CITY OL O City and soul - Minerva Partners

ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/01/020169-19 © 2001 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1360481012009245 4

CITY, VOL. 5, NO. 2, 2001

City and soulSarajevo, Johannesburg, Jerusalem,Nicosia

Scott A. Bollens

These cities, encapsulating deep-rooted cleavages based on competing nationalisms andarguments over state legitimacy, constitute an essential analytical scale for studyingcontemporary intra-state patterns and processes of ethnic conflict, violence and theirmanagement. Amidst deep-rooted enmities, the basis for sustainable peace lies not just inreconstituting a legitimate and inclusive national-level government, but in reconciliationamong communities and economic and social reconstruction at the local tier. The author’sresearch on the role of ethnicity in urban development, and how urban peace-building maybe possible amidst deep political conflict, took him to these politically contested cities in1994, 1995 and 1999. These observations are from some of the over 100 interviews heconducted with urban policymakers, community leaders and city residents.

“We grew up during the war, but wedon’t know when”, states JasminaResulovic, 23-year-old Bosnian Muslimwoman who lived in Sarajevo throughoutthe four-year siege of that city by SerbMilitias which killed 11,000 people anddestroyed or damaged 60% of the city’sbuildings.

An urban planner in Johannesburg, DikViljoen, states while sitting in his hillsideestate atop the grime, soot and humanityof the black city below that apartheidwas an “honest and serious attempt toprovide opportunities for blacks to havetheir own areas and their owngovernment, thereby taking them out ofthe political system.”

A veteran Israeli official in Jerusalem,Yethonathan Golani, who worked for 30years for the state, explains that hisleading motivation has been “the traumaof the holocaust, showing that we cannottrust anyone but ourselves”.

A Turkish Cypriot poetess, Neshe Yashin,travels thousands of miles so that she canbypass the 50 meter buffer zone thathermetically divides Turkish from GreekCypriot in the city of Nicosia and theMediterranean island of Cyprus.

The emotional scars and physical sep-aration one faces in the divided andpolitically contested cities of Sar-

ajevo, Johannesburg, Jerusalem and Nico-sia, present us with visions of ourselves inNorth America. These cities of ethnic andracial turmoil provide mirrors into thefear, separation, exclusivity and denial thatcoarse through our own cityscapes inAmerica. We divide here too, but history,territoriality, and religion have less tan-gible effect on us. Rather we build walls toseal us from past histories and those basichuman instincts that these cities must dealwith daily.

These cities are very different, but theyshare a common sorrow. Every day the

170 CITY VOL. 5 NO. 2

people who live there must struggle forcoexistence in the midst of intense andsometimes violent conflict. Studying citiesthat are stuck in the middle of ethnicconflict may at first appear parochial andantiquated in light of the oft-mentionedtrends of globalization and modernization.Yet, cities tell us much about whom we areand what we aspire to. The walls and spacesthat divide peoples in these famous polar-ized cities are present in our own backyard.These infamous cities tell us much aboutthe way we in America build cities andmake policy—issues of residential segrega-tion of races and incomes, physical redeve-lopment of ethnically mixed areas, affirma-tive action, the design of public open spaceamong diverse uses, and generally, how tobuild cities that have multiple group iden-tities and competing claims on society’sresources. Whether we are talking aboutJerusalem, Los Angeles, Beirut or NewYork, city leaders and policymakers mustemphasize not only the spatial layout ofcities, but also be keenly aware of thecomplex social-psychological and identityneeds of diverse ethnic groups within theurban region. It is not far fetched to drawthe connections. The containment of moralresponsibility on the part of city-buildersin the USA for those low-income house-holds displaced by urban revitalizationprojects bears an unsettling similarity toplanners undertaking partisan strategies inpolitically contested cities.

Through its people, its neighbourhoods,its rituals, its crossroads and meeting pla-ces, a city tells us much about the soul of asociety. Urban areas and their civilianpopulations are “soft, high-value” targetsfor broader conflict, witness Grozny in theRussian republic of Chechnya or Sarajevoin Bosnia. They can become importantmilitary and symbolic flashpoints of vio-lence between ethnic groups seeking sover-eignty, autonomy or independence. Citiesare fragile organisms subject to economicstagnation, demographic disintegrationand cultural suppression. They are sig-

nificant depositories of material, culturaland symbolic resources that often defyexclusive claims made on the city by singleethnic groups or leaders. They containzones of intergroup proximity and inti-macy. Cities are often located on thefaultline between cultures—between mod-ernizing societies and traditional cultures;between individual-based and community-based economies; between democracyand more authoritarian regimes; betweenold colonial governments and nativepopulations.

