Introducing relational segregation through planning the in-betweenness: interpretations on Belfast’s interfaces and other interstitial transitions

Abstract

Cities are often described as the accumulation of built-up spaces. However, there are various undefined, ambiguous, undeveloped, and finally interstitial spaces that remain overlooked. This is partly because urban interstices are often interpreted as abandoned, marginal, unplanned, empty, or lacking value, while missing sight of the fact that interstices are not inert spaces and can even be planned, accepted, and (re)produced as relational domains. Drawing upon the capital city of Northern Ireland, Belfast, the so-called 'interface’ areas and peacewalls that separate Catholic/Nationalist and Protestant/Unionist communities are analysed through the interstitiality lens. This allows elaborating on urban interstices as planned space characterised by their neutrality and emptiness as intra-urban boundaries. The insights are contingent to politics for dismantling Belfast’s peacewalls and filling the resulting spatial gap with updated forms of spatial order. Through phenomenological lines of enquiry, methods include mapping, critical policy review, and in-depth interviews with policy actors, residents, and community representatives. The findings suggest that Belfast’s interfaces are a type of interstitiality that reframes the meanings of spatial emptiness, and the extent such emptiness become relational amid politics against socio-spatial segregation. The conclusions highlight the importance of interstitiality within divided cities, and open questions around the legitimacy of induced segregation.

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