded in ‘single identity’ communities—‘It is critical that we move from a model of safety and security guaranteed by ‘containment’ and by locating all services within communities, to a model of ‘mobility’ where people can freely travel to and safely access services beyond their immediate locality’ (p. 6). Similar approaches have been taken by other public agencies, for example, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. There is thus a growing recognition of the need for a paradigm of intervention that not only addresses the interfaces between social inclusion and social cohesion policies, but also the need to frame both within a broader agenda like the competitive city. However, historically, spatial planning has tended to acquiesce to the idea of the ‘fragmented city’. As an alternative to this splintering of the city, there have been voices raised in promotion of an open compact urban future—one city, developed through integrated planning, and built on the primacy of civic over ethnic leadership, and on the creation of ever more safe spaces for a new conversation among citizens. However, efforts to construct a common city vision and genuine sustained collaboration in its delivery have yet to take firm root, despite the consensus around the necessity of integrated agendas.

Community cohesion and economic austerity It should be recognised that the debate about the creation of new urban strategies in Belfast has been undertaken over the past decade in an environment of economic growth driven largely by successive increases in public spending. The challenge of developing an integrated urban agenda for Belfast may prove even more difficult in a future of prolonged fiscal austerity. Northern Ireland is a ‘public sector’ region with public spending just over 67% of GDP (Centre for Economic and Business Research, 2009). Although, public sector employment has been steadily falling, the proportion of private sector jobs dependent on public spending (para-state jobs) remains high. About a fifth of regional household income is benefits derived. Total public spending is around £16 billion per year—the Executive budget, what used to be the Northern Ireland Office budget and benefits expenditure – of which about £9 billion is raised through local taxation. Public sector regions have an interesting trajectory during major recessions. In the first phase, services and employment hold up because of Keynesian injections into the economy—private sector regions fare worse. However, in

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the second phase (deficit reduction), public sector regions suffer most because spending cuts reduce jobs, which, in turn, reduce local demand. Analyses by the Economic Research Institute, Northern Ireland point to: .

.

.

The probable impact of the recession on Northern Ireland—‘Of the twelve local authority areas in the UK experiencing the fastest increase in unemployment over the past year, 6 are in Northern Ireland’ (ERINI, Economic Research Institute, Northern Ireland, 2009, p. 3). The challenge of new policies—‘different and possibly much more contentious options to be pursued as well as facing up to the difficult decisions needed to raise the resources to finance them’ (ibid., p. 21). Implicit in the argument here is the view that the Executive has responded neither quickly enough nor comprehensively enough given the scale of the recession. Minority sensitive governance systems tend to be cumbersome because of the need for cross-community agreement and the creation of multiple structures for cross-community participation. This may be exaggerated where the contesting parties come to a partial ‘historic compromise’ because of different socio-economic approaches. The probable loss to the Executive’s budget—‘. . .even in a most favourable case . . .the outcome is still the loss of between £500–600 million in real terms over three years. If this was to continue for a further three years and be combined with external public expenditure cuts the total pressure to be managed could easily exceed £1 billion’ (Economic Research Institute, Northern Ireland, 2010, p. 22).

All this points to a very different funding environment than Northern Ireland has become used to over the past decade. Indeed, the Ulster Bank’s Quarterly Economic Review (June 2010, p. 1) gave a pessimistic view of regional prospects: NI’s economic recovery will struggle to get out of first gear, with the public expenditure cuts keeping growth around 1.5% in 2011 (UK¼ þ 2.7%). . . Private sector output remains 11% below its 2007 peak and is currently at 2004 levels. Private sector services output remains almost 13% below its 2007 peak with the Business Services & Finance services sector down over 40%. Meanwhile, manufacturing output remains 15% below its 2008 peak with the engineering sector down by almost one third at back to levels last seen in 1995. Unlike previous downturns, NI’s labour market has been hit much harder than the UK in terms of job losses. . .Indeed, given the scale of the public expenditure cuts, unemployment may not peak until 2012. What will be the implications for Belfast? Most of the urban jobs growth of the past decade has been driven by public spending. Austerity will have implications for urban jobs. The Centre for Cities (2009) estimated that public sector jobs as a percentage of all employment in Belfast was the

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fourth highest in the UK and claimed, ‘for every 100 public sector jobs created in a city, . . .an additional 30 to 50 private sector jobs may be created through the public sector’s spending power’ (p. 13). If the percentage share of public sector jobs in Belfast was reduced simply to the current Northern Ireland average (31%), it would mean a loss of 8500 jobs. Allowing for the jobs multiplier, the total reduction in the city’s public and private sectors would be around 13 000 jobs. The projected reduction of public sector jobs 2010–2014 ranges as high as 500 000. Northern Ireland’s share of that will be disproportionate given its public sector’s share of GDP, with Belfast even more vulnerable than the region as a whole. Yet, disputes about community differentials and rival communities in competition for urban resources persisted during a period of rapid economic growth. A long period of stagnation coupled with downward pressure of public spending could accentuate such tensions.

Moving forward: the role of planning All cities are being encouraged to plan for compact form that promotes sustainability and efficiently optimises use of brownfield land. But, in Belfast, much brownfield land is in or near Protestant areas, given the demographic change in that community. Yet, new housing supply on many of these sites would likely face Catholic occupancy, given the differential Catholic need for housing. Such patterns, in turn, are likely to be viewed by some Protestant communities as territorial encroachment. In our engagement with local communities about their regeneration strategies, we have encountered the argument from an inner city Catholic community leadership that it is prepared to reach across the divide for mutual cooperation with its Protestant neighbours. But its immediate imperative is for extra housing provision, and it is unwilling to accept that its proposal for development in adjacent brownfield sites risks creating new flashpoints. As they see it, they cannot trade equity for good relations; they cannot forsake their need for housing in the interest of maintaining inter-communal peace. Such an equation seems to them to be a form of pressure to resign themselves indefinitely to discriminatory treatment. Conversely, their counterparts in the other community feel threatened by this prospect of an expanded Catholic presence. It would help to have an agreed citywide framework, within which local negotiations about such re-definitions of space could be conducted. Just as it helped to open up the Northern Ireland conflict to a more global reference, so it is useful to ease the intensiveness of very micro conflicts about contested land distribution by framing them within an agreed set of fair principles. But a real shared city has to embrace also the issue of socio-spatial segregation. Recent developments in Belfast have risked generating a new

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tale of two cities, with new projects relatively bypassing North and West Belfast, which has long lacked a vibrant economic base, and remains scarred by ‘peace’ walls. A sustained strategic approach to the creation of a new development axis for this area is intrinsic to any serious objective to build a shared city. Alongside this, there is a difficult discussion about how the spatial concentrations of multiple deprivation can give way to more socially mixed communities without the negative externalities associated with gentrification. A dynamic and differentiated interpretation of ‘space’ illustrates the problematic pursuit of shared space in a contested city. Is the notion of ‘shared space’ to be taken as inherently benign and its alternative of ethnic space to be regarded as universally malign? Conversely, is not the objective to create more ‘shared space’ in Belfast itself disputable? For instance, does it imply that the whole city should comprise shared space, whereby success would be calibrated in terms of the diminution of ethnic space? If so, all tribal socio-spatial segregation in the city, even when freely chosen, is inherently flawed. In any case, does ‘shared’ here mean an elimination of all ethnic spatial markers so that the new spaces created are sanitised in terms of all partisan representation? Or does it mean that the symbols and culture of the two main traditions have an equal coexistence in all spaces to reflect a dual rather than a common belonging? If so, how far does this go: all street names and signage in both English and Irish language?; the Irish Tricolour and the Union Jack flying over City Hall? Or does it mean that alongside the retention of substantial segregation, reflecting people’s choice to live most closely among those ‘of their own kind’, that there should be an extensive degree of shared space to balance this separatism with more scope for pluralist and diverse city living? But is such public space itself free from contest? Certainly, in deeply divided cities like Belfast, in which a preponderance of space is partitioned into ethnic turfs, and where spaces of common belonging are at a premium, the public realm can be at once an important arena of potential civic identity, and also subject itself to intercommunal disputation. If a ‘shared city’ means an ‘agreed city’ and the latter embodies agreement to disagree, and thereby a high degree of separate living in a manner that is mutually respectful and non-threatening, that is one thing. But if it means a significant increase in integrated social interaction and inter-communal collaboration, rooted in values of inclusion, diversity, equity, and interdependence, that is a much more ambitious project. How can this be accorded spatial form in a city whose sectarian signature is a predominantly Catholic/Nationalist West and a predominantly Protestant/Unionist East, fragmented from each other by both the natural environment of the river, and the built environment of major infrastructure? There is no blueprint for such an outcome. Rather, it is an agenda that needs to be opened up for greater civic understanding and debate, and this task is the first thing that

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needs to be deliberately undertaken, supported by an investment in civic literacy and capacity. A new approach to planning involves not simply a new system, but also a set of key principles that provide a framework for consistency and conflict resolution. As indicated, the idea of a ‘shared’ city has so many meanings to different people, in various contexts, that these multiple meanings must be framed in one common code that is recognisable, and achievable, not only within the planning framework but also within a collaborative form of city governance. The market has been the dominant instrument for change in Belfast in the recent past, with some commentators complimenting its nonpartisan capacity to shape a more cosmopolitan outlook for the city. However, the new apartment building around the city, seen by some as creating shared spaces in terms of the sectarian geography, is at the same time creating a new social geography. Yet, would the city trade off more social segregation for less sectarian segregation? Would it avoid social housing in its new non-sectarian spaces, since such estates are deemed by some to have an association with high levels of segregation? How would such an agenda square with declared planning values about creating balanced, socially mixed, sustainable communities? In any case, can planning set itself in contest with a contemporary political dynamic that is about ‘neoliberalizing space’ (Peck and Tickell, 2002). Ambivalence and ambiguity about such matters impede a strategic way forward in the city. Yet, the process of achieving clarity of principle is not without its own disputes. For instance, in a more market driven society, the power of capital can usually trump that of civic solidarity, and there is a key disagreement as to whether the primary purpose of planning is to be part of public intervention to compensate for market inequities, or whether it should run with the grain of the market to facilitate private development. Alongside these universal conflicts, the particular conflict in a city like Belfast needs to be more explicitly acknowledged in the planning system. That may mean that planning has to ‘declare its hand’ about what principles will inform its proactive intervention, e.g. that it will: .

. . . .

Acknowledge that equity—whether social or spatial—does not mean uniformity of provision. Rather, public urban resources need to be differentially distributed, based on need; See the regeneration of Belfast to be inextricably linked to reconciliation between its two main traditions; Promote community leadership that is pluralist and democratic rather than narrow and divisive; Treat space in ways, and at scales, that optimise opportunities for crosscommunity development agendas; urban permeability; and connectivity; Focus a ‘tandem’ strategy to reduce both social and sectarian separatism, rather than trade off one against the other; and

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Uphold the concept of the city as a living entity, and thereby not automatically accept that historic patterns of its ownership, associations, and use should establish its current and future use.

Such principles need to find expression in a strategic framework for planning that informs a long-term approach to building the preferred city. This would entail a metropolitan spatial framework, not only to achieve efficiencies in scale and scope, and to correspond with the geography of the draft Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan (dBMAP), but also to minimise any severance between what could become an increasingly Catholic/Nationalist city and its predominantly Protestant/Unionist suburbs and adjacent towns. In shaping the city itself, contrasts to the ‘ethnic norm’ need to be deliberately pursued. This involves: a systematic consolidation of the urban centre and waterfront for integrated living; extending outwards to address the symbols, flags, emblems, and other barriers on arterial routes that characterise them as exclusivist ethnoscapes rather than shared public territory; and then translating this agenda at community level, in partnership with the adjacent neighbourhoods. In building shared space, a distinction can be drawn between ‘borders’ (which are porous, adaptable, and positive) and ‘boundaries’ (which are hard-edged, inflexible, and negative). Thus, borders on arterial routes can still offer the prospect for cross-community interaction. For instance, service centres located in such sites can offer shared facilities that draw residents out of their segregated enclosures. In this way, instead of duplicating service provision within each community, it may be more productive to offer one quality provision on ‘borders’ that both communities can feel comfortable using. If such a strategy was to be supplemented by serious investment in design and environmental initiatives such as pavement widening and re-surfacing, enhanced street-crossing facilities and designed ‘places’ at street intersections, these new service centres could become attractive nodes for ‘shared living’. At the same time, initiatives like Titanic Quarter that are frontiering the ‘new Belfast’ need to ensure that they are not inadvertently creating a city within the city. While creating mixed spaces for those keen to integrate across the sectarian barrier, they may be accentuating the social polarisation. Avoidance of this form of dual city requires that social/affordable housing is zoned across the city in locales that facilitate the building of integrated communities, rather than spatially concentrated in ways that deepen sectarian segregation. Opening up the city also involves a more flexible public transport network that accommodates cross-radial and cross-city routes, together with pedestrian and cycle paths that make public spaces, services, and employment opportunities accessible to all. But whatever strategic and tactical contributions planning can make have to be set within a framework for serious political change towards a different future.

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Facing the future In facing the future, Belfast is faced with two choices: .

.

Emphasising the need to move rapidly into a post-conflict scenario by diminishing the focus on the past—deliberating about the conflict only helped to give it and its protagonists prominence. Concentration on a new city image, supported by an economic development agenda for post-industrialism and new landmark physical developments, will create a virtuous cycle that would see the remnants of conflict wither. An alternative perspective counsels against this evasion. Without confronting the contested nature of space and social life in the city, there is little prospect of shifting from a managerial to a transformative approach. Moreover, since no one agency has either the authority or capacity to deliver an answer to the lack of shared space, a coordinated and cooperative partnership of all relevant agencies is essential.

Two narratives have dominated Belfast in recent history: the narrative of nostalgia on the Protestant side that looks back to a contented time before violent subversion disturbed an ordered and prosperous corner of British society; and the narrative of utopia on the Catholic side that looks forward beyond grievance and inequity to a better future in a new Irish settlement. Both these narratives are changing—how much, how fast, how uniformly no one knows. However, in its widest interpretation, ‘the public realm’ needs to become a space where remaining difference can be navigated and negotiated peaceably; where old borders and boundaries are blurred; and where in a more porous, fluid, shifting ‘dialogic space’, the pluralities and multiple identities of a complex, diverse world offer an alternative to the fundamentalisms of fixed identity. The safe spaces that will help shape these new conversations will not magically transform enmity into amity. However, they may transform antipathy into empathy, offering a more widespread civic capacity to engage, and sometimes even robustly contest, with ‘the other’ within a public ethics of trust, respect and reciprocity.

Notes 1. The PSNI fatalities dataset contains 3377 cases and members of paramilitary organisations are categorised as ‘civilians’. Using a slightly wider definition, the Cost of the Troubles dataset (on which the analysis of political violence in Belfast is based) numbers just over 3700 victims and categorises paramilitary members separately from civilians. 2. The terms used in describing political violence are contentious in Northern Ireland. Official sources used the term ‘security-related’, but this is not acceptable to other

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participants who reject the idea that the conflict was simply a ‘security’ problem. The alternative term of ‘conflict-related’ is then substituted. Here ‘conflict-related’ will be used generally, but when, official sources are employed, ‘security-related’ will then be used. 3. The rate was calculated by dividing the total number of local fatalities by the average ward population, 1971–1991. The 2001 ward populations were excluded since wards were reorganised and, in some cases, renamed in 1992. 4. The dataset was created by Ian Shuttleworth (QUB) from Census data organised on 100 metre square grids for this project. 5. It should be noted that the ward boundaries shifted between the 1991 and the 2001 Censuses.