Being exposed to these cities and theirremarkable stories of organized hatred andindividual perseverance makes one morehuman and less patient with research donefrom a safe theoretical or analytical dis-tance. Division—whether it is physical orpsychological—is an extremely difficultemotion that spawns hatred, grief, denial,depression and forgiveness. Thinkingabout the individuals I have talked tomakes me want to cry over our ability tohurt one another, and to celebrate thehuman soul and its ability to persevereamid the trials of hatred.

Sarajevo . . . the siege of the city byBosnian Serb and Serbian Militias lasted1395 days, from 2 May 1992 to 26February 1996, killed 11,000 people, 1600children and damaged or destroyed 60%of the city’s buildings. Today, the political‘solution’ and the ‘peace’ has an imposedfeel and seems likely not sustainable inour lifetime. The Dayton accordinstitutionalizes a de facto partition ofBosnia-Herzegovina that the USA hadstood steadfastly against. Theautonomous Bosnian Serb entity ofRepublika Srpska created by Daytoncomprises 49% of the country’s territory,a reward for its ruthless fighting machine.There is ‘peace’ now in Sarajevo, but it isthe peace of the cemetery, not people.

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina is a special,transcendent place. Like Johannesburg andBeirut, how this city torn apart by strife is

BOLLENS: CITY AND SOUL 171

physically reconstructed and socially recon-stituted will play a key role in whether thelarger region and nation will bear witness toa sustainable peace or a return to violence.

Sarajevo is the scene of a crime, a rape anddevastation. It is an affront to humanity andrationality. Blown off limbs, puncturedheads, humiliation, playgrounds and soccerfields turned into cemeteries because thesewere some of few areas that hillside sniperscouldn’t see, ice rink from 1984 WinterOlympics shelled and afire, building afterbuilding shattered and burnt. How, pray tell,do I describe photographs of this place to mysix-year-old son? Should I?

It is now a different city, moving from amixed ethnic population of 540,000 BosnianMuslims (40%), Bosnian Serbs (30%) andBosnian Croats (20%) in 1991 to an approx-imately 80% Muslim city today of about340,000 population. Zeljko Komsic, presi-dent of Sarajevo’s Municipal Council, statesthat, “divided city is a difficult term for us;we are the cruel victims of history”.Although many Bosnian Serbs stayed in thecity during the war in defence of the bom-barded concept of multiethnicity, substantialnumbers fled the city after Dayton fearingretaliation. Muslim refugees from ethnicallycleansed eastern Bosnia (now RepublikaSrpska) currently inhabit shelled and burned-out flats in the city’s worst war-torn neigh-bourhoods. Political graffiti is surprisinglylimited in Sarajevo; when it is present itfrequently asserts SDA—the Muslim’s mainParty of Democratic Action. The town ofPale, the headquarters of Bosnian Serb warleader Radovan Karadzic, stands 10 miles tothe east of Sarajevo in the strange newpolitical geography of Bosnia-Herzegovina.New canton (county) borders have beendrawn on Sarajevo’s side to accommodate thenew jigsaw-like boundaries. The governor ofthe Sarajevo canton is Mustafa Mujezinovic,a large and demanding presence with aserious, gloomy demeanor that seemsimpenetrable. I wonder whether his gloomhas more to do with what he has witnessed inhis city or to the imposed artificiality and

perceived vulnerability of the boundariesthat define his jurisdiction.

Sarajevo, like Jerusalem since 1948, is nowa frontier city—an urban interstice—between opposing political territories. Theboundaries between the Dayton-createdMuslim-Croat Federation and RepublikaSrpska entities (in international speak, Inter-Entity Boundary Lines or IEBLs) are drawnjust outside the city’s southeastern parts andcontain no checkpoints and no visible signsof differentiation, except for the Cyrillicwritten alphabet present in the Bosnian Serbentity. Indeed, in an affront to the logic ofaggression, there is now new road-buildingto connect the two entities and the creationof ‘universal licence plates’ to facilitate autotravel from one part to the other. Was notland and its control what the heinous1992–1995 Bosnia war was all about?Another crossing nearby, although also with-out checkpoint, reveals who is sponsoringthis reconnection. Electronic monitoring andtransportation vehicles of NATO’s Stabiliza-tion Force (SFOR) are obvious and busy,contradicting the otherwise intended nor-malcy of the unmarked crossing. Do thosenow seeking connection believe that whichwas torn apart by war can be normalizedfour short years after slaughter? And is theabsence of an armed border four years afterwar a good sign or a bad sign? Should itsabsence be treated as a sign of mutualtolerance or an indicator of an artificiallyimposed peace?

