ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses current challenges hindering Belfast’s public spaces from becoming more inclusive, plural venues for cross-community interaction. It explains how spaces in divided cities are carved into perceived ownerships that increase tension between spatial and psychological territories, the control of which can often lead to intercommunity disputes. It also interrogates implemented neoliberal urban policies and architecture which focus on rejuvenating the city into four shared quarters with designated cultural and economic agendas. Instead of offering new spaces of engagement, the chapter argues, these new developments and buildings have further alienated local communities and deepened patterns of division by adding a socio-economic component to ethnopolitical conflict and so further marginalising lower-class individuals. The chapter points out that shared space retains peculiar significance in divided societies because the nature of such conflicts is to emphasise each community’s confidence in their right to the city and to feeling secure in the public domain.