9 Between Sovereignty and Pluralism: Other Divided Cities

A major theme of the empirical material so far has involved comparison of issues arising out of a city whose divisions stem from a contest over sovereignty (Belfast) with those whose divisions have been characterised as primarily pluralist—disputes over the sharing of power, public resources, and private assets (the US cities). However, in counter-posing these paradigms of urban division, their interpenetration should be recognised. This is illustrated by reference to two other sites—Nicosia, a physically divided city between two sovereignty realms and two British Northern cities, preoccupied with inter-ethnic community division over the past decade. In Cyprus, a pluralist dispute (the distribution of power and resources between the ethnically Greek and Turkish communities) was brutally transformed in a sovereignty contest by the 1974 invasion and the creation of the northern Cypriot statelet. In the British cities profiled, the key issues were defined in terms of community separation and isolation leading to ‘parallel lives’. Strategies thus centred on community cohesion interventions such as respect for diversity and inter-community engagement. The London bombings in July 2005 shifted the perspective. While the 9/11 incident in New York was seen as the action of ‘outsiders’ trained and resourced elsewhere, the London bombings were conducted by British citizens, ‘radicalised’ by international events and the promulgation of ‘extremist’ ideas. A cohesion problem had been transformed into a sovereignty contest, even if the sovereignty dispute was about the primacy of the devine over the secular. The response by the British government (Contest) included a strand of community intervention known as ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ (PVE)—arguably the ‘soft’ component of a national ‘anti-terrorism’1 strategy. Since Muslims were the Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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primary focus of this strategy, English northern towns, once seen as having an ‘inter-communal’ problem, became also the locations for PVE. The interface between community cohesion and counter-insurgency has been exhaustively explored in Northern Ireland, where the latter has been seen to ‘contaminate’ the former, for example, by efforts to deny resources to community-based organisations that were perceived to be associated with paramilitary organisations. Curiously, following the 1998 Agreement and the attendant prisoner releases, there has been the charge that paramilitarydominated ex-prisoner organisations have been excessively favoured, for example, with Peace Programme resources (Allister, 2007). The Northern Ireland experience points to the difficulties and consequences of simultaneously attempting to build community cohesion and operating counter insurgency. The latter involves intelligence building, the restriction of individual rights and, ultimately, coercion. The former attempts to expand rights and relationships while addressing inequalities. Similar tensions have been exhibited in England. The Final Report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion (2007) stressed individual rights and ‘similar life opportunities’ in its definition of community cohesion. Yet, many of those critical of PVE emphasise the extent to which both are undermined. For example, in its submission to the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee (PVE 12, 2009), Oxfam was concerned about: the impact of cuts in funding to organisations working in poor ethnic minority communities, as part of a shift away from ‘single group’ funding and towards community cohesion. The second is the discrimination experienced by ethnic minority communities because of the targeting of Muslims by Prevent. The third is the way in which ethnic minority women may become more vulnerable because Prevent and cohesion policy puts more power and authority into the hands of religious leaders and interfaith networks. The Institute for Race Relations characterised the policy as ‘How Not to Prevent Violent Extremism’ (Kundnani, 2009). The Islamic Human Rights Commission (2009) described the strategy as ‘inherently flawed’. The revised counter terrorism strategy, Contest II launched in 2009, re-emphasised the importance of Prevent in relation to other kinds of strategy despite the many reservations about its implementation up to that point. Arguably, the vigorous pursuit of human rights and equality agendas can do more to diminish the attraction of ‘extremist’ ideas than a community strategy embedded in counter insurgency operations. Nevertheless, in Northern Ireland, vigorous equality strategies, coupled with a range of anti-poverty measures, were implemented while political support for Sinn Fein grew and grew. The point surely is that such initiatives are worthy for

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their own sake rather than as adjuncts to strategies designed to weaken criticism of government or even challenges to the existence of the state. The cases studies were based on visits to each of these sites where interviews with planners and community organisers took place. They are not exhaustive accounts of the history of issues within each. Rather, the central point is to describe a set of case studies where pluralism and sovereignty contests overlap to draw out other lessons about the nature of urban division.

Divided country—divided city: Nicosia As the capital city of Cyprus, Nicosia is almost centrally located in the Mediterranean island nation. Following the colonial struggle with Britain, by the 1960s conflict on the island mainly took the form of inter-communal violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. In 1974, in anticipation of intervention by the Greek military junta, there was a pre-emptive Turkish invasion of the northern part of the island. The subsequent turmoil included refugees from both sides fleeing to the part of the island controlled by their ethnic group, particularly a move by substantial numbers of Greek Cypriots in the North to the Cypriot government-controlled southern territory. A ceasefire line was drawn across the island and its capital city, and has since operated as a UN-patrolled buffer zone between the two separated parts. Since division in Cyprus dates back deep into history, this contested past helps to shape current nationalist ideologies. Some take the story back thousands of years, others to at least the Ottoman conquest of the island in the 16th century, while others focus on the ethnic ramifications of British colonial rule and its physical division of 1956 known as the ‘Mason-Dixon Line’. Eruptions of violent disturbance in this period led in 1963 to a UNpatrolled barrier—the so-called ‘Green Line’—separating the two sides in both Nicosia and the island as a whole. However, as acute animosities declined over the following decade, this dividing line became more porous, only to be re-configured as a more stark separation following the 1974 demographic re-alignment into two ethnically homogeneous zones. So both traditions know that they have been here many times before. Despite a series of negotiations to achieve an agreed settlement, in 1983 there was a unilateral declaration of the establishment of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, whose legitimacy is recognised only by Turkey. In the quarter of a century since, sporadic talks have failed to deliver agreement, leading to what has been described as a protracted ‘adversarial impasse’ (Fisher, 2001). Essentially, Greek Cypriots hold that both ethnic communities share a mutual heritage and optimally should belong to a unified state, with a single citizenship, even if in the form of a bi-communal federation. By contrast, Turkish Cypriots prefer their own separate state as a reflection of

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the need for ‘two independent ethnic zones’ (Broome, 2004, p. 200). The integrationist impulse of the former means that, for them, the dividing lines are seen as temporary and unfortunate boundaries, whereas for the latter, they are seen as more permanent borders that validate their separatism and mark an inter-state arrangement between two distinct sovereignties. Such diverse perspectives allow for the walls to be conceived as both instruments of protection and exclusion (Papadakis, 1998). The principles that have informed the as-of-yet unsuccessful peace process include: . . . . .

Phased de-militarisation by Greek and Turkish troops. Installation of a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation. Territorial adjustments. Return of property or appropriate compensation to pre-1974 owners. Addressing the issues of the new Turkish settlers and displaced persons.

Augmenting the divisions between the two sides are social disparities, such as the tendency for the Turkish Cypriots to be poorer and less well served by public services than Greek Cypriots, and for the former to look more to the East, while the latter tend to be ‘westernised’. Nevertheless, while Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, with EU laws suspended for North Cyprus, given Turkey’s request for membership, the European Union might provide a framework for a final settlement on the island. Meanwhile, following the demolition of the Berlin Wall with German re-unification, Nicosia is often depicted as ‘the last divided capital’ in Europe, in physical, military, and governance terms. Operating as the capital of the Republic of Cyprus, the southern part of the city had a population in 2001 of 198 200, and by 2012, with rapidly expanding southern residential suburbs, it is set to reach 223 360. The northern part functions as the capital of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (with a ‘guestimated’ 85 000 population). Whereas before the 1974 invasion, Turkish Cypriots accounted for 18% of the population and around 10% of the land, they now control close to 40% of the land, and their number has increased with the inflow of Turkish settlers, whose figures are contested between 40 000 and 150 000. In the case of Nicosia itself, moving from the Greek Cypriot part of the city to the Turkish Cypriot part requires showing a passport and getting a visa stamped. Such a pronounced form of division, whereby Nicosia has become a microcosm of a sovereignty dispute in a partitioned island, makes the city a particularly appropriate comparative case study on the subject of contested cities.

Planning divided Nicosia The relevance of Nicosia to the more general debate about the nature of divided cities is approached via a series of interviews, site visits, and a

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seminar/workshop, conducted while on a study tour of the city in 2008.2 The material is presented in edited rather than transcript format. From a planning perspective,3 the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and the subsequent partition produced the critical turning point in the island’s spatial form—separating over one-third of the island, and the northern sector of Nicosia, from the government-controlled southern sector. While across the island, the physical demarcation has both reflected and accentuated the ethnic separatism between its Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking communities, the impact on Nicosia has been particularly pronounced. The central area, contiguous to the buffer zone, has seen substantial abandonment and erosion of identity as an urban core. Not only has the UN-protected buffer zone split the old quarter of the city, converting the city-centre into a ‘dead-zone’ of under-investment and dilapidation, it has also witnessed the independent and disconnected development of the two detached parts of the city. As commented by Demetriou (2004, p. 241): ‘The existence of the “Green Line” has undermined the centrality of the old city and turned it into a ‘border’ town or an “edge zone” of marginal importance’. Moreover, it has impacted on the socio-spatial formation of the wider urban area. For instance, it disconnected the city from the Mesaoria plain. Moreover, following the disruption and dislocation of the 1970s, a pressing imperative was for refugee housing for some 150 000 Greek Cypriots—about one-third of the island’s population at that time—displaced from their northern homelands (Demetriou, 2004). Public land to the south of the city was allocated to accommodate a substantial share of those dislocated, and thereby the urban fabric was significantly altered, with large housing estates dispersed piecemeal on the southern fringes and the relocation of the city’s commercial centre into the ‘sixties development’ of the inner suburbs. Such multi-nodal spatial sprawl in the second-ring suburbs did not derive from strategic planning, and subsequently the city has been seeking a post-hoc rationalisation for these expedient de-centralist development processes. However, to retrospectively superimpose a more integrated, compact, transit-oriented, and pedestrian-friendly complexion on this fragmented and imbalanced suburbanisation is a formidable quest. Such incursion into agricultural terrain, via scattered, low density patterns, without a defined and regulated edge of settlement, hardly heralds ‘smart growth’ and well-designed public space. Facilitated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the 1979 Nicosia Master Plan was instigated as a bi-communal regeneration project involving both Greek and Turkish Cypriot planners, architects and engineers, collaborating initially on essential infrastructural coordination and subsequently on the architectural heritage and restoration of the historic old city within its famous Venetian walls. Beyond this professional collaboration across the divide, and the practical benefits of improved sewerage and water systems, this shows planning’s potential to contribute as a ‘resolver’ of the overall conflict, including the identification of a shared heritage that merits

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conservation. However, there remain real obstacles to compatible development in both parts of a city beset by two divergent scenarios: a united and divided Nicosia. Since a succession of peace initiatives has yet to achieve urban unity, the more immediate challenge facing Cypriot planners is the redevelopment of the buffer zone. Such an agenda has to link the processes of regeneration and reconciliation, thereby providing both a physical and social ‘glue’ that can remake Nicosia as a more cohesive and viable city. This theme also emerged in exchanges with the government Department of Planning and Housing4. The immediate post-independence optimism of the 1960s attracted an investment boom in the Greek-speaking parts of Cyprus, reflected in a proliferation of ‘sixties’ high-rise architecture in the current commercial centre, together with substantial housing demand. Largely based on British planning practice, a Local Plan for Nicosia, produced in the early 1970s, was effectively suspended following the island’s political rupture in 1974. Reinstated in 1990 as a statutory plan exclusively for the southern, governmentcontrolled, part of the urban area, it has 5-year review periods.5 The UNDP has taken a keen interest in the strategic role of planning in the divided city, for example, initiating an evaluation of all plans in 1993, and up-dating this in its 2004 Diagnostic Report. While Greek Cypriot planners experience cordial working relations with their Turkish Cypriot counterparts, it remains politically unfeasible to contemplate a unified planning process that treats the whole island as one settlement, the ideal regional nest, in which sustainable urban planning can sit. Rather, since these professional contacts are informal and non-statutory, they cannot translate into decisive change. In an interview with Ms Eleni Mavrou, the Mayor of Nicosia,6 she evidenced the Nicosia Master Plan as an illustration of planning’s integrative contribution, and the opening of Ledra Street, during her term of office, as a practical manifestation of the mutual economic benefits of connectivity between both parts of the city. She explained, interestingly, that the fact that these initiatives were not constitutional, in a formal sense, made them less complicated to execute on an exploratory basis. The only legal planning instruments with effect on both sides of the buffer-zone are the UNDPfunded ‘area schemes’. In relation to inter-community relations, she suggested that there was little teamwork amongst the six municipalities comprising the government-controlled urban area for the Nicosia Local Plan, never mind the more emotive issue of collaboration with the Turkish-speaking community (McEldowney, 2008). Another aspect of the disconnectedness of Nicosia relates to its poor public transport, which the Mayor acknowledged, though she emphasised that she had commissioned a transport review for the car-dominated city, focusing on the prospect of an improved bus provision. But she considered that such planning initiatives were debilitated by the prevailing issue of sovereignty. Though she held that only a federal solution with true equality between

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Greek and Turkish-speaking populations was feasible, this outcome was itself problematic for different factions. For instance, within the Greekspeaking community, there was concern that the northern zone might exploit federal status as a catalyst for Turkish accession. While her analysis here is plausible, it is also the case that Turkish Cypriots retain scepticism of any rapprochement that erodes their current autonomy and may be interpreted by their opponents as demonstrating the efficacy of closer unity between the two ethno-nationalist traditions under a common identity of ‘Cypriot’. While the President has approved a people-centred, rather than a land-centred, political accommodation, the Mayor appreciated that land was a very delicate issue in Cyprus—a visceral rather than just a conceptual or legal concern (McEldowney, 2008). In discussion with a planning consultant,7 whose team is responsible for the ‘New Vision’ for the Core of Nicosia, which is de facto the current phase of the Nicosia Master Plan, it was explained how this process had succeeded in achieving partnership between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot professionals. Providing a foundation for harmonising essential infrastructure, and delivering a series of architectural heritage regeneration projects on both sides of the partition within the walled city, this bi-communal project team has been augmented by a bi-communal Community Council, and the project area has been extended beyond the walled city to encompass segments of inner-city housing predominantly occupied by poor, immigrant populations. While most European cities have experienced a suburbanisation of people and jobs to lower-cost land on the urban outskirts, the special circumstance in Nicosia is the ‘push’ factor of the ‘dead-end’ central zone, attributable to the severance of the old city into two mutually hostile and physically-split sectors. Thus, contemporary planning in Nicosia has to embrace this wider metropolitan geography. The New Vision posits five scenarios—a dismal scenario in which problems are let drift; a ‘social’ scenario in which the emphasis rests on public investment, such as housing; an ‘economic’ scenario in which the focus is on commerce and business; a ‘cultural’ scenario in which education, built heritage and tourism take precedence; and the preferred ‘integrative’ scenario in which the last three are blended together, and operationalised via a new, integrated Walled City Administrative Board, a three-phase development programme and a series of detailed development briefs for areas like Ledra Street (Ibid., 2008).

The impact of planning Evidently, the agenda for building peace in Nicosia contains a central role for spatial planning to redress communal segregation and restore unity of identity and purpose to a fractured city. In engagement with local stakeholders, there was broad endorsement of how the early United Nations-sponsored Nicosia

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Master Plan induced bi-communal alliances, practical synchronisation of infrastructural systems, and, at a more micro level, a succession of arresting built heritage restoration ventures. Surpassing both this particular effort, and the general despondency about the intractability of the conflict, is the tentative delineation of a shared vision of a democratically-shaped and integrated Nicosia. Whether this confidence in the planning process is merited is itself questionable. The entrenched Planning structures, which derive from the British system-planning approaches from the 1960s, are mixed with some current more proactive planning initiatives—such as the New Vision—which can appear convincing in their presentation. However, Nicosia is hardly a model of sustainable development, being notably car-dominated, with much visually distasteful 1960s high-rise, its impromptu growth sprawling southwards, and all under-pinned by an enfeebled public realm (McEldowney, 2008). Moreover, a critical appraisal (Abu-Orf, 2005, p. 56) of the collaborative planning approach putatively adopted in the Master Plan argues that the ‘informal communication in planning was distorted and. . .was used as a cover for essentially political agendas.’ This relationship between planning and partisan politics is inevitably controversial in a city so physically and thoroughly splintered. Diseconomies of conflict are apparent in: the inefficient duplication of amenities and services; the refugee problem that has accentuated the tendency to sprawl; the deterrence on strategic investment that attends cities ensnared in persistent conflict; and the absence of mutually pooled information and strategy across the urban divide that would allow for considered and well-adjusted development. However, Charlesworth (2006, p. 95) presents a more positive appraisal of the impact of planning on Nicosia on both the city’s schism and the macro politics: . . . .design and planning initiatives can become powerful peace-broking tools for politicians and communities interested in resolving their cultural, ethnic, and economic divisions. Many of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot architects interviewed saw clearly that their contribution was as political negotiators in the peace process through the future removal of the Green Line barrier. From this perspective, restoration of a significant urban space, such as the historic city, cannot await a final peace settlement. Indeed, the very progress on the ground in transforming such a sensitive site may itself be catalytic for the wider peace process. Whatever of this optimism, a pronounced impression from a study visit to Nicosia is the utter physicality of the division, as compared with Belfast and other case study cities. Whereas Belfast is disfigured with multiple small-scale physical inter-communal ramparts and fortifications, Nicosia is sliced in two by one vast and formalised cordon, which forms not only the paramount feature of the urban fabric, but also the primary

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influence on its urban surrounds. The incapacitation imposed by the bisection is evident in the decay and neglect in many parts of the ‘walled city’, as well as much of the inner-city. Yet, it can be claimed that the almost complete residential segregation between the two protagonist communities has halted the flare-ups of inter-communal violence, an improved security that may appeal to some residents as an unfortunate but essential response to lethal ethnic strife. At the same time, the permanence of this marked separatism has allowed a whole generation to be reared without routine interaction with the other community, and the adaptability that can attend such exchange across cultural, linguistic, and ethnic boundaries. Referring to the negative impact of such barriers in bifurcated cities, Calame and Charlesworth (2009, p. 5) note: In many cases, these partitions also postpone or even preclude a negotiated settlement between ethnic antagonists because they create a climate of dampened violence, sustained distrust and low-grade hostility. Urban partitions seem to reduce violent confrontation while justifying fear and paranoia. If there was no actual danger, this logic suggests, the walls would no longer be standing. In this way, the partition becomes the emblem of threat as much as a bulwark against it. Moreover, the forms and symbols of division can be read differently between the two communities. For instance, there can be a noticeable difference in the type of barrier in each mono-ethnic space. Typically, they appear more sturdy and durable within the Turkish Cypriot zone, perhaps indicating the intention to make the separation absolute and permanent, whereas the flimsier versions on the other side speak to their faith in the transient nature of this divide, given their political ambition to eventually re-unify the city and island-state (Papadakis, 1998). Beyond these contesting impulses, the heart of Nicosia holds an underexploited scope for revitalisation. With the architectural attraction of the old Italianate townscape and Venetian imprint, and the splendid legacy of other traditions such as Byzantine, French Medieval and Ottoman—reflected, for instance, in signature buildings such as mosques and churches—the city’s resilient heritage encapsulates its historic ‘frontier’ role as gateway to both East and West. As such, it offers great prospect for imaginative ‘culture-based’ planning, and the opening-up of Ledra Street may pre-figure the potential for further buffer-breaking access initiatives. Such a scenario may address the paradox of a stunted city tourism market in the midst of a tourist-dominated island economy. Yet, even this potential is not unproblematic. Where there is conflictive heritage, there can be dispute about the efficacy of complete and ‘authentic’ preservation over the argument that selective erasure of the most contentious sites may help tranquillise the inter-communal polarisation. Outside of specific sites, such as the Ledra Palace Hotel that houses UN

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soldiers, there are few neutral or shared spaces in the heart of the city that can host bi-communal engagement. Perhaps, beyond the understandable focus in the Master Plan on grand initiatives such as cultural centres, museums and theatres, and restoration of historic monuments, emphasis should be accorded to the creation of mutually accessible piazzas and mixed-use development, deliberately designed to welcome both traditions, supplemented by pedestrian precincts and transport modes to improve mobility across the divide.