Andy Bearpark is head of the Reconstruc-tion and Return Task Force of the UnitedNations (the de facto civilian government ofBosnia-Herzegovina). His Task Force ischarged with easing the return of minoritiesto places of their former residence, meaningMuslims to Republika Srpska and BosnianSerbs to Sarajevo and elsewhere in the“Federation”. The dilemma faced by theUnited Nations (UN) is that such effortsmay be consistent with morality, but in thecircumstance of a new Balkan apartheid, theymay be counterproductive to peace-building.Bearpark has over 25 years foreign experi-


ence dealing with places like Rwanda, North-ern Iraq and Somalia. He talks in a waysurprisingly straightforward and self-criticalof the international community’s role inpost-war Bosnia. In a talk containing rawemotion and frustration, he says that inBosnia the international community cannotforce change; yet, the UN is increasinglyforced, due to local disagreements, to imposenew civilian laws pertaining to electoralrepresentation, property ownership, eco-nomic reconstruction and return of displacedpersons. While advocating democracy, theUN increasingly acts authoritarian. Thisinadvertently allows local officials to escaperesponsibility and retreat to tribalism. Thisdependent relationship of local leaders uponthe international community in 1999 bearssimilarities with local leaders’ relationshipwith Josip Tito, communist leader of Yugo-slavia from the 1930s to his death in 1980.

There are heroes today. Jovan Divjak is asquare-jawed, grey-haired man, solidly built,with a face etched in war. He is a retiredgeneral in the Bosnian Army and was incommand of the forces defending the city ofSarajevo for over three years against BosnianSerb militias and Serb paramilitaries. He is abeliever in a multiethnic Bosnia and advo-cates for a return to the ethnically mixedSarajevo of pre-1992. Most amazing aboutthe man is this startling fact—he is a BosnianSerb. We hear so often of those who play theethnic card and manipulate identity to divideand conquer. Divjak, in contrast, is a livingand vital example of someone who embodiesthe spirit of inter-ethnic tolerance.

Divjak is steadfast and determined inleading a tour of the city for political andcommunity leaders from Belfast, Beirut,Jerusalem, Nicosia and Barcelona. He spendstime to clearly describe the logistics of thewar and to show us the hubris left from thesiege in the form of shot-out buildings andoverflowing cemeteries. At the beginning ofthe siege in 1992, the aggressor forces sur-rounded Sarajevo with 260 tanks, 120 mor-tars, and vast numbers of rocket launchers,anti-aircraft machine guns, snipers and

machine guns. In contrast, the city’s defend-ers were left with minimal arms for protec-tion. Throughout the war, mortar shells of82, 120, 150 and 250 millimetres shelled thecity. Snipers using semi-automatic guns weredeployed for most of the war in tall buildingswithin the occupied Grbavica neighbour-hood of the city. Every day the city was hitby some 4000 shells on average; among thetargets were hospitals, schools, mosques,churches, synagogues, maternity hospitals,libraries, museums, open-air and shelteredfood markets, and any place where peoplestood in line for the limited supplies of food,bread and water.

Divjak is firm and unemotional in hisrecall. He is accompanied by a female trans-lator who has frequently been by his side ashe has described the war over the past threeyears to all those who are interested. WhenDivjak interjects how comfortable he is withher, it is the woman’s moist eyes and momen-tary inner reflection that reveals the pain thatmust be present in constantly retelling thestory of this savagery. In the midst of amilitary cemetery that used to be a play-ground where he took his grandchildren,Divjak breaks from our group to hug andconsole a mother remembering her son. Aswe walk through the city, many residents onthe streets embrace him. They want to touchthis man, to feel him, to thank him. It is clearthat this man preserves in these people avaluable part of them, which struggles tosurvive amidst the emotional exhaustion andpain of ethnic hatred.

The retired general is heavy-hearted aboutthe future of Bosnia. He dismisses thesustainability of the new internal boundariesof Bosnia-Herzegovina negotiated by Hol-brooke, Milosevic, Tudjman and Izetbegovicin Dayton. The 49% of Bosnian land that isnow the Bosnian Serb autonomous zone isindicative of a victorious campaign of warand ethnic cleansing. Divjak is concernedwith the translation of this war and itsmeaning to today’s youth; he asks, “areparents capable of excluding children fromthese manipulative mechanisms we play?” As


Figure 1 Sarajevo. At the frontline of the urbansiege—Grbavica neighbourhood.

