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

Chapter 10: Patterns

Chapter  Patterns These five cities are linked by similar episodes of development in similar sequences. The patterns are easily discerned and characterize a class of cities violently impacted, and ultimately reshaped, by involuntary ethnic partition. Recognition of the patterns may require concurrent recognition of a moral obligation to confront the problem of urban apartheid in increasingly effective, creative ways. The careful observer is compelled to wonder about the conditions under which partition typically occurs, and the extent to which those conditions might appear in divergent cultural environments . Some citizens of divided cities do not consider themselves special , as noted in a Beirut resident’s wartime memoir: They speak of Beirut as if it were an aberration of the human experience: it is not. Beirut was a city like any other and its people were a people like any other. What happened here could, I think, happen anywhere. (Makdisi 1990: 20) A similar observation was made by a Belfast police officer: If you solve this here, then there are communities over here that would want it and over there that would want it . . . if you get the model, you can transfer it. But I don’t think there’s anyone out there watching, like a shark-watcher. Looking for patterns, issues and patterns. (Edmund S., 2001) The point was clarified by a Belfast politician: unless you move to manage your society, any area of conflict or area where there is potential conflict will end up exactly the same way as us. The reaction to fear—it’s the same the world over. . . . The reaction to the need to have space, and comfort, and—what shall I say?—peace of mind. It doesn’t matter where it is, people want to live in the area where they feel safe, and they constantly, it seems to me, keep looking for a ghettoization—for safety. Is that not how divided societies begin to be divided? Once you have a population that believes that it’s not safe to live among the other side, well then they begin to look for other ways to live with the other  Chapter  people; I mean, they don’t take the risk. Why take the risk? I can afford myself peace of mind. Is that not a human thing? Rather than a Belfast thing or a Beirut thing or a Mostar thing? It’s a human thing. (Ervine 2001) The lessons drawn from Beirut, Mostar, Nicosia, Jerusalem, and Belfast relate to other, less polarized cities that exhibit symptoms of deepening physical segregation. It is not difficult to recognize spatial segregation as ‘‘a coping mechanism tied to specific threats’’ (Benvenisti 1982: 173) that exist to some degree in every city. The spectrum of division spans from those which show only relatively mild and normal micro level conflict over allocation of public resources, through those which show some macro level dichotomy , to those cities in which polarization resulted in complete physical partition. (Benvenisti 1982: 5) Several patterns that bind divided cities together into a meaningful urban class have already been examined. Chapter 2 suggested that urban partition can be a legitimate and unavoidable response to the breakdown of collective security. Chapters 3 to 7 showed that all five cities exhibited similar combinations of stress and insecurity prior to division. Chapter 8 showed that cycles of violence and internal partitioning are tied to the breach and renegotiation of a social compact binding urban managers and urban residents. This chapter consolidates these observations into a more concise portrait of the divided city and its typical developmental pathways. Standard Sequence The events that pushed Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia up to and beyond the threshold of ethnic apartheid have much in common. Hindsight illuminates the shared phases of urban development that presaged violent episodes of partition. A number of standard prerequisites to partition have been identified in the comparative analysis of the five divided cities scrutinized in this book. Not all are found in each city, but they can be considered reliable indicators of a propensity toward physical segregation for ethnically diverse societies under stress while undergoing a major social transition. 1. Politicizing ethnicity The path leading to urban partition is paved with the merging of political and ethnic identity on a mass scale. In the five cities examined here, ethnic- Patterns  ity is the dominant determinant of political affiliation and inherited...