Divided cities in Britain: Oldham and Bradford The analysis of divided cities is now extended to Britain where there has been an equally turbulent debate about the position of ethnic minorities (and migrants) and their relationship with the mainly white populations. While these relationships have not had as violent a history as cities like Belfast or Nicosia, the terms of the debate (discrimination, inequality and, more lately, ideological challenge to the state) have been similar. Moreover, disorganised, opportunistic violence amongst urban communities has been a feature of the British environment, occasionally flaring into full-scale urban riots. These phenomena have been essentially urban, where ethnic minorities are concentrated, offering examples of residential segregation, socio-economic inequality and community division.

Oldham Oldham Borough’s population in 2001 was 217 300, with the town less than half that (103 900). Over the preceding decade, the borough’s population reduced slightly (by 0.6%), a notable stability relative to other urban centres in the ribbon-development conurbation of 2.4 million people that constitutes Greater Manchester. With a current population around 219 600, it is projected to grow by 4%, to total around 228 100 people in 2022. Of the Borough’s residents, in 2001, 13.9% were of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) heritage. By the end of that decade, this share had increased to nearly 17%, and was projected to be close to one-fifth by 2012 and to one-quarter by 2022. The increase in Oldham’s population overall is primarily from the minority ethnic populations and particularly people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage (Oldham NHS Primary Care Trust, 2008). Together with this pace of growth, the spatial concentration of this population in segregated neighbourhoods is pronounced, for instance in wards such as Werneth (58% non-white), Coldhurst (41% non-white) and Alexandra (30% non-white). This racial composition is in the context of a mainly working class urban area, where valueadded economic activity, skill, and wage levels are low. For instance, 37.7% of Oldham people hold no qualifications, and the average gross weekly wage in 2001 was £297, £50 below the national average (URBED et al., 2004). In 2007,

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Oldham had the 23rd highest local concentration of deprivation out of the 354 local authorities in England. Poverty was particularly prevalent in those Super Output Areas (SOAs) in Oldham’s central wards. For instance, Coldhurst, St Mary’s and Werneth contained SOAs in the 1% most deprived in England (Oldham NHS Primary Care Trust, 2008). In short, there is a close correspondence between those areas with concentrations of ethnic population and those areas suffering high levels of income-deprivation. Of course in the 19th century, when Lancashire was a premier industrial region built around its weaving and spinning, Oldham flourished as a satellite town of the burgeoning Manchester, and was dotted with 330 mills, as it increased its population in the period 1830–1914 nearly 13-fold. But a half century on from the First World War, the local textile industry was in retreat, inducing an exodus by a section of its traditional labour to better job opportunities elsewhere, and the immediate labour shortage—particularly for the night shift—attracted immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh: ‘These groups arrived to work in a declining industry in a town with little tradition of welcoming outsiders’ (URBED et al., 2004, p. 9). Currently, some 90 000 people are employed in Oldham, and just over two-thirds of these are local residents. Alongside its declining traditional sectors of textiles and metals, some ‘growth’ occupations such as food, publishing, and medical equipment are evident, but at the lower skill level in these sectors, suggesting an urgent imperative for a more diversified economic base. In the midst of this demographic and economic shift, Oldham drew attention in May 2001 as the location of one of the most disruptive racially motivated riots in the UK in recent decades, tensions partly reflected in the local electoral enhancement of the far right British National Party in the General Election. In a series of reports and reviews that were subsequently commissioned to identify the genesis of this civil disturbance, certain features were accorded particular significance. For instance, in an area where around two-thirds of housing is tightly-packed terraced Victorian, there is a concentration of BME households in overcrowded poor accommodation in central Oldham, whereas social housing in the peripheral estates comprises predominantly white neighbourhoods. While 7.3% of households across the borough live in overcrowded housing, similar to the national average of 7.1%, the rates in areas with high concentrations of ethnic population are significantly higher: Coldhurst (22.8%), Werneth (17.5%) and St Mary’s (15.9%) (Oldham NHS Primary Care Trust, 2008). This marked racial segregation has drawn government compensatory interventions targeted spatially to alleviate poverty and educational under-attainment. But, in the view of some, these very attempts to redress exclusion have inadvertently accentuated the problem of defective community cohesion: ‘Well-intentioned attempts to address need through area-based initiatives backfired and became a source of resentment between neighbourhoods fueling political extremism. This was a contributory factor to the outbreak of rioting

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in May 2001 which brought Oldham to prominence for all the wrong reasons (URBED et al., 2004, p. 9). Familiar comments abound about how the separatism of segregated housing and schooling is bolstered by linguistic, cultural and religious distinctions (Ritchie Report, 2001; Cantle Report, 2001; Denham Report, 2002). A more recent evaluation is both positive and critical with respect to progress by Oldham Council and related social partnerships in addressing the ‘parallel lives’ that are depicted as the basis of ethnic strife (Institute of Community Cohesion, March 2006, p. 4): ‘(we are) struck by the extent to which divisions within and polarisation between Oldham’s many communities continue to be a feature of social relations, and the seeming reluctance of many sections of the community to embrace positive change.’

Promoting community cohesion in Oldham Notwithstanding this ‘cultural’ factor, Oldham’s main problems arguably lie at the interface of race and class. The response from the Council and the Oldham Partnership has been largely to adopt the official guidelines for creating community cohesion: instilling pride of belonging to community; promoting peaceable co-existence of diverse populations, who show mutual respect and neighbourly support; ensuring that equity is applied in service delivery and economic opportunity, and that racism is rejected; and empowering people to participate in the shaping of their social lives (Local Government Association, 2002). Translating these precepts for local circumstance, the Community Cohesion Strategy for the borough—‘Forward Together’— specifies seven objectives: . . . . . . .

Fostering good community relations. Targeting resources to decrease inequality. Addressing differential needs in a culturally sensitive way. Engaging with communities. Generating mutual understanding and respect, while challenging racism, discrimination, and prejudice. Producing a balanced labour force that reflects community composition in the borough. Developing best practice in civic leadership (Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, October 2004).

As an example of this agenda, the Housing Strategy is designed to build cohesion. For instance, it emphasises the creation of diversity within housing developments—mix in terms of income appeal, tenure, housing type and size— to attract an assortment of class, ethnic background, and family composition. It is thought that such integration will diminish spatial concentrations of

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poverty. In addition, there is provision to deploy new urban design that connects neighbourhoods to each other and to the town centre. Many of the poorest neighbourhoods are physically secluded or obstructed by infrastructure such as motorway by-pass or rail line, or otherwise enfolded by dead ends. Estates like Werneth are to benefit from masterplans that emphasise their ‘unlocking’ through improved permeability and access. In creating quality and secure areas that hold wide appeal, the strategy also contains deliberate fostering of ‘community links’, a programme for encouraging contact and mingling across social and racial divides. This combination of physical and social planning indicates appreciation of the integrated nature of the challenge, and of the requisite proactive development for transformative impact (www. oldham.gov.uk, viewed 13 July 2010). A significant chance to make an impression comes when people are new arrivals in an area. From its research, Oldham’s Housing Market Renewal (HMR) project emphasises how a diverse range of basic, low cost, informal activities can contribute significantly to building relationships between new residents. Shared inductions and free sessions at amenities can create opportunity for meeting and mixing, while welcome packs at new build developments that provide information about the wider vicinity and contact details for community agencies and facilities are also valuable in helping newcomers make initial connections. In supporting this networking and cohesion-building, HMR references ‘Cohesion Counts’, an on-line resource for those engaged in building trust within, and shared aspirations for, an area. It offers a set of useful questions to be explored, including: is the area popular? what is the turnover rate? what is the tenure mix and is it balanced? is there diversity of people (i.e. ethnic group, age, religion, etc.)? how marked is the incidence of anti-social behaviour? how prevalent is hate crime? are conflicts raging between this area’s residents and those of a neighbouring one? is shared open space available? did local people participate in its design? is such space contributing to residents’ quality of life? is there evidence of community organisations working together for the good of the area? As part of Oldham’s Housing delivery, First Choice Homes Oldham (FCHO) is a not-for-profit social landlord that manages, lets, repairs, and modernises Council-owned properties in the borough. Amongst its objectives, it seeks to make Oldham a place where people live together in peaceful security and mutual respect (First Choice Homes Oldham, February, 2004, p. 4). In a 2003 survey of its BME tenants that it commissioned, 68.4% of respondents preferred to reside in a mixed community, where people from different cultural backgrounds lived in proximity, whereas 10.1% of respondents expressed a wish not to live in such circumstance for various reasons. In exploring why residents would not desire to re-locate to a mixed area, 59.9% of respondents emphasised that a lack of cultural and religious facilities, such as Asian shops, schools, and Mosques, would be a disincentive; 58.2% expressed fear of racial harassment; and 57.4% identified fear of isolation and not being

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accepted. But a major consideration in moving home was the location and size of property on offer (First Choice Homes Oldham, May 2004). Another example of this kind of intervention is the Schools Link Project. Starting modestly in 2000 with six primary schools, its participation now comprises 50 of Oldham’s 95 primary schools, and seven secondary schools. In pairing schools with dissimilar ethnic composition, the intention is to afford opportunity for children to convene and engage across socio-cultural difference, through drama, art, and outdoor pursuits. Since the organisation can involve not only teachers, but also school governors and parents, the project allows for a wider cross-community involvement. Such joint initiatives are designed to enhance communal reciprocation. In discussion with local Council officials responsible for promoting cohesion8, three main sources of ‘shared space’ and inter-communal contact were identified. First, unlike Belfast’s differentiated system, some of which is customised for specific communities and routes, the local transport service operates uniformly for the whole city, providing links across communities. Second, the central shopping district is accessible and used by all communities, and third, the Sixth Form College is thought to offer students the opportunity for inter-ethnic engagement. They are concerned to enhance these kinds of spaces. For them, this includes an ambitious attempt to reconceptualise the city’s education system. As indicated in the strategy for educational change (Oldham Metropolitan Borough, 2007, p. 2): The percentage of pupils from ethnic minorities is well above the national average in five schools and well below in nine. The segregation of schools was recognised as a major problem in relation to community cohesion in the Cantle Report, and the need to address this and support greater integration in secondary education is a priority for the Borough. Projected population trends reinforce the need for change. Oldham currently has a relatively young population of approximately 220 000 from various ethnic backgrounds in both rural and urban areas. The school population is forecast to decline until 2016. This decline masks a significant change in composition of the population with an increase in some communities within the ethnic minority population (currently 20.5% of the school population, rising to 33% in 2015) and greater decline in the white population. The plan proposes the closure of seven schools, to be replaced by three academies and one Roman Catholic school, built on strategically selected sites located outside traditional areas. Rather, they are thinking of ‘edge’ sites, accessible to all communities across geographical and social division. This allows for each school to adopt a distinctive identity unattached to any particular community. Such schools ‘are part of a whole system plan in terms of school reorganisation, which aims to break up current arrangements and

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create a social mix in each school, at the same time as giving all parents more choices of good school’ (ibid., p. 6). In addition to such innovations, there is an approach to cohesion that extends beyond conventional notions of multiculturalism. For instance, it is recognised that the traditional identity of ‘British’ does not have a ready purchase for all citizens. Rather, common citizenship that is underpinned by socio-economic opportunity and equitable public policy, and rooted in durable and resilient communities, is taken as critical to forging attachments, from which cohesion emerges organically. Such an approach allows for strong distinctive identities, within a framework of equality and mutual engagement, supported by strategies to enhance community capacity to encounter external ideas and forces with competence and confidence. The Council seeks to mainstream these primary facets of community cohesion into its policies for education, social services, planning, and regeneration, etc. In discussion with the officials, scepticism was expressed about those explanations for local ethnic strife that focused on deliberate segregation and insulation. Such settlement patterns did not always emerge from choice to lead separate lives. But there were divergent views among interviewees about the scope for planning to bestow a more united city. In part, this was attributed to the regulatory and conventional land-use approaches of some planners, who missed out on the more strategic potential of planning to contribute proactively to such wider social objectives. It was also considered that until the cohesion agenda was incorporated into a clear legislative framework, with proportionate resources, significant progress towards building sustainable communities that were at once inclusive, diverse, and cohesive would stall. However, from the planners’ perspective, the English system does address ethnic segregation through Urban Development Plans (UDPs) and community cohesion is integral to the preparation of the Local Development Framework. As indicated earlier, planners are empowered to help create mixed residential estates. Policy H1.5 of Oldham’s UDP on Housing Choice and Diversity obliges developments of 25 dwellings or more to contain a variety of house type and size suitable for diverse housing demand. In assessing these planning and policy interventions for addressing division in Oldham, many familiar dilemmas emerge: is race inequality becoming a subordinate issue to a culturally dominated debate about cohesion? In pursuing greater integration, to what extent can local government be a vanguard of social engineering, or to what extent does effective mixing rely ultimately on organic development based on choice? How comprehensive can planning and policy be in this regard, without creating a proliferation of strategies and the confusing fragmentations of multiple over-lapping partnerships? How much should initiatives be bottom-up rather than top-down? These and many similar considerations beset any serious strategy. So, what has Oldham’s approach to community cohesion achieved? The recent review of its efforts (Institute of Community Cohesion, March 2006) noted that it had undertaken

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many interesting and exemplary initiatives that had shown commendable civic leadership. However, it had not yet brought these all together in a coherent strategy, with appropriate targets. In this elusive search for a viably comprehensive approach to planning and policy in divided cities, attention turns to another UK city afflicted with inter-ethnic conflict.