Figure 2 Sarajevo. Bosnian Army retired General Jovan Divjak in a military cemetery 1999.

a parent of two young children, I would liketo believe that I would rise above a contem-porary struggle and pass along a brighterfuture for my children. Yet, this feels like awish, not a genuine reaction. Are we perhapsmistaken to believe that pain and hatredshould dissipate through the generations?Mistaken to believe that 40 years of Tito candispel the pain and hatred experienced bySerbs, Croats and Muslims during WorldWar II? Mistaken to believe that a decade ofstrong economic times in America can dispelthe ethnic and racial tension that has existedin our cities? I must come to terms with myown gut reaction to what I hear and witnessin the former Yugoslavia. If these terriblethings were done to me and my familysimply because of my ethnic identity, themost important task in my remaining lifewould be to tell my impressionable andcurious son and daughter exactly what wasdone to me and by whom.

Jasmina Resulovic and Arnan Velic are 23and 22 years old. Jasmina is a short, round-faced, bespectacled young woman with con-temporary flare. Arnan is a lean man, dark-


featured and handsome. Jasmina says, “Iguess by our parents’ birth we are Muslim”.Both are architecture students at Universityof Sarajevo. They both stayed in the cityduring the four years of war, Arnan fightingin the Bosnian Army for five months, andJasmina mired with her parents and otherfamily in a high-rise flat near the front linesof hand-to-hand fighting. During the war,they attended abbreviated ‘war school’ in lieuof high school. Since the war, they and a fewother students now manage tours of thehistoric and war-affected city. I spend oneand a half days with Jasmina and Arnan asthey guide me around the city and I querythem about the ‘indescribable’. They were 15and 14 years old when the war started. Theyare now kids with the wisdom, sadness andperspective of adults. We stand for manyquiet moments at the Vraca Monument onthe hills overlooking new town Sarajevo. It isa remembrance of the power of brotherhoodin the communist partisans’ successful cru-sade against fascism in World War II. Arnanfinally speaks—“it’s unreal, it is like that warnever took place; we learned nothing”. Theirlong stares at this monument also likely oweto this cruel fact—it was from within thatmonument celebrating interethnic unity thatthe heavy guns of the Serb militias were firstfired from the hills at the Grbavica neigh-bourhood of the city below. For enter-tainment between gun fire, the militia menhad erected a basketball backboard and hoopon one of the stone walls, knocking offthousands of small letters of the names ofpartisan fighters commemorated on the hillsabove Sarajevo.

It is a different life now. “Everyone wasequal during the war”, says Jasmina, “nowmoney follows money”. And in a cruel irony,Arnan painfully describes how “we arelooked down now by those who left duringthe war and now are back with new cars andclothes. Sometimes I just want to stranglethem”. Jasmina’s mother is a teacher and nowmakes about one-third of her pre-war wages.Her underemployed father now makes lessthan her mother does. When Jasmina was

able to work as a translator for seven days,she was embarrassed to take the wages backto her household because it was as much asher mother makes in one month.

Yet, Arnan’s and Jasmina’s story is not oneof only despair. Arnan asserts “we’re notafraid of trying things now. If we fail, we fail,its OK. There is so much opportunity now,not compared to before the war, but in lifegenerally. It is short and one must make themost of it”. It was not depressing during ourtime together to hear Jasmina and Arnan talk.Rather, hearing stories of how the humansoul perseveres and matures seems affirma-tive of life. There is hope in despair, a spiritamid gloom. The simple ability to persevere,live, cope and grow amidst hatred is proof oflight and love. Without the surroundingdarkness, how would we know that we couldilluminate each other and ourselves? After aday and one-half of touring war-strickenSarajevo, I return to my hotel. At thereception desk is a gift T-shirt—of the cheaptourist type showing a leggy woman wel-coming the viewer to Sarajevo—and a notefrom Arnan saying this is something thatmay help me remember my visit. I went backto my room, laid down and was flooded bythe pain and the utter goodness of peopleliving in inhumane places and times. A boy,now man, who has lived through hell thinksof giving to an American visitor. The kitschynature of the gift makes it even morepoignant. Sarajevo’s and Arnan’s story con-tains a rashly different plane of emotion thatoverwhelms and connects one to another.

Johannesburg . . . the durable knots ofapartheid city building seem likely tocontinue for decades; the emotional painfor generations. The fragmented anddistorted urban forms of apartheid arestark. The most luxurious suburbs on theAfrican continent and downtownskyscrapers of iridescent modernityco-exist with planned geographies ofpoverty—townships and shantytowns ofintentionally degraded livingenvironments, poor infrastructure andsocial facilities. One such area is described


in the book Mekhukhu—“Mshenguville(Soweto) consisted of 31,254 jam-packedtin dwellings. The tin shacks lean virtuallyone against the other, with a merepassage between them. The settlementlacks streets and roads. Garbage piles upin every nook and cranny; a smell ofpoverty permeates the shantytown. It isovercrowded, squalid and ugly, yet it isalso vibrant and irrepressible in its ownsordid way.” The two million people inthe urban region of Johannesburg were inthe early 1990s approximately 60% blackand 31% white. After the 1994 democraticelections, hope and opportunities forurban change co-existed with theawareness by policymakers of thedifficulties of bettering the starkconditions of most black Africans.

