(Re-)Evaluating the post-violent conflict city: Belfast’s hidden architectures of segregation and integration

Paper Abstract
Many positive signs of social cohesion and improving relations between the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland have followed signing of the 1998 Belfast Agreement peace accord. Yet over 90% of social housing continues to be segregated along Catholic and Protestant boundaries, with much of it concentrated in Belfast. This paper draws on two recent research projects to provide a novel perspective on the overlooked role played by ‘everyday’ architecture in both the maintenance of this segregation and the post-conflict efforts to encourage community integration. It first reveals the capacity of architecture to latently reinforce and duplicate conflict forces by examining an historic body of hidden barriers put in place between 1977-1985 as part of a confidential programme of government security-planning. It illustrates how seemingly nondescript buildings and spaces work in unseen ways to foster continued social division within present-day Belfast. The paper then moves on to provide a contemporary counterpoint by revealing the capacity of architecture to stimulate positive micro-politics between divided groups. It analyses a series of publicly funded Community Hubs which generate novel architectures that promote social mixing and exchange. It illustrates how these buildings and spaces work in hidden ways to stimulate and sustain new forms of cross-community contact. The paper concludes by arguing for a re-evaluation of the role played by architecture, in its widest sense, within wider peacebuilding policy processes.