Bradford: from ethnic to shared space? Bradford Metropolitan District has an overall population of 493 100 (2006 midyear population estimates: Office of National Statistics, ONS). ONS also notes that the population grew slowly between 1991 and 1994 before declining until 1999. However, since 2001, the population has been increasing each year. The district is multi-cultural, with a range of ethnic groups: white (75%); Pakistani (15%); Indian (3%); and less than 2% of the district’s population is of black African/Caribbean origin. The district’s population is expected to grow to 655 000 by 2031 (Total Place Pilot Final Report, February 2010). The white ethnic group’s share of the total population is expected to fall to 56% (from 74% in 2007) and the South Asian ethnic group to rise from 20 to 35%. As noted in the previous section, Bradford, along with Oldham and Burnley were identified as sites of ethnic tension and conflict resulting from riots in all three cities in 2001. While the initial incidents were the result of activities by ‘far right’ groups, a familiar pattern of Asian youths confronting the police soon emerged. The disturbances were regarded as the outcome of communities in segregated areas living ‘parallel lives’ (Cantle, 2001; Ouseley, 2001). Although, there is evidence to suggest that rigid patterns of racial self segregation are not supported by the evidence (Simpson, 2003, p. 23—‘Demographic evidence shows dispersal, supporting the survey evidence of a desire to live in mixed neighbourhoods by most in the South Asian populations’), the policy response was based on the assumption of a deficit in ‘bridging social capital’. As Varshney (2002) argues, these kinds of bridging relationships may be crucial in moderating inter-community violence. In his view, inter-ethnic and intraethnic networks of civic engagement play very different roles in ethnic conflict. The former build bridges between ethnic communities while the latter reinforce ethnic boundaries and reduce positive communication and interaction between ethnic groups. Inter-ethnic networks can work as agents of peace. But if communities are organised only on intra-ethnic lines—where members of different ethnic groups do not mix together and interconnections among ethnic communities are limited or do not exist—ethnic violence is much more likely to break out. These assumptions were echoed in the British government’s response to the urban disturbances. The Cantle Report (2002, p. 10) emphasised:

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We believe that there is an urgent need to promote community cohesion, based upon a greater knowledge of, contact between, and respect for, the various cultures that now make Great Britain such a rich and diverse nation. It is also essential to establish a greater sense of citizenship, based on (a few) common principles, which are shared and observed by all sections of the community. This concept of citizenship would also place a higher value on cultural differences. There are, however, alternative analyses to the ‘defective bridging social capital thesis’. Horowitz (2001) defines ethnic riots as intense, sudden, but not necessarily wholly unplanned, lethal attacks on the civilian members of one ethnic group by civilian members of another ethnic group, with the victims chosen because of their group membership. The rioters imagine themselves to be engaged in heroic acts of self-defence against life and death threats (persecutory). The rioters often over-estimate the dangers they face and misperceive the intentions and actions of their enemies. He argues that the combination of four conditions best explains the occurrence of ethnic riots: . .

. .

A hostile relationship between two ethnic groups, not necessarily an ancient enmity that produces antipathy or hatred. A response to events—usually denominated as anger, but perhaps more accurately rendered as arousal, rage, outrage, or wrath—that strongly engages the emotions of one of these groups. A keenly felt sense of justification for violence. An assessment of the reduced risks of violence that reduces inhibition.

The rioters’ sense of low risk is heightened by the fact that they generally outnumber their victims, possess weapons and have the anonymity of being in a crowd. Riots can be inhibited when the police and other organisations make plain that the activity carries high risk. In short, policing strategies are most effective. Nevertheless, following the disturbances, government asked each of the three local authorities to prepare a Community Cohesion Plan and to identify actions to develop better community cohesion within the districts. ‘Building a Shared Future in the Bradford District’ report was undertaken by Bradford Vision: the Local Strategic Partnership. Its primary purpose was to identify areas for action that can contribute to a ‘shared future’. On the basis of a range of current actions and through extensive consultation about priorities, the following outcomes were identified: .

There are opportunities for people to meet with or connect with people from different communities; people recognise their common aspirations and identity.

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There is strong leadership which can communicate our aspirations for our Shared Future, lead on this work and challenge behaviours and beliefs which undermine it. All services, policies, and practices build a Shared Future for the district. All young people can contribute to and shape our Shared Future. Community tensions are dealt with appropriately. Inappropriate behaviour is consistently and effectively challenged. Funding and resource allocation processes are transparent and fair. All residents and all communities across the district having a mechanism through which they can be heard (Bradford Vision: the Local Strategic Partnership, 2007, p. 7).

It was suggested that segregation and separated living are also experienced through school selection, shopping preferences, and where people choose to work and socialise. Despite the everyday experience of separate lifestyles, however, the Vision project maintained that ‘people still want the opportunity to meet together’. Within the context of the shared future project, a number of projects were developed to facilitate inter-community engagement: a Schools Linking Project; a Children’s University; Linking Communities project and MythBusters projects, which, according to the Project literature, are having a significant impact on improving community relations. There is also recognition of the role that planning can play in relation to creating and facilitating shared spaces. The ambition in this regard is about more than simply creating neutral space. Rather, it is about ‘meeting together’, sharing tasks, and achieving things together. And it is also about providing the support that may be needed to help some communities to feel safe in different neighbourhoods or environments. Essential to this are planning processes which recognise the importance of a range of meeting places and shared spaces which are neutral and can be used by lots of different people (Bradford Vision: the Local Strategic Partnership, 2007, p. 15). Interestingly, Bradford Vision and the Government Office for Yorkshire and The Humber organised a visit of those engaged in community cohesion to Northern Ireland to draw out its lessons from 30 years of conflict (2002). The key lesson drawn from this visit was the ‘difficulty of building peace in a violently polarised society’ and the need ‘to recognise the potential for (and likely causes of) polarisation within the District and take decisive steps to prevent it’ (p. 27). One example of a project that aimed to create space that could be used for shared events, as well as everyday interactions, was the Lister Park initiative.

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This previously run-down area of open space, which was stigmatised by antisocial behaviour, was redesigned with a £3.2 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Extensive consultation with different ethnic and social groups about the redesign helped to secure ‘inclusive facilities’ and ‘pockets of culture’ as well as a sense of ownership across a broad range of local communities. A key feature is the Mughal Water Garden which is based on designs of the Mughal Dynasty. This example, and indeed others, highlights the role that space, and the design of space, can have in facilitating interactions between communities. However, it is also worth noting that this in itself is not enough. A proactive approach which promotes shared events, sports, and leisure activities is an important dimension of the broader project. A Rowntree Report, about unlocking the potential of cultural diversity in cities, asks, ‘should architects and planners structure space to reflect different cultures and use spaces in varied ways? Or should open-ended spaces be created, which others can adapt to?’ (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, November 2006). The report points to a survey of residents in Lewisham and Bristol which suggested that it was the more everyday spaces of the city, such as the ‘libraries, schools, colleges, youth centres, sports clubs, specific cinemas, the hair salon, the hospital, markets and community centres’ that were successful meeting places rather than the ‘highly designed’ public spaces. In this connection, one interviewee suggested that many such local facilities in Bradford are located within distinctive community areas and as such don’t offer opportunities for mixing. He also noted that there was some evidence of ongoing movement in the socio-ethnic geography of inner city Bradford and that this affected the use of everyday spaces. He suggested that the more affluent of the south Asian population, who largely occupy the pre1919 housing stock, are gradually moving out and are being replaced by eastern European migrants. This, in turn, is triggering some tensions within those communities in transition. In Bradford, as elsewhere, mainstream planning is now part of a broader planning process and is much more focused on spatial issues and on delivery. As well as this, an evidence-based approach is twinned with extensive and intensive community consultation not just on planning proposals, but also on priorities for delivery. Currently, Bradford District Council is preparing its Local Development Framework (LDF). This will supercede the Replacement Unitary Development Plan adopted in 2005. The LDF will be made up of a number of different planning documents, known as Local Development Documents (LDDs), including a Core Strategy which sets out the long-term vision for the area and the strategic policies required to deliver that vision. A key imperative of the new system is that the broader visioning process captured in the Sustainable Community Strategy (SCS) is given spatial expression in the LDF. This, the ‘theory’ suggested, was the key to a joined-up, community focused approach. An interviewee reflecting on the relationship suggested that there was a ‘mismatch’ between the SCS and the

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LDF, and that this was largely because the SCS was overly short-term in its ambition. It was, he suggested, not sufficiently strategic and was ‘understandably’ committed to short-term actions through Local Area Agreements. The LDF, on the other hand, was attempting to set in place a strategy for the period through to 2026. The SCS process and the adopted strategy were, however, valuable in providing a significant layer to the evidence base that is one of the foundations of the LDF. Issues relating to how people use or don’t use the city, their vision for the city, together with broader ambitions about accommodating a multicultural society were all important elements of the evidence base for the core strategy and the city centre regeneration strategy. In relation to issues around ethnic spaces and the potential for shared spaces, the interviewees pointed to the need for a better connected city. As with parts of Belfast, Bradford is living with a legacy of inner city road infrastructure that effectively acts as a barrier between inner city communities and the city centre. This is one of the key challenges for the LDF group, addressing the issue of connection, both through physical development and through public transport policy and practice. Connectedness is a particularly important issue in the context of the ethnic geography of Bradford. The south Asian communities, for example, tend not to use the city centre as much as other communities. The interviewees suggested that traditionally these communities have preferred to shop and socialise within their own areas where their needs were better met with local markets and community facilities. In his view, the city centre currently offered very little interest to these communities. A second related point concerns the development of the city centre. Bradford city centre has been in decline for some time and has lost a number of major retailers to neighbouring Leeds as well as to other shopping centres. As well as this, the centre was becoming run-down and the public spaces were not functioning as safe areas of public realm. In response to all of this and to the wider ambition of creating a more connected city with a distinctive role within the region, Bradford Council initiated a major regeneration process. In 2003, the Urban Regeneration Company (URC), Bradford Centre Regeneration, was set up to tackle the challenges faced by the city centre. One of those challenges, according to an interviewee, was to create a centre that every community could use and be part of. A master plan for the city centre (Will Alsop Architects) and currently, under the new legislation, a City Centre Action Area Plan (CCAAP) is being prepared as part of the LDF. As noted earlier, the new system requires extensive consultation with a range of stakeholders and must strive, where possible, to seek consensus on key proposals. Some of the issues emerging from this process are similar to those facing Belfast. For example, there is broad recognition that a mixed use environment will offer the most sustainable form of development. However, there is some concern about what sort of residential communities are best

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suited to downtown living. While many of those participating in the consultation saw the need for a mix of small and family household accommodation, others, particularly from the Asian communities were sceptical about families being prepared to live away from their traditional community support structures. Other key messages included: the need for higher quality retailing; better public realm; and improved transport links to the wider community. The interviewees, however, were keen to stress the importance of creating a city centre that offered more than just a retail experience, and this, they argued, chimed with the views of many of the community consultees. In this regard, the public realm is particularly important, because good public realm coupled with events and on-going interests, would bring people from different community backgrounds into the city. It was absolutely vital that the new regenerated city centre was not dominated by any particular group, be that young people, professionals, revellers, or indeed any one of the ethnic communities. One interviewee noted that the feedback from young people was very positive about providing safe and secure space where different ethnic groups could mix. In his view, many young people wanted more opportunities to mix with others from a different background. Another idea currently being developed in the context of taking forward the CCAAP, is to create a ‘world mile’. This represents an attempt to celebrate the ethnic diversity of the city and to strengthen the connections between the city centre and some of the ethnic community areas. More particularly, this is an attempt to bring the specialist ethnic retailing, including international cuisines and leisure activities into a central location, and to encourage local communities to use the city centre. This relates back to the point made by one interviewee, that many ethnic communities seldom use the city centre. The new system of planning currently being implemented in Bradford, as elsewhere in England, offers significant benefits for the shared future agenda. First, the system brings with it a new set of priorities. While it is strategic and visionary, it is also grounded in delivery. The old system of ‘putting coloured shapes on a map’ and waiting for the market, or under-pressure public agencies to deliver, is now redundant. Major proposals must be accompanied, or frontloaded with delivery agreements, or delivery packages. In other words, implementation is factored into the planning process from the beginning. This, in itself, can cause difficulties, because it demands programme commitment from service providers and others, in order to ensure integrated and co-ordinated development. One interviewee commented that this was almost a complete reversal of the previous system, where the planners asked the service providers to outline their individual plans so that they could be accommodated in the development plan. A good example here might be the city centre regeneration plan. If the proposal to develop substantial new residential accommodation is accepted, then the supportive infrastructure such as schools, cr eches, open space, and other services have to be planned and

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delivered as part of an integrated scheme. In other words, planning is more project-driven and more proactive in achieving outcomes. A second significant benefit is evidence-based dialogue with stakeholders and communities. Here the new planning must engage in much broader discussion about current spatial issues and about spending priorities. An example given by one interviewee relates to transport. A better connected city and the development of the city centre will require new and developed transport infrastructure as well as changes in policy and practice. This will then become a feature in the LDF. The previous development plans would not have strayed into this broader territory. All of this is not without challenge. One interviewee commented that the principles underpinning the new system were laudable, but that their implementation could be very complicated. Achieving consensus was sometimes difficult and getting collaboration and commitment with other agencies was often time consuming and problematical. In his view, however, one of the greatest hurdles was what he called the ‘culture change’. At one level, this referred to the professional planners who found it difficult to move away from the comfort zone of the previous regulatory system, but at another level it referred to the change in approach required from other agencies, arms of government, and the private sector. Given that the legislation has only been in place for 4 years, the new system of spatial planning is still encountering some difficulties. In Bradford, and probably elsewhere, the shift from a development control-led system to a more strategic and action-orientated approach is taking time to bed down. However, the major long-term benefit, recognised by the interviewees, was that collaborative planning can now contribute to the wider processes of change.

Conclusions The case studies here offer insight into how different cities address issues of segregation and shared space: .

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In all three, urban divisions involved disputes about citizenship and identity. Nicosia offers the most extreme example of this phenomenon where military action not merely separated the ethnic groups but created an alternative political space. In the British cities the challenge is to find a form of citizenship that can embrace a diversity that is ever complicated by new forms of diversity. All illustrated the importance of planning in addressing issues around segregated and shared space. In Nicosia the vision was of a form of regeneration that could encompass reconciliation, whereas in the English cities the creation of shared, engaged spaces was seen as important in the development of bridging relationships amongst different communities.

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The diseconomies associated with providing duplicate services were apparent: in Oldham and Bradford the concern about dual provision was more about the reinforcement of insularity, rather than cost. Everyday experience of living contact with other communities was hindered by separate social and cultural infrastructure in the English cases. In all three locations, a sense of safety was regarded as of paramount concern to communities living in some degree of tension with other communities. There was some evidence in the British cities of reluctance among some minority ethnic communities to fully embrace the potential of a shared future. This relates primarily to fears about loss of identity, dilution of faith and potentially weakened community. Conversely, investment in the capacity of faith communities (through Preventing Violent Extremism) was seen to ‘crowd out’ other kinds of anti-poverty initiatives and have unintended negative consequences, for example, on the lives of women. In Oldham and Bradford, building community capacity was still regarded as a major building block in the process of facilitating community cohesion. The Northern Ireland experience with this approach has been mixed. It can be seen as developing capacity and self confidence for engagement or as creating ethno-religious leadership that reinforces community isolation and acts as ‘gate keepers’ for all interaction with their community. Creating significant spaces to encourage interaction between communities is not a solution in itself. All three cities demonstrate the need for a complementary programme of events to bring people to new or different environments. The new planning system in England and Wales offers new tools and greater legitimacy for the sort of interventions that can help create more opportunities for sharing and interaction. For example, Bradford’s initiative to create a ‘world mile’ illustrates how spatial planning can be used to celebrate diversity and encourage sharing.

Notes 1. The term ‘terrorist’ used by governments to describe their enemies is subject to considerable dispute. In Northern Ireland, the IRA resisted the term terrorist to the point of demanding ‘political status’ for its imprisoned members. Their insistence on that resulted in a hunger strike in which 10 of its members died. One of the common outcomes of sovereignty contests is that governments eventually talk to terrorists, Sri Lanka being the obvious exception. 2. Frank Gaffikin and a research colleague, Malachy McEldowney, visited the city in May 2008, presenting a paper on ‘Planning in Contested Cities—the Belfast Experience’ to a national Seminar on ‘Contested Cities—International Comparisons’, organised by the government of Cyprus’s Reconstruction and Resettlement Council on May 21st. They also conducted a series of interviews, including with Ms Elena Mavrou, the Mayor of Nicosia; Ms A., Director, ALA Planning Consultancy; Ms B., Principal Planning Officer, Department of Town Planning and Housing; and Mr C., Planning academic and

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Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space consultant. In addition, they undertook unguided walking tours of the old city of Nicosia, using the recently opened Ledra Street link between the Governmentcontrolled (Greek Cypriot) and non-Government controlled (Turkish Cypriot) parts of the city on either side of the United Nations’ ‘buffer-zone’. Ms A. is an English-educated Greek Cypriot professional civil engineer and town planner who has worked in both the public and private sectors in Nicosia, and who now runs her own planning consultancy in the city. Interview with Ms B., a principal planning officer in the Cyprus Government’s Department of Town Planning and Housing, based in Nicosia. She participated in the Reconstruction and Resettlement Council’s Mission to Ireland and Northern Ireland in July 2007, exploring conflict resolution. Her Department holds responsibility for the preparation of statutory local plans, based on similar legislation to that pertaining in the UK in the 1970s. She understands that there has been a local plan for the northern, Turkish-speaking, part of the city since 1999, but is not aware of any of its details. She is a representative of AKEL (the Progressive Party for Working People) which can trace its origins as a Soviet Union-supporting Marxist/Leninist Communist party legalised under British rule in the 1950s, through to its current affinity with the broad Labour movement (although not Social Democratic) with strong links to the trade unions and civic organisations. Her Party has a keen faith in the potential for planning to contribute to civic solidarity. Mr D. is a planning consultant and planning academic who was also part of the Reconstruction and Resettlement Council’s study visit to Ireland/Northern Ireland. Under the research programme, known as CU2 (Contested Cities and Urban Universities), Oldham and Bradford were two UK cities taken as case studies of ‘urban planning amid division’. Conducted by research officer, Maeliosa Hardy, in May 2008, a discussion was held with key personnel from Research, Community Cohesion and Planning, Oldham Council. It explored the main issues in the city and the Council’s efforts to promote community cohesion and successful planning, and this section encapsulates that exchange.

