Brendan Murtagh

Capacity-building, Representation and Intracommunity Conflict

This paper explores the nature of community capacity-building in the context of local development. It challenges some of the simplistic constructions of community as a distinctive stakeholder with a shared set of values and clear identity. Even in apparently homogeneous place-based communities such as in the Catholic Ardoyne area of North Belfast there are important differences in the way in which local people interact with the organised voluntary sector. The paper concludes by highlighting the need to reach deeper into the concerns of local people, rather than the priorities of statutory funders, as a basis for service provision and local planning.

Desegregation and Place Restructuring in the New Belfast

A sustained reduction in unemployment, economic growth and house price increase have reflected Belfast’s post-conflict renaissance just as readily as the global recession has exposed the fragility of construction-led growth. Rates of segregation had stabilised and new consumption spaces and élite developments further reflected the city’s engagement with globalisation and economic liberalisation. This paper explores the spatial impact of these processes, not least as gentrification has created new layers of residential segregation in a city already preoccupied with high rates of ethno-religious territoriality. A case study of south Belfast connects these shifts to the production of new mixed-religion neighbourhoods. These have the capacity to reduce the relevance of traditional binary identities, but at the same time reproduce new forms of segregation centred on tenure and class. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for policy and practice, not least as the recession opens new spaces to present alternatives to the market logic.

Collaboration, equality and land-use planning

This article examines the connection between ethnic‐religious segregation and land‐use policy. It questions the normative capacity of collaborative planning in societies where place is imbued with multiple political, social and ethnic meanings. Using research data from Belfast, it identifies a number of challenges to discursive practice, namely the understanding of ‘place’ and how it is constructed, the emotional qualities attached to territory and the way in which professionalized policy routines moderate participatory practice. The article goes on to argue that space is being reinterpreted via statutory equality, human rights and social needs legislation, which have placed further strain on planners and planning policy in the city. However, it concludes by emphasizing the potential of collaborative planning to animate equality and social inclusion and give direction to the profession and practice in areas long divided by poverty and ethnic division. For this to happen, collaborative practice needs to inform the plan‐making process from formulation to implementation and not be limited to fairly selective public consultation exercises.

The Local Housing System in Craigavon, N. Ireland: Ethno-religious Residential Segregation, Socio-tenurial Polarisation and Sub-markets

The definition, identification and factors influencing the operation of local housing markets are relatively underresearched within the UK. This paper reports upon the outcomes of an investigation into the behaviour of housing markets within the local government area of Craigavon, Northern Ireland. The research investigated three interrelated themes of segregation, socio-tenurial polarisation and sub-markets. The findings indicate a high degree of ethno-religious segregation, clear evidence of socio-tenurial polarisation and the existence of sub-markets defined both by religion and locality. There is little evidence of mobility between the two main towns within the local government area, Portadown and Lurgan, but there is clear evidence of dual market structures within both towns.

Devolution and the Politics of Development in Northern Ireland

The reintroduction of devolution in Northern Ireland is widely interpreted as the working out of the Belfast Agreement (1998) which aimed to embed political consensus in shared institutions of the state. However, such analysis tends to be limited with regard to wider political economy readings of the devolution project and historic struggles to find an appropriate institutional fix to manage different forms of crisis. Peace and stability have, it is argued, permitted Northern Irelands reentry to global markets and circuits of capital with new governance structures being assembled to reconfigure ‘post-conflict’ economic space. We argue that the onset of devolution has promoted a mix between ethnosectarian resource competition and a constantly expanding neoliberal model of governance. Devolved neoliberal structures that sustain social polarisation may perpetuate strategies of resistance that could cut across and challenge ethnosectarian politics and deepening social segregation.

Integrated Social Housing in Northern Ireland

Studies of residential segregation in Northern Ireland have traditionally focused on historical accounts of its development, geographic measures of spatial distance and on ethnographic descriptions of enclaved communities. Analysis of the quantity, meaning and development of religiously integrated housing has received comparatively scant attention from academics and policy-makers. This paper reviews the extent of integrated housing, how it has been maintained in the social rented sector and looks at the possibilities for developing it as a specific policy objective. The paper concludes by suggesting that retarding sustained rates of segregation could connect housing in Northern Ireland to the task of closing social distance, equality and embedding the transition to post-conflict stability.

Bridging Top Down and Bottom Up: Modelling Community Preferences for a Dispersed Rural Settlement Pattern

This paper explores the scope to bridge top-down and bottom-up perspectives on spatial planning by drawing on EU-funded action research in relation to rural settlement planning in Northern Ireland. The empirical work is located within a review of planning theory that exposes a long running tension between the technocratic stances of government planners and the aspirations of engaged citizens. It demonstrates the operation of a large group planning methodology that delivers community preference with environmental responsibility as a participatory input into planning policy formulation. Transferable insights into the dynamics of spatial planning are identified.

Evaluating the social effects of the EU URBAN Community Initiative Programme

This article explores alternative interpretations of the meaning and method of urban policy evaluation within the European Union (EU) Structural Funds. Using the EU URBAN Community Initiative Programme 1994–1999 it draws a distinction between ‘instrumental’ techniques that are primarily concerned with performance and efficiency measures and ‘interpretative’ approaches that stress the need to explore power relationships in the development and delivery of spending programmes. Empirically, it reflects on the interpretation of EU guidance and the MEANS (Means for Evaluating Actions of a Structural Nature) Collection to evaluate the Derry/Londonderry (UK) URBAN Sub-programme 1994–1999. The analysis concludes by emphasizing the need to ensure that urban policy evaluation is consistent with the broader social turn in the scope and content of regeneration programmes.

Community, conflict and rural planning in Northern Ireland

Abstract The geography of urban ethnic conflict has been extensively researched and described in Northern Ireland. By comparison the literature on rural areas is weak and confined mainly to ethnographic accounts of life in farming communities. This paper offers some limited redress by focusing on a spatial analysis of two villages in mid-County Armagh, an area that has experienced some of the worst internecine conflict over the last 27 years. The paper begins by exploring key concepts in urban segregation including ‘critical mass’, ‘tipping point’ and ‘institutional completeness’ and argues their relevance to understanding divided rural communities. This is followed by a review of the literature on rural conflict in Northern Ireland which debates the relative importance of kinship, locality, social class and religious cleavages. The importance of demographic shifts are highlighted leading to a case study describing the experiences of a marginalized and polarized enclave Protestant village. The implications for policy makers are set out focusing on the need to build these issues into a more inclusive definition of rural planning and sustainable regeneration.

Environmental Affordances and Children in Post-conflict Belfast

This paper examines the experiences of children in post-conflict Belfast as peace and social change afford new opportunities at the same time as they regulate behaviours and spatial practices. Theoretically and empirically it draws on the concept of environmental affordances in order to map the experiences of 11-year-old children in separate inner-city segregated and middle-class communities. Whilst the recession has affected the pace of urban restructuring, children in the expanding mixed and largely middle-class city extract multiple advantages from their area in ways not available to segregated communities. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for effective listening strategies in the management of divided communities.