Johannesburg produces a constant low-levelnausea concerning the gross and inhumaneinequalities of the human condition. For thefirst time in my life, I was a minority—adistinct, conspicuous one guilty by beingwhite in South Africa. How was I to makesense of the overwhelming and rhythmicstreet scene of black people in this city, whenmost media portrayals of American citiessuggest that blacks should be guarded againstphysically?

Whites in Johannesburg fear the avengingblack, producing gates that separate housesfrom streets and even parts of houses fromother parts. Gates provide a benign feeling ofsafety but also a dark reinforcement of the“other” as demon and threat. In the well-offridgeline home we rented while in the city,there was a so-called “rape gate” in betweenthe home’s living room and its sleepingquarters. It was there to block a successfulintruder’s entryway into our bedroom atnight. I recall the feeling that I was losing abit of my humanity each of the 78 nights thatI locked that gate. It made me feel moreprotected at night, but it didn’t make me feelbetter.

Racism with a professional and trainedface seems more of an affront than working-class racism. My interview with Graeme

Hart, professor at the University of theWitwatersrand, felt like we were two teen-agers huddling together to share nastythoughts about the different-looking kids inour neighbourhood. His racism was depress-ing because his arguments were at timesdressed up in the language of social science.He points out that the development level ofany African country is best explained by thepercentage white population in that country.“We’re the technocrats and the blacks aren’t.They have never demonstrated that capac-ity.” In terms of what to do with squatter and‘informal’ settlements that spring up aroundJohannesburg, Hart quips that “it might bebetter to put something in the water”. As forthe future, “if we play our cards right, we canstill steer our own canoe even through theseguys are now in control; blacks need us morethan we need them”. The discussion withveteran planner, Dik Viljoen, feels morenuanced and regal, yet ultimately more dis-tressing. He countered my portrayal ofapartheid Johannesburg as a contested city;“under the old regime it was not contested; itis now under the new regime”. Unlike Jewswho have a homeland where reside all thingsof cultural importance, the white Dutch-descendant Afrikaner in South Africa has nohomeland elsewhere; there is nowhere elsefor him to turn. So, “the policy of separatedevelopment—call it apartheid if you wish—was an attempt to say, ‘we have to dosomething to give the African people suffi-cient rights so they can do their thing, so wecan continue to do our own thing’ ”. This hasa logic that seeks to entrap and soothe youbefore you wake up to the actual con-sequences. More telling is that neighbour-hood dogs in Johannesburg bark ferociouslyat black people but not white. What was saidto those dogs behind closed doors?

Tandi Klassen shows the scars and burns ofapartheid on her face. She is a famous blackAfrican jazz singer. Her face is disfigured andbeautiful, radiating both pain she can still feeland joy that she exudes more naturally. Shehas a quality of frenetic joy, as if she feelsthere is not enough time to make up for


apartheid and that she is going to get it all outas best she can. Truly a blessed experiencewatching her sing an improvised jazz stand-ard to our then one-year-old son in themagnificent expanse of our home’s backyard.The heart and soul become serene, makingthe gates of fear seem like a joke in very badtaste. It is surreal to drive her one late nightto her home in a south Johannesburg town-ship, passing through the boundaries ofapartheid’s spatial divides. Driving down anear-abandoned road lit with the orangeglow of industrial standard lighting, turninginto the dark and sleepy township, andentering Tandi’s modest house and her worldof love and thrill.

We travel into Soweto guided by PeterWeir. Soweto is an amalgamation of 29 blacktownships over 10 miles southwest of, andfunctionally disconnected from, whiteJohannesburg. Soweto is the largest blackresidential area in the country, with any-where between 800,000 and 3 million inhab-itants (since blacks were viewed as ‘tempo-rary’ urban residents under apartheid, therewas no reason to count). The tour is informa-tive but distanced by the fact that Weir iswhite. He carries a gun; “I don’t knowwhether it would make a difference”. He alsosays that he is “told to stay on the mainroutes, so they can find us”. A month earlier,we had spent a day in the Kwa-MashuTownship of Durham, guided by a local mannamed Nelson Zondi Mandla. The experi-ence was intimate and intoxicating. As wecraned our necks to get views out of the vanof everything around us, we were answeredback with smiles and waves from womenwearing aprons caught in pose betweenhousehold chores, young tykes leaning out oframshackle windows, and tired soulful men.We received more waves and smiles that dayin Kwa-Mashu than one receives in one yearin suburban southern California. I sleptcloser to heaven that night.

