Bordered Cities and Divided Societies is a provocative, moving, and poetic encounter with the hearts and minds of individuals living in nine cities of conflict, violence, and healing—Jerusalem, Belfast, Johannesburg, Nicosia, Sarajevo, Mostar, Barcelona, Bilbao, and Beirut. Based on research spanning 25 years, including 360 interviews and over two and a half years of in-country field research, this innovative work employs a series of concise reflective narrative essays, grouped into four thematic sections, to provide a humanistic, “on-the-ground” understanding of divided cities, conflict, and peacemaking. Incorporating both scholarly analyses based on empirical research and introspective essays, Bollens digs underneath grand narratives of conflict to illuminate the complexities and paradoxes of living amid nationalistic political strife and the challenges of planning and policymaking in divided societies. Richly illustrated, the book includes informative synopses about the cities that provide access for general readers while extensive connections to recent literature enhance the book’s research value to scholars.

"In this unique book Scott A. Bollens combines personal narrative with academic analysis in telling the story of inflammatory nationalistic and ethnic conflict in nine cities - Jerusalem, Beirut, Belfast, Johannesburg, Nicosia, Sarajevo, Mostar, Bilbao, and Barcelona. Reporting on 17 years of research and over 240 interviews with political leaders, planners, architects, community representatives, and academics, he blends personal reflections, reportage from a wealth of original interviews, and the presentation of hard data in a multidimensional and interdisciplinary exploration of these urban environments of damage, trauma, healing, and repair. City and Soul reveals what it is like living and working in these cities, going inside the head of the researcher. This approach extends the reader's understanding of these places and connects more intimately with the lived urban experience. Bollens observes that a city disabled by nationalistic strife looks like a callous landscape of securitized space, divisions and wounds, frozen in time and in place. Yet, the soul in these cities perseveres. Written for general readers and academic specialists alike, City and Soul integrates facts, opinions, photographs, and observations in original ways in order to illuminate the substantial challenges of living in, and governing, polarized and unsettled cities"--

In this book, the authors present a combination of research-by-design, place-based, and policy-oriented approaches to the territorial fragilities of Nicosia. Nicosia, in Cyprus, is a city divided. Since 1974, a 180 km long Buffer Zone has separated the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and the Republic of Cyprus (RoC). This "open wound" cuts through the city's historical center, crossing the Venetian walls, a key cultural heritage asset, and impacting the city's spatial and cultural identity. Outcomes of an inter-doctoral research initiative, this edited book documents the local realities of the divided city and tests scenarios and spatial patterns of intervention to cope with the partition through the enhancement of local cultural heritage. The book targets an academic audience, architects, urban planners, heritage preservation professionals and policymakers, providing a transferable research method relevant to those approaching a complex, fragile, and contested "border territory".

The study of 'divided societies' has focused, historically, on either ethnic divides in colonial (or post-colonial) societies or on developed Western democracies which have ethnic power-sharing Government structures. The study of divided societies emerged historically at a moment when there was a growing interest in the study of immigration and inter-ethnic relations in developed industrial nations. These two sets of literature―on divided societies and on immigration and inter-ethnic relations―have developed largely in isolation from each other. Both sets of literature have also tended to focus on inter-ethnic relations, and have paid much less attention to migration. This edited collection sets out to fill this gap in the literature through examining migration and ethnic division. The case studies examined include developed industrial nations (Canada and Norway), a post-colonial country (Kenya) and three cases which feature regularly in the 'divided societies' literature (Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Israel). Taken together, these case-studies suggest ways in which migration intersects with and complicates ethnic divides in 'divided societies'. This book was published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics.

Jerusalem’s formal political borders reveal neither the dynamics of power in the city nor the underlying factors that make an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians so difficult. The lines delineating Israeli authority are frequently different from those delineating segregated housing or areas of uneven service provision or parallel national electoral districts of competing educational jurisdictions. In particular, the city’s large number of holy sites and restricted religious compounds create enclaves that continually threaten to undermine the Israeli state’s authority and control over the city. This lack of congruity between political control and the actual spatial organization and everyday use of the city leaves many areas of occupied East Jerusalem in a kind of twilight zone where citizenship, property rights, and the enforcement of the rule of law are ambiguously applied. Michael Dumper plots a history of Jerusalem that examines this intersecting and multileveled matrix and in so doing is able to portray the constraints on Israeli control over the city and the resilience of Palestinian enclaves after forty-five years of Israeli occupation. Adding to this complex mix is the role of numerous external influences—religious, political, financial, and cultural—so that the city is also a crucible for broader contestation. While the Palestinians may not return to their previous preeminence in the city, neither will Israel be able to assert a total and irreversible dominance. His conclusion is that the city will not only have to be shared, but that the sharing will be based upon these many borders and the interplay between history, geography, and religion.

First Published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Why do people invest so much emotional energy and resources in conflicts over images, symbols, rituals, and other cultural expressions? The answers explored in Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies view such expressions as barriers to or opportunities for inclusion in a divided society's symbolic landscape and political life.