TOWN PLANNERS must take the division of the island into account if they want to ensure Nicosia’s survival in a European, globalised context, warned two planning experts from Northern Ireland yesterday.
The two academics from Queen’s University, Belfast, spoke at a seminar titled, ‘Contested Cities- International Comparisons’ hosted by the Reconstruction and Resettlement Council (RRC) in Nicosia.
Professor Frank Gaffikin highlighted that regeneration of the city and reconciliation had to go hand in hand, one could not survive without the other.
“You cannot survive and prosper as a divided city, For example, Belfast has been heavily subsidised by Westminster and the rest of Europe for years. Now, it needs to find its niche. It can’t do it divided, living off handouts,” he said.
An important factor in regenerating a contested area is to take the conflict into account when planning for the city.
“You can’t just airbrush division out of planning. You need to acknowledge these issues. There are no simple answers. Some prefer the ‘burnt earth’ strategy. They would rather continue the division and see the city run to the ground than give up their flags and ideology,” he added.
Professor Malachy McEldowney explained that the spatial development strategy for Northern Ireland took into account all of its surrounding areas, including the Republic of Ireland.
“You can best understand how Nicosia works if you understand the whole spatial set- up of the island,” said McEldowney.
He gave as an example the co-ordinated strategies to link Belfast and Dublin through a motorway system where motorists are unable to tell whether they are driving in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland.
“A good European city has got to be pluralist. We are moving away from old-fashioned physical planning to spatial planning. It’s got to be balanced, strategic, sustainable, comprehensive, integrative, visionary, action-oriented and participatory,” said McEldowney.
Gaffikin added that the new European context has influenced the way we look at planning in divided cities. The planning expert highlighted that all cities were contested one way or another. Given the finite space and resources, competition between various groups existed in every city. For example, Chicago is divided and developed along race fault lines
“Race shapes development of the city. There are debates around issues of status, power, identity and pluralism. In other cities, like Jerusalem, Belfast, Nicosia, the debate is around sovereignty. Who owns the city? This makes these cities even more contested,” said Gaffikin.
Belfast is a city of two dreams, he noted, one of nostalgia (before the Troubles), and one of utopia (without the British).
“The two live in parallel universes, and trying to find a language between them is very difficult,” he noted.
Divided cities where sovereignty is contested usually involve “intimate enemies”. “This makes enmity very visceral, ancestral. Combatants don’t necessary live in a rational universe,” said Gaffikin.
“There is also the feature of mutual victimhood, where each side believes the other side needs to change more than they do,” he added.
Gaffikin argued against segregation of a city. “Segregation is a zero-sum game. We need to recognise that the city as a whole needs to operate together, so we can try to amplify the shared and cosmopolitan spaces and have less ethnic spaces,” he said.
Glafcos Constantinides, who worked as a national consultant on the New Vision for the Core of Nicosia Project, noted that Nicosia was suffering from suburbanisation.
“The main problem for old Nicosia is demand deficiency. We see an enormous sprawl away from the walled city. People and commercial activity are moving to the suburbs. Cypriots don’t necessarily value the old city,” he said.
According to a 2006 study, old Nicosia has around 2,000 buildings in very poor structural condition, needing around £160m (€274m) to fix. There is also 100,000sqm of empty shopping and office floor space in the walled city.
The study revealed that Cypriots are minorities in both parts of old Nicosia.
In south Nicosia, 45 per cent of residents are Cypriot and 55 per cent ‘other’. In the northern part of the old city, 33 per cent are Cypriot and 67 per cent other.
Constantinides noted that the most sensitive issue in the Nicosia Project was the ‘others’ living in the town.
“What will happen to them?” he asked. The planning consultant acknowledged that none of the studies on Nicosia took account of the real diversity in the city. “You have to account for these people and this is lacking,” he said.
Constantinides highlighted that the best way forward for Nicosia was to use cultural heritage as a strategic vehicle, creating a market for restoration through tourism and education.
“The idea is to bring new consumer power into the area,” he said. “To do that, we need basic fundamental changes in the relationship between the public and private sector, between development, mobility and movement, and between history and market economics. If nothing is done, outward migration from the centre will continue,” he added.