Umunta ngumuntu ngabantu (‘a persondepends on persons to be a person’) is aXhosa concept that provides a window intothe communitarian basis of native African

philosophy. It is directly in contrast to ourwestern impulses toward individualism andstresses instead our dependence on others forour own development and fulfilment. Com-munity does not lead to the blurring andblending of individual boundaries but ratherto the deepening of self. In South Africa, arelated concept, ubuntu, stresses the sig-nificance of group solidarity, human dignity,and humanity in surviving individual andcommunity hardship. One feels the seductivepull of community in listening to apartheidstruggle. Eric Molobi is the head of theKagiso Trust in Johannesburg, which fundsnon-governmental and community-basedorganizations. He recalls the detentions, tor-ture and legal blockades thrown at the group,stating that ‘survival was an act of defianceand that to close down would have been asign of defeat’. Patrick Flusk, from the‘coloured’ township of Riverlea and repre-sentative in the new post-apartheid metro-politan government, suggests to his con-stituents “not to call me ‘councillor’ becausethat distances me from people; I always hadan attitude toward that term. That’s theactivist part of me”. Patrick is 31 years oldwith 17 years experience in political activitiesin the form of school boycotts and policedetentions. Solidarity amidst survival isseductive—whether it is Muslims in Sar-ajevo, Catholics in Belfast, or blacks inAmerica’s cities.

Yet, allusions to community and groupsolidarity in glowing opposition to govern-ment cover over internal black divisions. Thearea known as Katorus in southern Johan-nesburg was a battlefield between hostel andtownship residents (aided and abetted by thewhite minority government) in the yearsleading up the 1994 elections. Four thousandyouths were dogs of war, fighting as part ofthe African National Congress’ “self defenceunits” or as the Zulu-based Inkatha FreedomParty’s “special protection units”. With theelection of 1994, states Themba Maluleke, theperson charged with stabilizing and rebuild-ing the area for the new government, theseyouths (or ‘amakosi’) had their reason for


Figure 3 Johannesburg. Louis Botha Avenue 1995.

Figure 4 Johannesburg. Squatter shacks in Alexandra Township.

being abandoned. In physically reconstruct-ing Katorus, Maluleke must rebuild lost soulsand incorporate these youths into a processof normalization. In Soweto, competingpolitical allegiances by blacks obstruct recon-struction. One channel for reconstruction isthrough religion, says Ishmael Mkhabela, agentle and soft-spoken bear of a man who isdirector of the Interfaith Community Devel-opment Association. He was part of the“Black Consciousness” movement of SteveBiko in the 1970s and worked on issues offorced removal and the creation of rumpnative homelands. In the future, “it will notbe whites and blacks, or political parties,coming together, but individuals in andacross neighbourhoods cutting deals to worktogether”.

Harry Mashabela, the author of Mekhu-khu, expresses frustration over the lack ofprogress in government action since 1994. Anolder man with tired and experienced eyes,he does not like what he sees—“reconcilia-


tion today seems to be condonement offurther degradation of the black person”. Helaments, “our people who are in governmenttoday seem to forget where they come from”.With liberation has come not major advance-ment in blacks’ well-being but rather anerosion in traditional African communitar-ianism; “if your raise ubuntu now, peoplethink you are crazy . . . ‘you want us to goback to being primitive’ ”.

In many ways, politically empoweredblack Africans are like swimmers who havebeen under water for 50 years, emerge to thesurface and are told to swim the backstrokeat Olympian level. The substantial personaland organizational skills black Africanslearned in the struggle must now be trans-lated to the skills of governance in repairing atorn city’s fabric and souls. “One under-estimates the kind of black hole created bythe collapse of an empire”, observes MontyNarsoo, Indian housing director of theJohannesburg region. He contrasts SouthAfrica, where political democracy must bedeveloped before economic growth, withSouth Korea, where authoritarian systemsthat stimulated economic growth only noware loosening. “We cannot compete withKoreas and the Malaysias out there”, con-tends Narsoo, “but I prefer it our way . . . arambling, shambling democracy that will getits act together sometime down the line”.Molobi of the Kagiso Trust observes that “weare on unknown terrain and have limitedexperience working with and for govern-ment, so it is really a first shot”. Connectingcommunities and government in the futurewill likely be done by people such as TshipsoMashinini, a young, cigarette-smoking dep-uty director in the Johannesburg’s Urbaniza-tion Department. Born in the Jabava neigh-bourhood of Soweto, his personal historyincludes trade union and community orga-nizing in the face of apartheid. He can talkboth languages—that of the community inarticulating needs, and that of government inportraying its rules and imperatives. In theearly years of post-apartheid, this combina-tion of experiences was rare, and Mashinini

admits, “nobody has been trained in doingthe work that we do”. Yet, these efforts atcommunity participation and mediation willlikely be essential to assure that the futurephysical and human development of SouthAfrica’s cities counteract, not solidify, apart-heid geographies.