Part III Conclusion

Chapter 10: Planning Amid Division: A Way Forward? Bringing the early theories/concepts together with the empirical insights from the case study cities, and using this analysis to construct a new model of planning in divided cities.

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

10 Planning Amid Division: A Way Forward?

Introduction: the formidable task This book has emphasised how many deep conflicts in the world are played out in urban arenas, leading to severed and scarred cityscapes. It has noted that contested cities can be differentiated across a range. At one end are those cities divided around conventional pluralist issues such as class, race, and power, and at the other end, those divided around similar equity disputes, linked to visceral struggle around sovereignty and state legitimacy. Belfast, like places such as Nicosia and Jerusalem, is at the latter end of this spectrum. When struggles around identity and territory turn violent, it can relate to the way in which competing claims are seen not only as immutable, but also as indivisible. As evident from earlier discussions, demonising belligerents simply in terms of misanthropic villainy relies on pathological explanations that underrate the complexity and historicity behind such ancient quarrels. However, bringing the combatants along the problematic pathway from ethnic contention to civic connection does demand retreat from their absolutisms and certitudes, within a framework of frank discussion and dissent, in short, a move away from: . . . . totalistic identities engaged in implacable struggles against those differences that threaten their hegemony or exclusivity. Such culture wars do not reflect too much diversity, difference or variety: they express contending demands to control the exclusive form the nation, state or community must assume (Connolly, 1995, p. xxi). As elaborated by Younge (2010), identity is not wholly self-defined since it is partially contoured by treatment from others. Thus, an identity deemed to be Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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harassed from the outside may become more protectionist and defiant on the inside, whereas those least menaced about their identity may become less attentive and guarded about it. But, alongside such dynamics, there is also the potential in a perplexing and intricate world for identities that offer untainted conviction to appeal to those drawn to the comfort of certainty and exclusivity of enclave. Building a civic city means addressing the separatisms that come from related residential and social segregation. In these conflicts, there is always a risk that even when some settlement is achieved, the peace is won at the price of conceding ‘spheres of influence’ to the major political blocks, thereby balkanising places into partisan zones that mark the dominant writ of one politico-ethno-religious persuasion. The more difficult alternative is to create a pluralist city for a pluralist people, an inclusive city that is at once diverse and cohesive. While planning and public policy have a distinctive contribution to make in this more ambitious agenda, their role has to be situated in a wider framework of conflict resolution. Moving from ghettoisation to positive integration demands a critical appraisal of the contradictions facing such processes.

The paradoxes of peace building Peace building confronts a set of central paradoxes in divided cities. On the one hand, there is a need to do something practical and immediate. Yet, intervention is addressing a protracted problem that invites the hesitancies and uncertainties that attend complex analysis. Such conflicts call for risk. Indeed, how do you provoke real change without being really provocative? As indicated in Chapter Six, it is essential to ‘disturb the peace’ of conventional thinking and comfort zones to create a sustainable and genuine peace. Yet, blunt words and deeds, in a highly partisan society, risk being cast as partisan. To survive such accusation, advocates of change and renewal need to build relationships of trust across the borders of division. Yet, such relationships cannot be purchased at the price of surrendering pluralist values in the face of narrow ethnic interest. So, these ‘three Rs’ of risk, renewal and relationship form the inescapable landscape of peace building. In negotiating this tricky terrain, appealing to people’s needs may be more productive than appealing to their good nature. Moreover, the basic supposition of traditional anti-prejudice programmes is that the consonance generated through contact and communication across the divide can over time dilute the dissonance of bigotry and ‘tribal’ hostility. But this faith in the power of ‘mutual understanding’ runs counter to evidence suggesting that the more common interests are proclaimed in these circumstances, the more significant becomes the marginal differences (Ignatieff, 1999). In other words, paradoxically, efforts to emphasise close similarity may

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inadvertently accentuate rather than ameliorate the defining division between protagonists, who feel more compelled to amplify those aspects which most place them apart. Thus, the plausible idea of replacing cultural distance and ethnic enmity with the relational empathy of a ‘shared humanity’ underestimates this tendency to ‘marginal difference’. Another approach is to replace the ‘ethnic’ nationalism that emphasises blood and kin, linguistic and cultural roots, and the mythical history that binds the collective tribe, with a ‘civic’ nationalism that recognises a multiethnic society built on citizenship, responsibilities, and the protection of individual rights and liberties. Three main arguments can be advanced to illustrate the difficulties of this shift. First, while a ‘civic’ society infers institutions and governance constructed around shared meaning and memory among citizenry, from a post-modernist perspective, unitary and universalist concepts such as ‘common rights’ do not exist independent of diverse cultural interpretation and social contingency. From this relativist position, the very assumption that divisions can be even commonly understood, never mind resolved, ignores the lack of an agreed moral compass to guide not only mediation and reconciliation, but also basic standards of ‘civilised’ behaviour. Moreover, while it is often advocated that contesting parties in the conflict should learn to behave ‘reasonably’, this appeal to reason again underestimates a post-modernist loss of faith in rationality, alongside a greater respect for ‘multiple realities’ and the emotive impulses of the human condition. Second, when unitary concepts like citizenship confront splintered realities like contested identity and territory, it highlights the importance of power inequalities in determining the outcomes of disputed definitions. Thus, the notion that a civic society can be built through collaborative discourse between rival ethno-nationalist interests underestimates the paradox that such peace building actually invites each side to demonstrate their power, since ‘flexing their muscle’ can lever negotiations in their favour. In short, peace processes are at once energising and dangerous because they can elevate levels of both hope and harm. In addition, while progress out of violent conflict demands the creation of safe spaces for democratic dialogue, that engagement itself has to contend with contradictions within the liberal democratic framework offered for such conversation: .

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On the one hand, it extols respect for cultural diversity and related special treatment of different groups, while on the other, it upholds universal principles about similar rights and equalities across the whole of society. Its practice of equal opportunity is compromised by market and other inequities that structurally disadvantage groups around factors such as gender, class, race, and ethnic identity. Behind the banner of universal franchise lies the reality of differential power based on these socio-economic disparities.

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Its response to ethnic violence—even when based on a cross-community consensus—can risk a self-fulfilling cycle, whereby insurgent violence provokes state repression, itself prompting violent reaction that induces more repression, which in turn can be exploited to justify ever more aggressive resistance. Yet, if the state fails to offer appropriate security, it invites the formation of vigilante militias in the noble name of ‘community defence’, and this bind between being both delicate and decisive in dealing with armed urban conflict can be manipulated by those intent on accentuating it.

Third, appeals to respect diversity assume some core binding common identity that permits appreciation that those who are different from us are also in some important sense like us, and the concept of citizenship is often employed for this unifying purpose. Yet, as indicated earlier, it is problematic to use the idea of shared ‘citizenship’ in an environment lacking shared sovereignty, where the fundamental contest is not over the nature of the state, but rather over its very existence. In such a situation, reformist agendas to improve equity and diversity can become confused with revolutionary agendas to fundamentally re-arrange constitutional authority. Some of the above tensions can be seen in the way that urban peace-building processes, designed to address the contest, become bound up in that very contest. Controversy over the differential funding and urban resources allocated to each side of the divided community provides one stark reflection of this. As elaborated later, in a situation where there are socio-economic inequalities, parity of treatment is not the same thing as uniformity of treatment. The side in more social need needs more compensatory resources. Yet, non-uniformity of resource allocation will invite claims of partisanship by the side receiving less. Such considerations demonstrate the complexity of peace building in deeply divided cities. Within such a vexatious context, a distinctive contribution that can be made by a proactive form of planning is the privileging of shared and safe places for inter-communal dialogue and intra-communal choices and dissent. Division in such cities involves not only political and cultural options beyond the traditional divide, but also the extension of scope for peaceful democratic difference and dispute within each main tradition. One model of this can be a form of planning that deliberately facilitates a multiplicity, hybridity and fluidity of identity, within a framework of common civic belonging, however fragile the latter may be in a contested society. Turning now to that specific challenge, the distinctive role of planning and public policy is explored.

Planning shared futures in divided cities In cities where the big division concerns national affiliation and linked issues of land ownership, this central dispute drills right down into small districts

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where the link between territory and identity produces its own spatial partitions. Since space is so pivotal to the overall conflict, and planning is the main instrument for the social shaping of space, planning is unavoidably central to the conflict’s resolution. This raises the question of how planning can create shared space for a shared future among warring communities. First, the concept of a shared future can be understood in its most obvious meaning—a significant increase in integrated living and collaborative working across the divide, rooted in principles of inclusion, respect for diversity, equity, and inter-dependence. However, a more differentiated understanding of the term begs the question of how much inter-communalism is actually sought, by whom, in what places, and over what time period. How can this be given spatial expression in cities marked by dominance of ethnic space, often sectioned by natural environment, infrastructure, and other features of the built environment that serve as barriers? Moreover, other vocabularies associated with the creation of a ‘shared future’ are intrinsically contestable. For some, this future implies a shift from managing to transforming the division, a stepchange to a more pluralist city with less insular communities anchored in exclusivist ethno-nationalist affiliation. In turn, this conversion is taken to elide over the long term with the nurturing of a ‘cosmopolitan culture which is seen as globally open, and inviting cross-pollination, hybridity and fluidity’ (Skrbis and Woodward, 2007, p. 731). This receptive approach cultivates increasing engagement, familiarity, and ultimately empathy and reciprocity across the divide. As such new sensibilities in turn create ever more porous boundaries and borders, it is hoped that the visceral fear of ‘the other’ that feeds conflict and separatism in time dissolves (Beck, 2006). A less ambitious agenda emphasises the intrinsic character of conflict to the human condition. For instance, the paradoxical resurgence of tribal identities amid the integrations of a globalising world can be taken to indicate the persistence of a human ‘Tower of Babel’, reflecting separatist identities and belongings. Bollens (2007, p. 1) affirms: ‘peace building in cities seeks not the wellpublicized handshakes of national political elites, but rather the more mundane, yet ultimately more meaningful, handshakes and smiles of ethnically diverse urban neighbors as they confront each other in their daily interactions’. To create the safe spaces for such dialogue, nurturing a vibrant pluralist public realm is critical. As noted by Modan (2007, p. 331): Public discourse is closely linked to public space; they are both elements in the public sphere. It is in public space and in public discourse that disparate people can come across each other and interact, where members of communities can debate and negotiate values, behaviors, and impending changes. In this way, the public sphere is a critical aspect of participatory democracy, so a focus on public discourse and public space allows us a window into the process of negotiation of communities.

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Nevertheless, as explained in Chapter Six, all talk of public discourse, public space, and the public city has to acknowledge the awkward presence of multiple and rival publics, with which planning and policy has to arbitrate. This is particularly so in cities marked by ethnic enclaves. Yet, planners can make practical responses to features such as segregated areas, as indicated by Bloomfield and Bianchini (2004, p. 79): Policy-makers can create soft boundaries where people can go outside their normal segregated experience and share a common space, within which social and cultural interaction and overlap takes place. In order to achieve this, it is important to have at the centre of urban planning and design strategies the notion of the city as a network of public spaces and as a system of interconnected parts. Rather than leave the re-shaping of the city to the market, with the consequent creation of disconnected microenvironments, each in its own customised design, a ‘public’ alternative is imperative, and Bloomfield and Bianchini (2004) use Barcelona as an illustration. There, civic authority set about to create new public spaces, parks, pedestrian routes, artwork, and attractions to mark various focal points where people can interact and neighbourhoods can be identified and connected, using active linkages and permeable network. Such deliberate intervention does not infer that all public space can best be ordered, designed and planned precisely. Since the urban is inherently an arena of unevenness and social ‘jaggedness’, an ordered antiseptic universe is incompatible with diversity. As Iveson (2007), Watson (2006) and others suggest, there is scope for the irregular, random and dilapidated ‘public’ spaces that capture the spontaneity and messiness that characterise distinctive and vibrant cityscapes. Space that invites chance encounter, happenstance, the accidental and contingent, and is permissive of exploration and discovery is part of what constitutes a dynamic urban environment. Massey (2005) sees this as congruent with the indeterminacy of contemporary social life, quoting Zohar (1997, p. 9) in this regard: Twentieth-century science has grown out of a deep shift in general culture, a move away from absolute truth and absolute perspective toward contextualism; a move away from certainty, toward an appreciation for pluralism and diversity, toward an acceptance of ambiguity and paradox, of complexity rather than simplicity. To respond to this diverse complex world, city planning has to be transformed. As indicated in Chapter Six, the new model of spatial planning offers an appropriate framework for a more inclusive and collaborative development process that can address contentious issues about territory and identity. However, many cities suffer from a proliferation of plans. Notionally, these

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are distinctive, and are supposed to operate in a hierarchy, in which each one logically nests. Alongside those statutory plans that carry legal authority are often other initiatives such as: vision plans, master plans, and local community plans. Where such a labyrinth operates, clarification and simplification are demanded, so that local plans can be integrated into citywide plans. This tendency to a plethora of plans is partly due to an impulse to believe that the answer to a flawed implementation of a given plan is to create a new plan, as if there is some ‘holy grail’ plan waiting to be created that will solve the previous plan’s limitations. Rather, often the primary need is to improve the means for collaborative delivery and to address candidly the central conundrums that impede city development.

The paradoxes of planning in divided cities The paradoxes of peace building are echoed in a set of paradoxes in planning. To take some specific examples of these dilemmas: in most cities, efficient land and resource use demands effective design to attain a compact urban form and to optimise brownfield sites that will avoid ecological detriment to nearby greenfield land from unnecessary sprawl, while boosting urban regeneration. Yet, supply of brownfield land may disproportionately exist on one community side of the city’s divide, while demand for its use for new housing may exist more on the other side. In such circumstances, allocation of brownfield land for housing would involve a spatial reshaping of demography and influence within a sensitive geo-politics. But covenants of silence cannot make such ‘wicked problems’ disappear. Rather, it requires candid engagement across the divide, led and facilitated by the planning authorities, within a framework for housing and community regeneration that shows that local development within a contested city need not be a zero sum game. This issue demonstrates the delicacy of negotiations required to secure crosscommunity consent in a shared city. To add complication, the term ‘shared space’ has tended to refer to places that offer safe engagement across sectarian divides. However, a sustainable city has to redress the problem of socio-spatial segregation, and there is a perennial problem in urban regeneration about how spatially concentrated poverty can be reversed without the damaging impact of gentrification. Whereas public policy designed to achieve these kinds of objectives in a contested city can be cast as partisan social engineering by those opposed to the implications of equity and diversity, the market can sometimes bring change with less controversy and resistance. Development driven by the market can appear neutral and disinterested, since the profit motive does not wear visible political colours, and it can appear inevitable that such contemporary urban economics trumps politics. So, for instance, in Belfast,

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the waterfront has been transformed, with little rancour in terms of the local political discourse, and the substantial site of the Titanic quarter is being primed for a similar makeover. Some see this as a welcome chance for the city to re-image itself and to create cosmopolitan spaces that transcend the conflict, offering opportunity to those citizens keen to escape ethnic cultural ghettos. But, even leaving aside the limited public participation about the quality and aesthetics in the design of such new arenas, there remains concern about the implication of privileging market-based development over needsbased development. Favouring speculative poor quality apartment construction over the provision of balanced development that includes affordable family housing is hardly the recipe for sustainable and socially mixed communities. In divided cities, close correspondence often exists between the spaces of the most acute deprivation and the spaces where conflict around identity and belonging is most trenchantly contested. Accordingly, policies of community cohesion and social inclusion are both necessary interventions. But they have to be closely aligned. Strategies for compensatory urban regeneration that tackle under-development and those that address inter-communal reconciliation have to operate as twin processes. Yet, the re-distributive goals of social inclusion can increase inter-communal dispute about the relative share of new urban resources going to each side of a divided city. Thereby, the regeneration initiatives can inadvertently accentuate rather than ameliorate the conflict, confounding the reconciliation initiatives designed to build cohesion. This potential incongruity between the two policy sets derives from ontological, epistemological, ideological, and methodological disputes that reflect the discussion about these dimensions in Chapter Six. Deep division generates contest: about the reality of the context and content of the conflict; about the form and validity of knowledge that permits causal understanding; about the rival values and perspectives that inform protagonist behaviour and mission; and about the methods of data collection and analysis that produces the ‘evidence’. Thus, in cities of acute cultural collision, what can appear as rational and equitable to one side can appear as unreasonable and discriminatory to the other. In turn, this rival lens can also help promote a familiar pattern in conflicts—of raised, though often frustrated, expectation of change on one side, and enhanced insecurity and ‘bunker mentality’ on the other. Further issues about the interface between regeneration and reconciliation in divided cities can be raised. For instance, the conflict may demand a focus on large urban projects that symbolise significant change. But such prestigious ‘signature’ projects may drain scarce resources from small local neighbourhoods. It suggests an interesting dilemma: is it preferable to invest a small number of large grants in carefully targeted strategic opportunities offering critical mass and economy of scope, or a large number of small grants in

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under-resourced groups and neighbourhood-based projects, which cumulatively may make more impact and achieve more local ownership? But, where resources are invested at community level, there can be problems in securing both future revenue that ensures sustainable project maintenance and development, and continued community participation beyond the initial enthusiasm. The turnover of government programmes and initiatives often means that good practice may not achieve the consolidation it deserves. Moreover, to what extent does this community development involve compliance with the funding criteria for promoting reconciliation as largely a ‘tick box’ exercise, rather than the promotion of changed relationships across the divide? A central problem in impact evaluation—say in relation to long-term attitudinal change—is the difficulty of attributing specific improvements to specific programmes, given the multi-faceted dimensions and contexts of such factors. Finally, a central paradox associated with planning in divided cities derives from the contradictions of ‘community’.

