Divided Cities: Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia

Chapter 9: Professional Responses to Partition

Chapter  Professional Responses to Partition Introduction Effective and equitable professional responses to urban partition are rare. For experts trained to solve problems in the built environment—urban planners, architects, and conservators—the divided city presents a nightmare scenario for which surefire remedies do not exist. Split, suffocating cities do not frequently appear in textbooks, and the complications of ethnic violence are generally assumed to be the concern of other disciplines. Academic training for planners and architects usually serves these polarized circumstances poorly, since segregation is typically lumped together with other forms of urban blight without considering the specific economic pressures and social weaknesses that divided cities reveal. Built environment professionals are easily lost in the gap that separates anticipated problems from actual ones in the context of a divided city. They often lack vital skills, such as being able to negotiate diplomatically among rival groups; perform social needs assessments in the absence of a stable central government; decipher and interpret territorial markers; accommodate irrational security concerns in planning strategies; and accept bigotry as a baseline condition for planning. The effectiveness of design professionals in the context of a divided city is limited by the extent to which their training and original assumptions bar them from operating under social conditions they perceive to be distasteful and dysfunctional. Until the dilemmas that result are addressed by reforming their professional education and providing them with wider consultation, wasted potential and disillusionment among planning professionals are likely to predominate. Despite all the disadvantages stacked against them, built environment professionals still retain a significant and mostly unrealized potential to shape policy and assist in the broader process of coping with the negative impacts of urban partition. It seems probable that their lack of onsite training and preparation constrains their effective involvement more than any  Chapter  Figure 9.1. One Mostarian urban planner expressed his frustration with a torn photo and a paper clip. Tihomir Rosic, used by permission. other single factor. The field of urban planning has been slow to acknowledge postconflict scenarios as part of its repertoire, leaving that domain undertheorized and without a professional literature supporting the development and critique of strategic approaches to ethnic division. Some experts attempt to rise above the fray, like the sewage engineer in Nicosia who cleared paths through the political minefield in which he works: Both sides are working the benefits of human beings. We are not working for the Turkish, or for the Greeks, or for the Muslims, or for Christians. We are working for the human beings. If you say, ‘‘Hey I am Turkish’’ or ‘‘I am English,’’ there is no chance to work. You say, ‘‘I am a human being. And I am an engineer, and I have to work for the benefit of human beings.’’ (Öznel 2001) But in most divided cities the notion of public welfare, an anchoring concept for most urban planning strategies, is called into question. Once this moral compass is demagnetized, even veteran practitioners feel the vertigo. For some, the common good becomes difficult to define: Professional Responses to Partition  In divided cities it’s waste, it’s ugly, it’s cruel, it’s unfair, it’s disharmony. The whole thing can be defined as a disharmonious situation. You come to a place, and you say: ‘‘Okay, so what am I going to do to rectify the situation, to ameliorate the situation, to do something positive?’’ And people look at you and say: ‘‘What do you mean by positive? Positive for whom?’’ And you say: ‘‘What do you mean for whom? For the good of humankind.’’ They say: ‘‘Humankind? You mean Jewish, or Arab?’’ And then you say, for instance: ‘‘There is a common good!’’ And they say: ‘‘Oh . . . you are a philosopher!’’ (Benvenisti 2003) Because professional engagement with divided cities is fraught, most experts avoid it or continue to work from within discredited political mechanisms , as if conditions were normal. In choosing their course, a dilemma is unavoidable: to participate is inevitably perceived as to be partisan, while inaction squanders opportunities to assist traumatized communities. Neither option presents clear prospects for satisfaction and success. The neutrality and objectivity that is so much a part of the professional ’s ordinary mindset cannot be sustained. Professionals attempting to avoid taking sides often find that a political affiliation has been assigned to them, since noncommittal behavior can...