Compared to the other cities in this paper,Johannesburg may contain the most self-reinforcing faultline—a clash between Euro-pean and African culture, North versusSouth, ‘modern’ versus ‘primitive’, individu-alism versus communitarianism. It is a con-flict that comes down irreducibly to race andour racism.

Jerusalem . . . this city of over 600,000residents is a site of demographic, physicaland political competition. The social andpolitical geography of Jerusalem hasincluded between 1920 and 1948 amulticultural mosaic under Britishcontrol and two-sided physicalpartitioning between 1948 and 1967 intoIsraeli and Jordanian-controlledcomponents. Since 1967, it has been anIsraeli-controlled municipality three timesthe area of the pre-1967 city (due tounilateral annexation) and encompassingformerly Arab East Jerusalem. Theinternational status of East Jerusalemtoday remains as ‘occupied’ territory.Jewish demographic advantage (ofapproximately 70–30%) within theIsraeli-defined city borders translates intoJewish control of the city council andmayor’s office. Arabs resist participatingin municipal elections they deemillegitimate.

Israel has created over the past 30 years anurban landscape of visible and stark inequal-ities, Jewish–Arab residential interfaces vul-nerable to conflict, and de facto division.“From the very first, all major developmentrepresented politically and strategically moti-vated planning”, admits Israel Kimhi (cityplanner, Jerusalem, 1963–1986). Equatingdemographic dominance with political con-trol, large Jewish communities have been builtin strategic locations throughout the annexed


and disputed municipal area. Of the approx-imately 27 square miles unilaterally annexedafter the 1967 war, approximately 33% hasbeen expropriated by the Israeli governmentand neighbourhoods built in these areas in“east” Jerusalem are homes today to approx-imately 160,000 Jewish residents. At the sametime, Israeli planners have curtailed thegrowth of Palestinian neighbourhoodsthrough land expropriation, restrictive envir-onmentally based “green area zoning”, roadconstruction that fragments Arab neighbour-hoods, “hidden guidelines” within Israeliplans that cap building volume in some areas,and the intentional absence of plans in others.The cumulative impact of Israeli restrictionson Palestinian growth is that only 11% ofannexed east Jerusalem in 1995 was vacantland where the Israeli government allowedPalestinian development.

Although lacking a physical partition since1967, Jerusalem is a city functionally andpsychologically divided. Michael Romanndescribes this as “living together separately”.Neighbourhood-level residential segregationis almost total. Separate business districts,public transportation systems, and educa-tional and medical facilities are maintained.Feelings of frustration and communitydepletion were the norm as one walkedthrough east Jerusalem in 1995. IbrahimDakkak, long-time east Jerusalem residentand community leader asserts, “Palestiniansin Jerusalem are seen as a problem, a histor-ical mistake, an unwanted child”. Lacking alegitimate source of urban governance, thecity’s Arab residents are a community beingconstantly re-charged with anger and hatred.Michael Warshawski is director of an Arab–Jewish non-governmental organization. Heasserts that, “in my nightmares, I see Jerusa-lem as a Jewish city with a Palestinianghetto—depoliticized, demobilized andcriminalized”. Jan Abu-Shahrah, a Pales-tinian human rights advocate, concludes thatthe “decimation and breaking up of EastJerusalem has left no feeling of community,of common history, common future, com-mon cause”.

Despite the constant tension of living inJerusalem, I experience a sense of intimacyshared by Jews and Palestinians, akin to awar between brothers in a long family battle,a knowing about each other amidst conflict.There are progressive Israeli voices in Jerusa-lem who stress the need for some mutualaccommodation with their Arab co-resi-dents. Yet, they are tired and frustrated,weighed down and ultimately captured bythe recent historical consciousness of the Jewin the 20th century. Indeed, can we reason-ably expect Israel to create a socially justJerusalem that is inclusive of a threateningArab population?

I meet Meron Benvenisti, former deputymayor of Jerusalem and prolific author oncity development and politics, in the serenesetting of his peaceful flat in the Talbiehneighbourhood of west Jerusalem. He issulky, depressed and thoughtful—“I am onlyan observer now. I’m tired. I can only writeand try to be provocative. But I am pessi-mistic. I’ve done what I can do”. Benvenistiwas chief deputy under liberal mayor TeddyKollek, who held power in the city for 27years (1967–1993). As a Labour politician,Kollek championed equality and fairness oftreatment toward Arab residents and mutualco-existence of the two groups. Yet, at thesame time, Jewish–Arab spending ratiosreflected gross inequalities in public spendingfor roads, water, sewer and other urbaninfrastructure. According to many, Kollekcreated a better political atmosphere but inpractice carried out the Israeli stamp onJerusalem.

