A co-influence approach to shared future urban environments in interface communities
Year: 2007
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Responding to the Northern Irish post-conflict imperative to envisage, facilitate and realise shared future strategies for urban development in interface locations, this paper draws from existing academic and empirical research to define a process through which shared vision, integrated social and built environments could be realised within interface locations. Emphasis is placed on exploring, defining and prioritising shared future outcomes at all levels of community, development and statutory decision making processes. As the result of prolonged sectarian conflict between politically and religiously segregated and opposed communities, Northern Ireland (NI) retains a legacy of isolated and embattled urban interface environments. Originally housing the workforce for the now dismantled industries which generated Northern Irelands wealth, these areas, are often in prime locations for development, such as edge of city centre or riverside locations and are predominately made up of low income households, retaining and defending distinct temporal and physical community identities and boundaries within the larger urban context. Concerted political effort since the Anglo Irish Agreement (1985), culminating in The Belfast Agreement (1998) has established the basis for democratic representation through a Northern Irish Assembly, transforming political and economic direction and governance and creating conditions within which a regionally determined, sustainable, post-conflict future can begin to be envisioned. Northern Ireland now seeks to move beyond the mechanisms and manifestations of conflict and respond effectively to the increasing influence of global market economics which political stability has brought. The daily lives of interface communities however, remain in the grasp of the “structural bind” (Neill, 1995) which has held the people of Northern Ireland since the Anglo Scots plantations of the 17. While there has been substantial work in the area of sustainable communities in the UK, particularly in the wake of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s (2003) Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future and the (2004) Egan Review of Skills for Sustainable Communities, the OPDM Sustainable Communities Plan (2005), in proposing a strategy for future development, acknowledges the challenges and pressing problems presented by the influence of market forces in shaping the built environment and acknowledges the need for a step change in approaches to dealing with these issues even within the relatively stable and integrated social context of the UK mainland. This study aims to develop a theoretical model for the exploration and realisation of more progressive solutions, challenging conventional practice and moving towards sustainable urban environments within areas of notable conflict in Northern Ireland. This paper details the construction of this model, which will be validated within the extended study of certain communities of Derry/ Londonderry.
Authors: McQueen, M., Elkadi, Hisham, Millar, J.
Language: English
Topic: Irish and British Studies
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: North Carolina State University
OpenAlex ID: W2247920876