No two conflicts are the same. While this paper concentrates on Northern Ireland, it poses the question as to whether its experience in recent decades of pursuing the formal policy of creating a more shared society bears any relevance for Israel-Palestine. This paper seeks to explore the role of planning in both places in addressing contested space. It proceeds to offer case studies of attempts to create shared space in Northern Ireland that may offer some models for greater mutual accommodation in Israel-Palestine in the spirit of reciprocal recognition and partaking in a common homeland.
In the last few decades, post-conflict cities have become focal points for political reconstruction, social reconciliation, and institutional innovation. These cities, often divided along ethnic, religious, or national lines, are where the legacies of violent conflict and exclusion visibly intersect with everyday governance. Post-conflict urban governance thus refers to the set of formal and informal institutions developed to administer cities recovering from ethnonational, sectarian, or territorial conflicts. This Background Paper explores the main institutional types developed in post-conflict cities and illustrates their operation through global examples.
Underlying – literally – the fractured and conflicted geopolitics of Israel-Palestine are the various elements of the shared natural environment, namely topography, hydrography, vegetation and natural resources. Anthropogenic climate and broader environmental changes are accelerating, exacerbating the already substantial variations of precipitation and temperature in this semi-arid to arid zone. Ensuring climate resilience and sustainability for any and all future reconstruction and development is therefore imperative.