The problem of community In many urban contexts, forms of de-centralised local community planning that allow for intensive public participation and shaping of development accord well with democratic spatial planning. However, in the context of an acutely divided city, like Belfast or Jerusalem, ‘community’ is a distinctly exclusive spatial unit. Here, community planning may encourage each segregated area to attempt to advance its position at the expense of the ‘other’ community, thereby deepening separatism and sectarian rivalry. Thus, such local planning in these very conflictive circumstances needs special forms of engagement that candidly acknowledge and preclude these tendencies. Indeed, participation in the kind of discursive and agonist planning, outlined in Chapter Six, needs to be facilitated by ‘border crossers’—people whose contact and credibility with the various factions permit them to operate as honest brokers, without being over-directive or prescriptive. Moreover, they need to acknowledge the differential capacity for such discourse among the stakeholders. Effective operation of this kind of planning depends on the wider framework of urban governance, and capacities among stakeholders such as the community sector. For instance, what deliberative, discursive, and agonist positions share is an intensive participatory process. Yet in most contemporary cities, the managerialist form of decision making that primarily targets efficiency and effectiveness is privileged over the participatory form, which champions values of equity and empowerment. The UK is a notable example. In its avowal of a ‘modernised’ planning system, it endorses participative practice. But it commends also greater alacrity in plan making and development, without explaining how to make the distributive justice and

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inclusiveness of the former congruent with the economy and competence implied in the latter. In conditions of the regular pluralist contests about resource allocation and development trajectory, it raises the wider question as to whether there is a trade-off between a quite autocratic style of urban leadership that may be goal-driven and decisive (directive leadership) and a more diffuse democratic one (generative leadership) that may not be able to deliver a similar clear agenda. In the fragmentary conditions of sovereignty contest, where common citizenship is already more problematic, it raises even deeper questions about the relative merit of centralist versus dispersed urban management. This in turn raises the question of public participation in this form of divided city—how local people can most effectively respond to issues of urban conflict centred on space and identity, which confound efforts to build sustainable communities in cities characterized by marked ethnospatial segregation. The predicaments of such deep division are not reducible to solutions based pre-eminently on skilling local communities. Nevertheless, the contribution at the local level is a necessary, if insufficient, component. Thus, a customized set of skills and competencies required for local strategic planning within the context of urban conflict (e.g. inclusive visioning, breakthrough thinking, brokerage, partnership working, leadership and negotiation) is demanded. Belfast is an exemplar of where substantial investment has been made in community development, but where there remains evidence of limits on civic literacy and social capital, together with claims that such resources are unevenly distributed between the two protagonist communities, with Catholic areas putatively operating with better community capacity than their Protestant counterparts (Cairns et al., 2003).

From community development to community capacity Since the 1960s, in many societies, community development has been seen as an important instrument for local regeneration and participatory planning. However, both positive and defective attributes are evident in the community sector. In terms of its potential contribution to a development partnership, it can bring: local knowledge and credibility; experience and expertise in local development; creative and cultural assets, alongside the resilience and resourcefulness forged from familiarity with adversity; mobilisation of voluntary effort, a crucial component of social capital; expression of civic responsibility, and thereby insurance that local projects have extensive ownership and legitimacy; and motivation to ‘ground’ the partnership by highlighting the need for tangible and achievable community benefits within set time frames. Yet, community development can also exhibit significant deficits: it functions largely at neighbourhood level. Thus in scale and scope: it is not commensurate with the problems it addresses, which are increasingly

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generated at national and global levels; in facing the urgencies of multiple deprivation or inter-communal conflict, it can either privilege short-term tactics over long-term strategy; or it can devote effort to building community infrastructure, a time and labour intensive enterprise that can distract focus from tackling pressing problems, and elevate process over product; its attempts to cope with the multi-dimensional features of decline can diffuse its efforts to deal coherently with any single aspect; it harbours a concept of community that some argue has been eclipsed in a globalising world, diminishing the significance of solidarities based around narrow geographies of co-habited social space; its transient form in terms of shifting organizations and temporary membership contrasts with the durability of the issues it seeks to redress; it struggles against not only an understandable tendency to cynicism and demoralisation, but also its own internal divisions, accentuated in the contemporary economy by new segmentations in the labour market, and in a more diverse society by greater ethnic difference; its will to network and collaborate with other similar localities can be weakened by the competitive motivation to secure scarce resources targeted at deprived areas in general; its need to placate supporters and funders with demonstrable and immediate success tempers its investment in long-term strategies; and its self-evaluation of its impact has tended to assume its intrinsic virtue, to rest more on the anecdotal than the evidential, and to stress outputs rather than outcomes (Ferguson and Dickens, 1999). The net balance of these traits has resulted in community development being typically more adept at vetoing unwelcome proposals than in delivering preferred alternatives. While the sector can propose, it has been largely up to the state and market to dispose, and this socio-economic geometry means that it can be often seen as the poor relation in a partnership, and more typically in reactive than proactive mode. Given this relative impotence, its interventions can sometimes appear oppositional. Moreover, the subsidies that the sector receives from the state can be seen to create dependency and/or incorporation, corroding its radicalism and/or autonomy (Craig et al., 1982). It should be acknowledged in this appraisal that community development can be distinguished from community action, with the former associated with more conventional pressure group processes and inter-sectoral partnerships, while the latter is associated with ‘people power’, more radical resistance, and a wariness of incorporation with the power of state or capital. Nevertheless, both traditions share similar exigencies, and these are mostly exacerbated in the case of community interventions in contested cities. Interestingly, if attention is paid to the US narrative on the role of community development in redressing urban problems, several distinct ‘waves’ can be discerned. Following the turbulence of civil rights and the related urban riots in the 1960s, federal government injected a series of compensatory urban programmes to build ‘model communities’ in some of the most disaffected areas. With the 1970s economic downturn impacting negatively on

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low income neighbourhoods, a further set of initiatives emerged with the Community Development Block Grant in 1974. In the 1980s, under Reagan and his ‘New Federalism’, fiscal support for urban communities dwindled, to be re-incarnated under Clinton in the 1990s under new rhetorical themes of empowerment and reinvented governance, but in practice within a more market driven agenda for urban regeneration (Dreier, 1996). Alongside such political shifts, the direction of community development itself changed. While there has remained an activist strand given to radical campaigning and advocacy, the core form moved by the 1980s from process-driven community action to a more professional/business model, known as Community Development Corporations, which got involved in direct service provision, first in building affordable housing, latterly also in workforce and small business development (Keating, 1997). In many cases, this turn has been accompanied by a retreat from exclusively community-based organization to more networked inter-sectoral partnership. But, if traditional community development had emphasized process over product, the CDC model was less concerned with public participation than with a managerialist priority for implementing change. Yet, the jobs and housing provision that they were able to effect was not remotely commensurate with the scale of the need (Stoecker, 1997). Despite these modest returns, the lure of ‘community’ has held its potency in US public policy. As commented by Sampson (1999, p. 241): Community seems to be the modern elixir for much of what ails American society. Indeed, as we approach a new century and reflect on the wrenching social changes that have shaped our recent past, calls for a return to community values are everywhere. One feature of this is the reinvention of community development as community capacity building. The term building community capacity can be understood as inputting the knowledge and skills to enhance the ability of an individual/group in the community to participate in actions designed to advance community well-being. These actions can be either about process, such as building social capital, or about product, such as service delivery. While the ‘community’ in question can be either one of interest or one of place, the focus is on both community assets and needs (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993), and the ‘building’ part is about extending six sources of capital needed for effective development: intellectual, social, physical, financial, natural (environment), and political. In this regard, there are those who remain sceptical about concepts like ‘community capacity’ for the complex challenge of local regeneration in a global age (Banks and Shenton, 2001), and in the political context of ascendant neo-liberalism and de-regulation (Peck and Tickell, 2002). While there have been attempts to construct participatory models for building sustainable community (Seitz, 2000), others comment

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on the limited rigorous research literature about community capacity models and related indicators, a paucity that to them indicates the sloppiness of the whole concept (Jackson et al., 2003). But, even within the ‘normal’ geographic sense of community, different types prevail. For instance, there is a big difference in community as propinquity and ascriptive bonding and the looser ties found in many contemporary urban environments, a distinction drawn well by Sampson (1999, pp. 246–247): This does not mean local relations are unimportant, but only that they are no longer controlling for many areas of social life. Such contingency of commitment to locality in the modern age has also been defined as the ‘community of limited liability’, where attachment to neighborhood is contingent, voluntary, and based on instrumental values tied to rational investment . . . . City dwellers have not lost the capacity for deep, longlasting relationships; rather they have gained the capacity for surface, fleeting relationships that are restricted. Consequently, urbanism’s effects are specified: estrangement occurs in the public sphere—less helpfulness, more conflict—but not in the private sphere—personal relationships and psychological well-being. But this emancipated model of community membership is more problematic in the case of well-established ethno-nationalist enclaves, where loyalty and conformity are meant to be more total rather than partial or conditional. In the context of such visceral urban conflicts, territorialized identity can be imposed by both the internal tribe and the external foe. In this respect, there is an emphasis in the UK government’s White Paper, Communities in Control (Communities and Local Government, July 2008, p. 22) on the links between empowerment and more cohesive and integrated communities: As individuals engage with their neighbours, with community groups and local decision makers on how to tackle shared concerns, there is more emphasis on shared goals. Greater openness about decision making and greater involvement in those decisions can remove perceptions of injustice that can fuel extremism. The White Paper declares that, to create a mature democracy, government wants ‘to shift power, influence and responsibility away from existing centres of power into the hands of communities and individual citizens’ (ibid., p. 1). In policy terms, this is seen to build upon the investment and modernization strategy for local development, and the fostering of the Third Sector in the new mixed economy of welfare (Cabinet Office, 2007), embodied in initiatives such as New Deal for Communities, Strong and Prosperous Communities (Communities and Local Government, 2006) and the subsequent statutory

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guidance for the operation of the various supportive instruments, such as Local Strategic Partnerships and Local Area Agreements (Communities and Local Government, 2008). As summarized by the Community Development Foundation (2008), this approach builds on the proposition that higher participatory rates and civic engagement derive from a sense of community belonging and shared identity, upon which networks of bridging and linking social capital can be developed. With this in mind, the Foundation advocates the creation of more ‘safe spaces’ that permit transactional relations among people from a diverse milieu. But the snag with this communal perspective is that, in the context of a divided city, it under-estimates the role of community as boundary and exclusion, and infers a fairly unproblematic link between bonding capital and the wider networking outside the ghetto. This is not to deny that single identity agencies operating ‘open door’ policies to other identities can contribute to integration and cohesion. In Britain, for instance, such bodies can sponsor inter-faith activities, while also working to create more diverse leadership within their own circle. Again, the Community Development Foundation affirms that such organizations with sturdy internal bonds are more likely to reach out to other communities and institutions (Community Development Foundation, May 2008). But this has not been the uniform experience in Northern Ireland, where the initial community relations work across the divide at the start of the conflict quickly gave way to community development work within each tradition. The premise was that those deprived Protestant and Catholic communities, spatially at the heart of the violent confrontations, needed to be bolstered internally as a prelude to their feeling confident enough to engage with the opposing tradition. Yet, despite substantial resources having been devoted to such single identity community development for nearly four decades, there is scant evidence that it promoted over time automatic progress towards ‘bridging’.

The role of planning in narrowing contest For planning to become more centre stage in a more proactive and comprehensive engagement, requires a more inter-disciplinary capacity in planning and related regeneration agencies. Alongside traditional planners, this new model of planning needs creative urban designers, architects, community developers, educators, economists, people with background in culture and the arts, and such like. It is the cross-pollination among such diverse knowledge and skills that will generate the innovation and synergy to raise both the profile and impact of city planning. Preferably, the city planning service should operate at the meso level of governance, a critical interface able to reach to the micro ground level of community, while able also to influence the macro level of government policy and budgets.

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From the discussion about collaborative and agonist planning in Chapter Six, it is apparent that such engaged forms of planning assume a seasoned civic literacy among well-versed publics. Those keen to deepen democratic processes of re-making cities are ideologically disposed to seeing citizens as willing and able for greater participation in such decision-making. As indicated in some of empirical evidence here, this ambition rests on an assumption that awaits convincing verification. More typically, the more sophisticated discourses about city development are largely limited to specialist interest and lobby groups, comprising those of expertise, experience, and often particular petition. Nevertheless, their worth and authenticity are not invalidated by this restricted membership. They can offer some public views, and can raise the level of debate. Particularly in contested societies with only partial political legitimacy, they can help to diminish the democratic deficit. But it cannot be claimed that they represent anything close to the full citizenry. In addition, there is no clear evidence that governments anywhere are committed to the full principles of participative planning. This is so, despite the rhetoric of spatial planning within Europe. For instance, in the case of Belfast, it is often joked that a city once famed for launching ships is now one that launches reports—on a plethora of plans and strategies. But even here, there is no compelling evidence that the formal consultative processes underpinning these initiatives play a decisive role in shaping their priorities, which tend to be largely pre-determined by government. Yet, paradoxically, the plans that do contain more of the creative and imaginative outcomes of public discourses tend to be the vision and master plans that lack statutory authority and commitment for practical delivery, whereas the legally-based plans that have most influence over actual development tend to be within an orthodox regulatory land-use framework. For the most part, these statutory plans tend to engage two main factions: those who want certain forms of development, and those who oppose them. Assessing the weight to accord the varied contributions in public consultations is part of a more general problem of arbitrating the relative significance to be allocated to specific arguments amid the plethora of data generated in such participative processes. In producing the key recommendations from each particular consultation exercise, it is difficult to determine whose ‘knowledge’ counts most. For example, in instances of dispute between different ‘knowledges’, it is seldom clear that the tacit/experiential knowledge of local community is to be privileged over the formal knowledge of planning experts, or vice versa. Expressed differently, there is no analytical framework for constructing a coherent synthesis from a diverse production of knowledge. However, progress in public engagement processes can at least entail many issues, such as those about sectarian division, being on the planning radar screen in a serious way. Moreover, it is important that public discourses about planning options get beyond wish lists, with consultees being more compelled

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to at least appreciate the trade-offs that accompany prioritisation and choice. Among well-versed participants, the way of thinking and seeing can mature over time, so that the ‘meanings’ once associated with particular interests— for example, the concept of sustainability with the environmentalist lobby— become more universally understood. This knowledge sharing allows such seasoned participants over time to become much more ‘multi-lingual’ with respect to others’ discourses, improving the sophistication of exchanges.

Implications for planning, governance, and capacity On the basis of these considerations about engagement around contest, there are ‘10 commandments’ for planning in cities where there are ‘conceptual gulfs that underlie deep value conflicts’ (Ramsbotham et al., 2005, p. 301): . .

. . . .

.

.

.

.

Avoid a cultural or structural determinism about the genesis or inexorable nature of the discord; Eschew the tendency to discount the relevance of the conflict to a planning remit, but rather accept that since these conflicts have a tenacious spatial facet, spatial planning is inextricably implicated in their resolution; Appreciate not only how the spatial is socially constructed, but also how the social is spatially constructed; Specifically identify the twin relation of regeneration and reconciliation in particular urban contexts; Realize that the orthodox technical and professional competencies of planning are insufficient to redress the thorny issue of contested space; Acquire the analytical and facilitative expertise to engage in discursive or agonist forms of inclusive participation that discard the normative of consensus; Transcend the limits of traditional rationalist planning and its predictive assumptions, with a keener grasp of multiple intelligences and sources of knowledge; Develop an inter-disciplinary capacity that permits an integrative approach to the social shaping of space, not only in terms of linking the physical, social, economic, environmental and cultural dimensions of development, but also of connecting processes of community cohesion, social inclusion, and conflict resolution; Disown the delusion that fortress planning in conflicted cities improves urban resilience, but rather take into account debates around identity formation, multiculturalism, cultural hybridity and cosmopolitanism, and their pertinence for creating place in a diverse world; and Understand a central paradox of planning in deeply divided cities, whereby the process can inadvertently accentuate rather than ameliorate the sociospatial partitions, and thereby entrench the conflict.

