by Anna Casaglia

Divided cities. Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar and Nicosia, Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2009 (pp. 253, $ 59.95)

In the era of globalization and the supposed end of borders (as theorised after the fall of the Berlin Wall) a closer look shows that ethnic, religious and national conflicts continue to have a strong territorial impact often leading to secession, partitioning and new borders. After World War II we have witnessed a change in the dynamics of conflict: clashes between nations have given way to conflicts within nations and in this context, cities have taken on a leading role as both the epicentre of conflict and an emblem of wider political struggles.

Calame and Charlesworth’s book is structured around a reflection upon the common features of ‘divided cities’, where single or multiple lines, in the form of an actual wall, or more subtly etched into the urban fabric, function to separate ethnic, religious and / or nationalist groups. Beirut, Belfast, Jerusalem, Nicosia and Mostar are the cities analysed by the authors, tracing the path that led to their divisions in search of a common interpretive framework.

The work’s limits stem from the difficulty of comparing five cases that are so different: the presention the cities’ individual contexts, in the central part of the book, seems neither thorough nor comprehensive. On the other hand, the book succeeds in the unusual effort of identifying common characteristics within a framework of urban historical development, placing divided cities as the extreme outcome of the process of spatial segregation that has always characterised the urban fabric. Furthermore, the authors have striven to understand the administrative, political and diplomatic errors which led to identifying physical separation as the only solution to situations of violent conflict.

The five cities have different historical backgrounds and socio-political conditions, but they share a set of factors that has brought them from a situation of ethnically mixed population to a physical, and institutionalised partition. In all five cases we have seen a growth of sectarianism, which led to conflict and violence, and lack of a far-seeing political solution. The authors refuse to consider divided cities as anomalies of urban development, preferring an attempt to unearth the underlying mechanisms that might explain the process of partitioning, pointing out the inherent risk present in many contemporary, urban environments characterised by ethnic mixture and inter-communal rivalry.

There exists a standard sequence of events in the cities under examination, defined by typical patterns which made division unavoidable. The first step in the path towards partition is the politicisation of ethnicity. The merging of ethnic and political identities is the result of competition for the control and management of resources (evident in the cases of Belfast, Jerusalem and Mostar). This process unfolds spatially with the creation of ethnically homogeneous areas, as a protective response to inequalities and political pressures through seeking protection within the inner group.

The consequence of this is an unavoidable decrease in contact and interaction between groups, involving both the social and the political / institutional levels. Political up-scaling leads to the recognition of informal ethnic enclaves in the political struggle on a national, or international level. In the authors’ words, “once threatened ethnic communities have retreated into homogeneous clusters and the urban terrain has been converted into political territory, it remains for the battle lines to be draw. The next step, in fact, is the boundary etching, which usually happens gradually and more often than not, cuts into areas previously characterised by mixed population and never firmly imprinted with a single ethnic identity. The concretisation of the border is the evolution of ethnic enclaves that are increasingly isolated from each other and formalised on an institutional level: boundaries that were permeable and informal turn into impermeable and stable.

The separation was intended as an emergency and temporary solution which, instead, has become permanent: an example of this is given by the so-called peaceline erected by the municipality in Belfast which has not only become permanent and more sophisticated, but has even been physically embellished. This stage is followed by a process of adaptation to the division, with the consolidation of the situation and the rearrangement of the city functioning. The explanation is found by the autors in the weaknesses and instability of political authorities, as in the cases of Mostar and Beirut.

This process takes place against all conventional logics of shared space and services: each group claims control and ownership of territory, infrastructure and resources, resulting in a doubling of the structures necessary for the proper functioning of a city and the inevitable dysfunctions in the urban system. The consolidation of the division is rarely sustainable, because the resulting social and materials costs are very high.

In some cases the barriers have been removed, or gates have been opened, like in Beirut, Nicosia and Mostar, but reunification does not necessarily mean integration: the social and physical divisions of a city are difficult to overcome. In the authors’ words, “the typical divided city remains divided as long as the insecurities that led to intergroup violence remain”. Removal of the boundary, therefore, is seen as a necessary but non sufficient condition for reconciliation. In this way, the key role played by political administrations becomes evident in guaranteeing equal access to rights and resources for every group that inhabits the city. The authorities shall thus be warned about adopting easy, seemingly functional solutions that might instead radicalise and stabilise otherwise manageable conflicts.