ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the difficulty of implementing broad national peacebuilding goals amongst the complex spatial legacies of conflict that exist in Belfast, and highlights how the process of peacebuilding has become disrupted and slowed by national political reverberations. It delves into the institutional architecture of Northern Ireland governance and the dialectic that exists between political sustainability and the ability to enact meaningful changes in Belfast's obstructive spatiality. This tension between institutional stability through power sharing and impactful policymaking adds one more layer of obstruction to peacebuilding. Northern Ireland illuminates the difficult balancing act between political stability through power sharing and the capacity of government to institute changes in urban space to move national peace forward. The challenge facing power-shared government in Northern Ireland is how to transform sectarian forces which were incorporated into the institutional design of peace.