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An almost ubiquitous feature of planning discourses in deeply divided cities is the indulgence in generality and ambivalence. Unfortunately, the tendency to the innocuous and inoffensive can lead to superficial accords, rooted in what are deemed to be ‘constructive ambiguities’. But, since these semantics are subject to multiple interpretations, they are prone to unravel when confronted by hard development choices and priorities among key protagonists. Many key policy and planning directions that emerge from collaborative discourses can remain inexact. Is compact settlement privileged over dispersal? Are town centres to be beneficiaries of the precautionary and sequential principle with respect to out-of-town development? Is balanced development a serious objective, with a corollary of greater spatial equity across the territory and between rural and urban development? Is there a coherent strategy to deliver productive use of those brownfield sites concentrated in contested space? Are the local regeneration initiatives able to adopt long-term strategic renewal, or are they to be sidelined by other disjointed projects and policies? Is shared space to be proactively favoured over ethnic space as a means of de-segregating sectarian geographies? In divided cities, a keenness for planners and policy makers to be unobjectionable to every key constituency permits the ultimate decision-takers to construe these issues expediently rather than strategically. Consequent confusion contributes to a proliferation of plans, a fragmentation of leadership, and a diffusion of resources that make for poor policy coherence and compromised sustainability. Even allowing for the flexibilities demanded by rapidly changing times, the indefinite expression that can permeate plans allows key stakeholders to support unitary purpose, without forsaking anything significant of their own silo agenda. As argued earlier, collaborative planning’s prioritisation of consensus invariably produces this non-committal, since its failure to accommodate a more candid agonistic discourse makes it vulnerable to euphemism, surface agreement, and equivocation. With agonistic discourse, transactional exchanges can be facilitated to foster rapport, whereby participants are afforded the confidence and dexterity to both ventilate their own views, and to navigate around the views of others in ways that acknowledge that query can be preferable to quiescence, and that concession does not have to be seen as surrender, or objection seen as obstructive. Advocates of collaborative planning are right to remind us that we must not abandon attempts to shape social trends just because they appear inevitable or overwhelming. But there is a need to distinguish those development problems that may have both a local manifestation and local resolution, and those with a local manifestation, but with essentially an external generation and redress. As indicated in Chapter Six, the traditional planning models have all demonstrated major flaws in both process and product. The technical approach sought to apply a detached and impartial intervention to efficient land use. But, its assumptions about the predictive potential of a systematic, rational, evidence-based planning proved to be

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misplaced, and its procedures were both mechanistic and non-inclusive. It planned for people rather than with them. Grand schemes conceived by professionals were often undertaken in isolation from the social and cultural contexts of those who had to live with the final plan. Advocacy alternatives still largely involved the most disenfranchised communities being spoken for by sympathetic experts, rather than being empowered to speak for themselves. Even the more democratic and participative versions of traditional planning paradigms tended to under-estimate the significance of very divergent and divided publics for a contested understanding of space and place. Collaborative planning, and the linked precepts for engagement found in deliberative democracy, at least acknowledge the challenge of pluralism and divergent cultural attachments within a democratic ideology of self-determination, inclusion, and solidarity. In a less collaborative world, in which power seems ever more distant and abstract, and in which the social sphere is being de-politicised and marketised, these approaches affirm the politics of connectivity and propinquity. But the agonistic ontology recognises better not only the social untidiness of the contemporary world, but also the permanent and potentially positive aspects of conflict; that deep social and ethnic frictions do not dissolve simply through entreaties for reconciliation; and yet, how addressing irreducible difference does not demand either the transient tranquilliser of avoidance, or the high stakes politics of absolute conquest. In epistemological terms, while collaborative planning recognises that there are different sites of knowledge production, including the tacit and experiential knowledge of community, agonistic approaches seek to validate the implications of this plurality by endorsing multiple forms of candid expression. Thus, instead of planners being in the business of advocacy and knowledge transfer, they can be in the business of knowledge exchange within the framework of smart pluralism, whereby each faction learns that its interest can be best advanced through persuasive engagement rather than coercive dominance. But advocacy of agonistic planning is not unproblematic. For instance, issues of power and inequity remain intractable. Nevertheless, the basic objective is for forms of planning that promote living with difference and disagreement in respectful acknowledgement of ‘the other’. Within this framework, it is for forms of civic empowerment, mediation and negotiation that provide transformative learning opportunities for participants, so that not only their arguments change, but they change as well. Beyond interestbased bargaining and horse-trading, scope for mutual growth and broader civic welfare is pursued. An agonistic approach that offers not only more inclusion, but also diverse forms of communication, including rhetoric and polemic, and more discordant exchanges in the process, offers also a formidable challenge.

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Final considerations To advance the process of integrated transformation, the following propositions invite consideration: (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

Quick fixes, optics, and sound-bites should not be confused with long term transformation. Peace needs to be built painstakingly around the streets of small neighbourhoods as well as around the big political table. Difference does not have to mean division, but where there is division, it does not have to be violent division. Building peace in deeply divided cities is not about creating places with no conflict, but rather places without armed conflict. The main divide in such troubled cities is not between the main political positions, Rather it is between those who would use or support violence for political purpose—or even express ambivalence in that regard—and those who advocate non-violence as a means of resolving conflict through democratic dialogue, where opportunity for such dialogue is being established; Sectarianism and racism—the fuel that drives the fear and mistrust underpinning much violent conflict in the city—is usually not a disposition attributable to any one faction. Rather, it is deeply embedded in many historic and contemporary aspects of city life. Thus, it needs to be a key target for peace building. Beyond committing public agencies to promote ‘good relations’, public policy needs to more proactively undertake a ‘sectarian audit’ of the impact of all main public intervention: does it contribute to, or subtract from, the divisions that cripple community relations? Importantly, this focus is not restricted to those poorest urban areas traditionally associated with the worst violence. As commented by one study of the peace programmes in Northern Ireland: ‘ Inter-communal discord is more visible in deprived areas but this does not mean that distrust and animosity do not exist in more affluent communities. There has been a failure to recognise that atavistic ethno-sectarian attitudes are present outside of highly segregated and deprived places’ (Building on PEACE, 2005, 187). Peace building in any particular city has to be set within wider societal shifts in the city, affecting family and community in ways that risk further social polarisation, such as: the changing role of women alongside persistent sex inequality; the new economy and the ‘underclass’ communities it can leave behind; the reshaping of socially allocated capital within a more mixed economy of welfare; the demographic transformation, including the rising share of elderly; and migration patterns that generate a growing presence of people from diverse ethnic origin. In cities beset by violent conflict, public intervention and compensatory urban programmes can be linked to particular instances of violent

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disturbance. Allocating priority resources designed primarily to pacify the most troublesome neighbourhood at any one time, regardless of its actual relative social need, may send out a signal that the worst behaviour earns most reward. (7) Safe spaces for candid dialogue across the divide need to be fostered, developing over time from arenas only for those participants that are open to the test of change into channels for wider public and political engagement. (8) Changes in urban governance can assist the achievement of these objectives: for instance, addressing the weak ‘institutional memory’ within government, whereby constantly changing civil servants take with them their experience and expertise. Such turnover contributes to the tendency for new names to be given to old schemes. Thereby, an endless stream of short-term urban programmes, pilot schemes, and planning concepts appear, rather than the mainstreaming of proven effective initiatives funded proportionately to the problem’s scale and duration. (9) While the structure for joined-up governance needs improvement, it is also crucial to facilitate the culture of collaboration, with financial and other incentives allocated to those agencies which adopt such practice, and which redress the diseconomies of conflict, such as segmented labour and housing markets generated by sectarian ‘chill factors’; and the duplication involved in locating the same public resources in each separate community. (10) Long-term support is needed at community level to ensure inclusive local democracy, and inter-communal equity of regeneration and reconciliation capacity. But no sector in city partnerships needed to advance this work has the monopoly of virtue and legitimacy. In a divided city, it is crucial to differentiate between community leadership that is committed to an open, pluralist agenda for the wider civic benefit, and that which is informed by narrow sectarianism, geared to the partisan interests of one tribe over its rival. Exclusive forms of ethnic capital should not be confused with inclusive forms of social capital when resources for community development are being distributed. (11) This sensitive problem is not restricted to the concept of ‘community’. Rather, it is one of the hallmarks of protracted conflicts that core concepts such as: ‘human rights’; ‘justice’; ‘victim’, and indeed ‘peace’ itself can be interpreted in many contradictory ways. For instance, some believe that those who die or suffer injury in the perpetration of violence are not the same kind of ‘victim’ as those who endure the same fate when violence is imposed upon them. Others insist that such a ‘hierarchy of victims’ is both mistaken and unhelpful. But sustainable peace building cannot avoid an open discourse about the implications of such diverse perspectives. In short, urban peace building is unavoidably controversial.

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(12) High-quality participative inter-disciplinary action research is vital to inform effective intervention, complemented by a comparative perspective gained through awareness about other contested societies. Research without action is observation. Action without research is blind faith. By the same token, rigorous evaluation of peace-building initiatives is essential. In all of this, anti-intellectualism has to be challenged. Since peace building is riddled with complexity, contradiction and difficult choices, these need to be debated at the highest possible level of knowledge and ideas. (13) Peace and reconciliation networks need to be fostered not only for mutual support and learning, but also for collective influence—not only at community level, but also in the workplace and classroom, and learning materials about anti-sectarianism, equality and good relations need to be systematically organised, funded and disseminated. (14) While cross-community work is not always feasible in the most acutely polarised conditions, public and trust funding support for single-identity work should be subject to greater reservation, and conditional on its planned progress toward reaching across the divide. The problem is that ‘single identity’ work can be justified never endingly in terms of ‘people aren’t ready yet. They need still more bonding capital’. But, over time, it is sensible to expect progress in developing bridging capital. (15) However, cross-community work itself has to be more than a proclamation of bridge building, or a flag of convenience to secure funding, or even a process measured in the amount of inter-communal contact and communication. Rather, its value relates to its depth, significance, lasting influence, ‘beacon’ effect to others, and its transformative impact over time. Most of all, it is about making the difference rather than splitting the difference, with regard to the hard issues in dispute. (16) It is infeasible to keep doing the same things, expecting that next time will produce a better result. But risk and innovation, while they can be ‘managed’, are incompatible with fear of failure. (17) Monitoring and auditing procedures around ‘peace funding’ have to include the opportunity costs of doing nothing and the benefits accrued through learning from failure as well as success. (18) Just as sectarianism has been pervasive in the old society that generated the conflict, peace building is central to every aspect of creating a new society, and not containable in special programmes, funds, or government units. (19) Building productive and respectful relationships among adversaries is clearly critical. But other kinds of ‘relationship’ are also important. For instance, the relationship among the present, past, and future demands a facilitation of ‘remembrance’, not for recrimination about the past, but rather for change toward a less divisive future.

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(20) Often combatants in armed conflicts can benefit from the clarity, not to say simplicity, of their ideology. This lends them a formidable focus, energy and persistence. By contrast, those engaged in dealing with conflict through non-violent means are often be-set by doubt and qualification. Even though this tentative disposition can be debilitating, it remains right to regularly admit ‘This is my best call on this. But, I could be wrong’. But, while infallibility is incompatible with ‘smart pluralism’, peace-builders should not disown the need for core values, which can provide a consistent guide to the ‘principled opportunism’ needed for reflexive action. (21) Ultimately, the vision is for cities at ease with multiplicity, variety, and hybridity in a new globalising world, where diversity is becoming more pervasive, even in cities previously accustomed to homogeneity. In this regard, four main options present themselves to citizens in deeply divided cities: . .

.

.

Withdraw into enclaves marked by exclusivity and absolutism, thereby extending and cementing segregated territories; Adopt a minimalist ‘live and let live’ approach, involving a form of respectful indifference to difference, managing a co-habitation of the city, with little real inter-cultural engagement across the traditional divide; Endorse a sensitive democratic politics of identity and belonging, whereby conflicts are addressed through a regular process of negotiation and attempted accommodation, involving dialogue that will be sometimes jarring and inconclusive; and finally Develop a more expansive recognition that no one culture or ideology has total purchase on the complexities and horizons of humanity, but that positive interaction across diverse traditions can add value to each for reciprocal enrichment.

At the very least, a deeply divided city needs to be clear about which of these options it intends to pursue. Without such clarity, its ambition for a strategic approach to conflict will be significantly compromised, and that is the one compromise that it can do without.

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Appendix: Methodology

A key principle of this engaged research has been to not only understand the problem of city division, but also to help change it. Accordingly, this book comprises four dimensions: theoretical, descriptive, analytical, and prescriptive. Thus, it reviews inter-disciplinary literature on contested space, identity formation, territory, and cultural collision, and on the related demands on planning and urban policy. It then provides some empirical evidence on the nature of planning in contested space using seven case study cities. Finally, it proposes an approach for a more viable planning intervention in such places. The analysis here employs different theoretical strands capable of offering insight and explanation, while wary of the more extravagant claims of social science. This view, in turn, informs the triangulated methods applied. Given the vagaries of any one approach—social survey, structured interview, participant observation, panel discussion—multiple means have been employed to uncover the complicated issues addressed. Thus, data generation comprises:

Secondary data (1) Literature search—books and journals across an extensive inter-disciplinary range: official reports and evaluation studies; strategic urban plans; community strategies and feasibility studies. (2) Interrogation of secondary data—for example, analysis of census data; police data; poverty surveys; etc. (3) Privileged access—as government advisers on urban policy and planning, regional development, and peace and reconciliation programmes, the authors have participated in closed discussion forums and advisory boards in Northern Ireland, where candid exchanges about policy options and outcomes have been aired. Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

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Appendix: Methodology

Primary data (1) Structured interviews—over 150 such interviews, covering US, English, Irish, and European cities, such as Nicosia and Malebor. (2) Panel discussions—inter-sectoral seminars in places such as Belfast, Derry, Birmingham, Nicosia, and Chicago. (3) Written submissions—analysis of detailed responses by inter-sectoral organisations to urban policy and vision planning proposals for Belfast, and similar sets for the city’s metropolitan plan and the region’s strategic plan. (4) US research—this comprised a study tour and interviews with leading personnel in planning, property, urban regeneration, and conflict resolution in Boston and Cleveland in 1989, and in Washington, Los Angeles, and Chicago in 1995; intensive research in Cleveland and Pittsburgh between January and July 1991, including a literature search in universities, libraries, and government offices, followed by visits to regeneration projects, and 75 taped structured interviews—each1 lasting an average of 40 minutes—with significant actors2 in property development, business/labour agencies, planning, economic development, foundations, community regeneration, research, and city promotion. This analysis, dating back to the early 1990s, was supplemented by secondary data covering the period since to appraise the progress made in both cities. One of authors spent a sabbatical in 2008–2009, at the Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois, Chicago, during which time he was able to investigate the issues of development and race in that city. This material complemented other interviews and participant observation undertaken regularly in Chicago over the previous 10 year period as a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute. He was able also to re-visit Cleveland and Pittsburgh to update his assessment of their development agenda in the intervening period. (5) Participant observation—in conferences, workshops, and meetings— particularly those involving policy-making and evaluation. Social science’s quest for a value-free grasp of the social world is delusory—if only because humans are studying an entity of which they themselves constitute the central part. In retreat from this uncomfortable truth, some researchers take refuge in dispassionate statistics, as though life can be understood exclusively in numbers. Others contend that social attitude and action can only be captured if the researcher can penetrate the meanings attached by their authors (phenomenology) or if such social opinions and behaviours can be revealed in their ‘natural’ context (ethnomethodology). But this is a sterile contest. No one approach is always best. All are subject to potential contamination. All have advantages and defects. This research

Appendix: Methodology

317

derives from mainly qualitative methods, and though the authors regard these as most appropriate to the research task, they remain conscious of their drawbacks. For instance, participant observation can permit ‘immersion’ in the subject, an exposure which over time affords nuanced insights and textured understandings. But, applied uncritically, it can descend into impressionistic accounts or fail to achieve appropriate detachment. Similarly, structured interviews have to be appreciated as an interactive process, whereby optimally the interviewer can prise information beyond the obtuse and evasive response, using a set of consistent questions across all interviewed, plus a flexible battery of enquiries customised and reactive to the particular case. Here, the wary researcher takes account of the method’s limitations—on the part of the interviewee: memory lapse, bias, retrospective self-elevation, supposition passed off as unassailable assertion, keenness to placate, and so on; on the part of the interviewer: posing leading questions, antagonistic interrogation, and such like. The role of ‘privileged actor’ permits valuable access—particularly in the case of this book, in the realm of policy making. But, given that such access is purchased by something of a directive role in the studied arena, distinction between advocacy and investigation needs to be constantly drawn. Reliability of all such qualitative techniques is an issue, since data generation is so dependent on the individual researcher that results are not readily re-testable. But then, questionnaires also bear deficiencies. Particularly with the ‘postal’ type, questions have to be short in total; each has be expressed in simple unambiguous language; and most are usually ‘closed’, risking unsophisticated prescription of response choices, not appropriate for all respondents, and not often very insightful. In short, competent research demands a judicious selection of appropriate methods, astutely applied. But any temptation to deduce wonderful universal truths from the process has been humbled by an increasing appreciation of the pretensions of social science, which has suffered from a faith in ‘mechanistic modelling’ and from extravagant claims about elementary social laws. While the ‘engaged’ aspect of this form of participatory action research adopted here has its drawbacks, it can help uncover the key dilemmas both at an intellectual and theoretical level, as well as those at a pragmatic policy level.

Notes 1. Note: In some cases, individuals were interviewed several times, because in the dynamic of developing information and insights from other interviews, it seemed useful to seek clarification or elaboration. 2. Early selection of interviewees was based on their identification as ‘prime movers’ in local periodicals, newspapers, and in the academic literature. These people then suggested others, and this provided a momentum. The process was intensive, and proved that the lengthy fieldwork period in both cities was necessary to become ‘immersed’ sufficiently to be assured that appropriate people and agencies were targeted.

Index Page numbers in italics represent figures, those in bold represent tables. abandoned city 61 Additionality development model 139 advocacy planning 116, 274 agonistic pluralism 122 Allegheny Conference 146, 153, 154 assimilation 81 Auction development model 138–9 authenticity 86 Babel syndrome 66–7 Baghdad 83 balkanisation effect 54, 70, 145, 183–4 Bangkok 18 Barcelona 262 bare life 71 Basra 83 behavioural social science approach 30 Beirut 83 Belfast 3–4, 9, 80–1, 197–229, 257 aftermath of conflict 202–3 civilian victims 206 community background 212 community relations agenda 220–2 deprivation 215–19, 216, 217, 217 economic austerity 222–4 education levels 215 employment rates 214 ethnocracy 80 facing the future 228 narratives of 228 paramilitary organisations 206–7, 207 peace lines 210 political violence 203–9 religious deprivation 218 religious segregation 213 residential segregation 209–10, 211, 213 role of planning 224–7 sectarian aspects 208 sectarianism 198, 207

security-related deaths 203 security-related injuries 204 segregated spaces 212–15 social inclusion agenda 220–2 social-spatial segregation 224–5 spaces in 102–3 spatial deprivation 209–10, 218 spatial distribution 205–6, 205, 208–9, 208 Super Output Area Level 213, 214–15 Titanic Quarter 227, 264 Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan 227 black middle class 180–1 blue banana area 15 borders 227, 234 Bosnia 77 boundaries 227, 234 Bradford 9, 107, 246–53 Childrens University 248 City Centre Action Area Plan 250–1 community cohesion 247–8 Linking Communities project 248 Lister Park initiative 248–9 Local Development Framework 249 Myth-Busters project 248 riots 247 Schools Link Project 248 Sustainable Community Strategy 249–50 bridging capital 277 brownfield sites 14, 155, 224, 263, 273 building community 172 Cape Town 83 capitalist crisis 26–7 central place theory 24 centralisation 23 Chicago 3, 8–9, 53–4, 145, 168–81 Downtown 169 gentrification 170 Henry Horner Homes 174

Planning in Divided Cities: Collaborative Shaping of Contested Space. Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-19218-7

320

Index

Chicago (Continued) HOPE V1 project 171, 177, 178 Humboldt Park 173 the Loop 168 Millennium Park 169 mixed-income developments 172–3 Near South Side 169–70 New Communities Project 173 Pilsen community 179 public housing 171 race and division 170–81 Robert Taylor Homes 175 South Side 174–5 West Haven 173–4 citizenship 4, 260 flexible 73 citizenship tests 93 city limits 14 city-regions 15 Additionality development model 139 Auction development model 138–9 civic internationalism 95 civic leadership 135 civic nationalism 259 civic participation 133 civic responsibility 266 Civil Rights Movement 80 civil war 84 clash of civilisations 19, 57 cleansing 81 Cleveland 8–9, 145, 158–68 Downtown 158–9 Euclid Avenue 166 Lakefront development 162–3 Mid-Town Corridor Project 166 Mill Creek 165 Playhouse Square 162 poverty levels 165 recent development 164–8 UDAG funding 160 University Circle District 165, 167–8 Cleveland Clinic 165 Cleveland Tomorrow 159 cohesion 137 collaborative planning 115–39 epistemology 119–20 ideology 120 methodology 120–1 ontology 119 role of 118–31 collective action 55

command and control administration 118 command/luxury city 60 Commission on Integration and Cohesion 232 common sense 130 community 88, 265–6 community capacity 266–70 community cohesion 105, 106, 107 Belfast 220–2 Bradford 247–8 Oldham 242–6 community development 266–70 Community Development Corporations 151, 268 community relations 220–2 and economic austerity 222–4 community studies 25 community-based regimes 42 commuting 14 compassionate conservatism 65 competitive regions 136 competitiveness 132, 136 and cohesion 137 complexity 44 conciliation 91 confinement 91 conflict 13–21, 86, 121, 128–9 and development 131, 133 ethnic 66–79 ethno-nationalist 79–82, 104 in the state 82–3 state of 82–3 urban 4, 6, 19–21, 66–79 conflict resolution dialogic 128 discursive 128 interactive 128 connectivity 44 conscious agency 48 constructive ambiguities 273 Contest II 232 Contested Cities and Urban Universities 10 contested sovereignty 197–229 contested space 8, 96–105 Cool Britannia 86 cosmopolitan space 102–3 cosmopolitanism 8, 89–96 definitions of 93–5 counter terrorism strategies 232–3 creating place 97

Index

creative identity 86 credibility 266 cross-community work 277 cultural dimension 25 cultural disadvantage 32 cultural particularism 8 cultural relativism 36, 95 cultural urban theory 31 cultural-religious divisions 69–70 culturalism 85 culture 24 cumulative causation model 29 cycle of deprivation 32 Daley, Richard M. 168 Darfur 82 decentralisation 36, 134 Delhi 17 deliberative democracy 122 democracy deliberative 122 discursive 127 democratic de-centralism 118 dependency theory 29, 55 dependent development 29 deprivation cycle of 32 measures to combat 220–2 religious 218 and segregation 215–19, 216, 217, 217 spatial 209–10, 218 development 132–9 export-led 136 integrated approach to 133–4 development regimes 42 Dhaka 17 dialogic conflict resolution 128 difference, accentuation of 90 discrimination 88 discursive conflict resolution 128 discursive democracy 127 discursive rationality 130 diseconomies 253 of conflict 238 of division 205, 219 Dissimilarity Index 211 diversity 44, 57, 76, 85–9, 90 extermination of 81–2 policy and planning responses 105–13 in suburban areas 144

divided city 53–84 examples of 58–66 division 132–9 Downing Street Declaration dual city 56–7

199

Eastern Europe 14 ecological urban theory 31 ecology 24 economic austerity 222–4 economic re-structuring 32 economic vs social problems 137–8 edge cities 13–14 education 148 electoral politics, disengagement from 106–7 engagement 51 entrepreneurialism 135 environmental determinism 31–2 environmental stress 73–4 equality 76, 136 equity 197 equity planning 116 equity policy 110, 111 estates management focus 30 ethnic conflict 66–79, 260 ethnic identity 67 ethnic leadership 135 ethnic minorities 89, 92 ethnic mix 57 ethnic nationalism 259 ethnic space 102 ethno-nationalism 20 ethno-nationalist conflict 79–82, 104 characteristics of 104 ethno-nationalist fissures 57 ethno-religious divide 4, 55 ethnocracy 80 European Union 134, 137 Structural Fund programmes 132 existentialism 86 exopolis 15 export-led development 136 external contingent relations 49 Flemish diamond 15 flexible citizenship 73, 90 flexible specialisation 34 Fordism 27 France 88–9 banlieues 75

321

322

Index

gated communities 91 gateway cities 70 gemeinschaft 24 genealogical determinism 87 genocide 80, 81–2 gentrification 170, 180 gentrified city 60 gesellschaft 24 ghettoes 61–2, 75–6, 174–5 global cities 16 Global North 64 Global South 17–19, 43–5 environmental stress 74 migration 72 urban expansion 57 global terrorism 70 global warming 57 globalisation 5–6, 16, 37–40, 132 golden banana 15 Good Friday Agreement 203, 219 governance 41 government failure 32 government systems 57 grant culture 132 group identity 88 Grozny 82 guest workers 109 Habermas, Jurgen 117, 119, 125, 128, 131 hard to house families 176–7 HOPE V1 project 171, 177, 178 host society 108, 109 human capital 133 humanity 49 hybridity 44 identity 7, 50, 84, 85–9, 257–8 group 88 recognition of 86 shared 108–9 ideology 20, 57 imitative identity 86 immigration 45 inclusion 136 incorporation 91 informal city 7 Institute for Race Relations 232 instrumental regimes 43 instrumentalist rationality 130 inter-communalism 260–3

inter-ethnic tension 68–9 interactive conflict resolution 128 internal necessary relations 49 Internet 97 intersocietal theories 29 intrasocietal theories 28–9 invasion 25 Islam ethnic identity 69–70 militant 19 Prophet Mohammed cartoons 89 radicalisation 105 Jerusalem Jos 76

55, 101, 110, 257

Kabul 83 Keynsian-Fordist industrialism 33–7 knowledge 10 knowledge society 37 Kolkata 17 labour market 137–8 languistic difference 68 Latin America 55 liberalism 90 Local Area Agreements 270 local communities 40 local economy 40 Local Initiatives Support Corporation 173 local knowledge 266 local labour markets 40 Local Strategic Partnerships 270 local-statist regimes 42 locality studies 40 location theory 23–4 Los Angeles 53–4 MacArthur Foundation 173, 178 maintenance regimes 42 managerialism 135 in socio-spatial system 31 managerialist perspective 26 market failure 31 Marxism 40 maturity thesis 33 mediate structuration 48 mega-regions 15–16 megacities 17 megalopolis 15

Index

metropolis 13 inversion of 14 Mexico City 17 middle class city 60 migration 19, 45, 72 mixed-income developments 172–3 model communities 267 modernisation theory 24 modernity 47 mongrel cities 16 moral geographies 99 moral hygiene 64 Mormons 88 Mostar 83 multiculturalism 8, 89–96 multiple realities 36 Mumbai 17, 44, 96 mutual understanding 258 nationalism 95 nemawashi 130 neo-classical economics 30 neo-classical urban theory 30 neo-liberalism 37–40 neo-Marxist urban theory 31 neutral policy 110 neutral space 102 New Communities Project 173 new wars 57 New York-Newark 17 Nicosia 9, 231–2, 233–40, 257 area schemes 236 buffer zone 236 Community Council 237 Green Line 233 impact of planning 237–40 Ledra Street 236, 237, 239–40 New Vision 237, 238 planned division 234–7 public transport 236–7 Nicosia Master Plan 235, 236, 238 North American Free Trade Association 134 North-South divide 60 Northern Ireland 197–9, 232 Belfast see Belfast community background 212 Downing Street Declaration 199 grant culture 132 Peace Process 199 poverty 199 security-related deaths 200, 202

323

security-related injuries 200 UK subsidies 132 violence 200–2, 201 Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure 212 Oldham 9, 240–6 community cohesion 242–6 declining industry 241 Forward Together strategy 242 Housing Market Renewal project 243 housing strategy 242–4 poverty 241 racial segregation 241 Schools Link Project 244 Urban Development Plan 245 opportunity expansion regimes 42 organic regimes 42 othering 82 Outer City 15 Parisian Red Belt 75 participatory planning 116 knowledge co-production 117 partisan policy 110 partitioning 239 partnership 134 passionate planning 123 paternalism 108 patriotism, progressive 90 peace building 258–60, 275 people power 168 personal autonomy 88 personality of cities 44 perspectives 10 petty bourgeois regimes 42 phenotypical racism 92–3 Pittsburgh 8–9, 145, 146–58 Allegheny Conference 146, 153, 154 Civic Arena 146 Community Development Corporations 151 de-industrialisation 149 development priorities 147–50 diversification without bifurcation 152–5 Downtown 146–7 Golden Triangle 146 Hill District 156 neighbourhood development 151–2 race issues 156–8 Renaissance I 146

324

Index

Pittsburgh (Continued) Renaissance II 147 riverfront development 150–1 Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighbourhood Development (PPND) 151 place attachment 97 place marketing 97 planning advocacy 116, 274 by debate 112–13 collaborative 115–39 equity 116 in narrow contest 270–2 paradoxes of 263–5 participatory 116, 117 shifts in 115–18 spatial 4–5, 111, 116 ‘ten commandments’ 272 top-down land-use 115 pluralism 3, 81, 88–9 agonistic 122 polarisation 59, 81 policy integration 137–8 political economy approach 30 political society 76 post-Fordism 35 post-modernity 47 post-structuralism 6 poverty 61, 63 black and Hispanic communities 144–5 Northern Ireland 199 sub-culture 65 power inequalities 259 prescriptive identity 86 Preventing Violent Extremism 231 privatisation 23 privatopia 61 progressive regimes 42 proximate structuration 48 public discourse 261–2 public housing 171, 175 hard to house families 176–7 HOPE V1 project 171, 177, 178 reduction of stock 180 public space 102 quiet riots 83 racial hygiene 87 racial segregation 241

and poverty 145 racialism 78, 87 racism 78, 87, 275 phenotypical 92–3 Randstad 15 real estate 183 realism 49 recognition of identity 86 regeneration 182 and real estate 183 vocabulary of 185 regime theory 40–3 see also various regimes regulation 27 relationships 258 religious deprivation 218 religious segregation 213 cultural-religious divisions 69–70 ethno-religious divide 4, 55 and spatial deprivation 218 renewal 258 replication 86 residential segregation 209–10, 211, 213 Super Output Area Level 213, 214–15 resistance 51 resolver policy 110, 111 resource wars 57 Rwanda 82 safe spaces 276 Santiago 55 Sarajevo 82, 83 sectarianism 198, 207, 275 segmentation 81 segregated spaces 212–15 segregation 91 Belfast 210–11, 211 residential 209–10 socio-spatial 224–5 Segregation Index 211 self-determination 77, 94 separatism 91 shared futures 260–3 shared identity 108–9 shared sovereignty 260 shared space 101, 102, 225, 263 sink estates 105 skills mismatch 66 social fragmentation 56, 83, 112

Index

social impoverishment 161 social inclusion 220–2 social integration policies 137–8 social justice 197 social space 8 social-spatial segregation 224–5 socio-economic divide 4 socio-spatial polarisation 59, 63–4, 82 solipsism 49 sovereignty 3, 71 contested 197–229 shared 260 space 4, 7–8, 100 contested 8, 96–105 cosmopolitan 102–3 ethnic 102 neutral 102 public 102 shared 101, 102 social 8 social shaping of 102–3 spatial deprivation 209–10 and religion 218 spatial mismatch 66 spatial planning 4–5, 111, 116 Srebrenica 82 state of conflict 82–3 state of exception 71 structuralist approach 27 structuration 6, 48 subsidiarity 134 suburbs 13–14 ethnic mix 143–4 succession 25 super-diversity 108 superburbia 14 sustainability 136, 224, 272 symbolic regimes 43 system of accumulation 27 technoburbs 14 technology transfer 166 tenement city 61 territory 4, 7–8, 24–5, 96, 98 cultural dimension 99–100 demarcation of 98–9 terrorists 253 Third Sector 106 Third Way 39

threshold 24 Tokyo 17 top-down land-use planning tribalism 84

325

115

underclass 61–2 conceptual ambiguity of 63 models of 64 racial aspects 62 unemployment 62, 131, 137–8 United Nations Development Programme 235 urban conflict 4, 6, 19–21 and ethnicity 66–79 urban expansion 14 urban gatekeepers 26, 32 urban praxis 28–9 urban social movements 27 urban terror 57–8 urban theories 30–1 urbanism, growth of 6–7, 18 urbanity 13 USA 143–95 Chicago 3, 8–9, 53–4, 145, 168–81 Cleveland 8–9, 145, 158–68 HOPE V1 project 171 Pittsburgh 8–9, 145, 146–58 suburbs 143–4 Vanke Garden City 64 violence 78 Belfast 203–9 Northern Ireland 200–2, 201, 202, 202 volatility 44 Washington DC 100 Washington, Harold 170 welfare capitalism 28 welfare state 92 welfarism 33–7 Wirth, Louis 25 world cities 30 world systems theory 29–30 World Wide Web 38 Yuppie culture

34

zone of transition

25