Benvenisti recalls bitterly that social justicegoals were not carried out, stating that“Kollek never fought for anything”. Anotherinsider at the time, Sarah Kaminker, suggeststhat the political coalition that held togetherthe Kollek regime “brought in liberal con-stituencies that facilitated the long-termmaintenance of a strategic and ideologicallybased planning approach”. She feels thatKollek’s “was not a liberal administration asfar as the Arabs were concerned”. ElinoarBarzacchi, city engineer under Kollek, states


that “we should have treated the Arabs ineast Jerusalem as equal Israel citizens; giveand take from them everything like we doJews. Bridging of the east–west gap in livingconditions should have been done quickly.The line today is still there and that is ourworst failure”.

Ehud Olmert, Likud mayor since 1993,professes more forcefully and adamantlythan Kollek that Jerusalem is a Jewish city.He states unequivocally that, “Jerusalemwas, never ceased to be, continues to be, andwill forever remain the undivided capital ofonly the state of Israel and the Jewishpeople”. Despite this stern and unaccommo-dating stance, the Olmert administration hasbeen cognizant of the potentially negativeeffects on Israel’s political claims of thehistoric and current service and spendingdifferentials. It sees increased spending inArab neighbourhoods as a way to securecontinued Jewish control over the city. IlanCohen, Jerusalem city manager, acknowl-

edges that “imbalances make it harder forIsrael to say ‘the city is unified’ ”.

A common, defining, characteristic ofdivided cities is the significant presence ofborders—real and perceptual. Competitionfor land and territory in contested citiescreates the need for politically constructedboundaries and borders which separate eth-nic groups. These boundaries separate peoplebut paradoxically bring them together. Polit-ical lines demarcate ownership amidst con-tested space, but also can become places ofencounter due to the same competition thatspawned the borders in the first place. In theDamascus Gate ‘seam area’ in Jerusalem,Arab labour and trucks now establish them-selves there looking for Jewish constructionjobs. Outside the 1967 outer boundary ofIsraeli-defined Jerusalem is the burgeoningArab settlement of A-Ram, whose growthcan be attributed to its ability to act as asafety net for Arabs unable to live inrestricted Jerusalem. The Israeli-delineated

Figure 5 Jerusalem. Jewish Quarter in Old City—Israeli army soldiers and orthodox Jew.


border, meant to separate peoples, actuallydraws the two sides closer in space due toland use competition over Jerusalem. Bordersin contested cities illuminate a strange worldof separateness and connection; or in thewords of Meron Benvenisti, the existence of‘intimate enemies’.

Political control amidst ambiguous bor-ders also is elusive, points out MichaelRomann of Tel-Aviv University. In an effortto politically control an antagonistic group, agoverning regime will often seek to penetratethat group’s territory in the urban arena. Inthe short term, this action increases thevulnerability of the aggressor, requiring fur-ther penetration at greater and greater geo-graphic scales in endeavours to increaseperceived security. In the Jerusalem case, asIsrael wins the numbers game within itsdefined city, its attention increasinglybecomes focused on the urban region andlarger West Bank where the numbers game isnot in Israel’s favour. Trying to establish

political control through territorial claims atone scale of geography spawns needs forfurther territorial aggrandizement, an endlesscycle alternating between political consolida-tion and disequilibrium.

In Jerusalem, this time in the Arab part,I am confronted after I give a seminarpresentation by the leader of a Palestiniannon-governmental organization, MahdiAbdul Hadi: “based on your research onIsrael’s Jerusalem policies, what would yourecommend that the Palestinian strategy beto counter them?” The audience patientlyand respectfully waits for my reply and Icannot come up with an alternative toconfrontational, even violent, overtures. AsI look at my ideals of human co-existenceshattered on the ground, I feel a warmemotional embrace by the audience of myacceptance of the harsh realities. I am notdifferent from human beings anywhere thatare deprived of basic rights, needs anddignity.

Figure 6 Jerusalem. A common sight in west Jerusalem—Israeli army soldiers.


I take an Arab taxi and cross the de factointernational border that separates Israeli-defined Jerusalem from the “West Bank”.The taxi leaves us in the wrong place for myinterview in the city of Ramallah, less than10 miles north of the Israeli borders ofJerusalem. Shopkeepers help me find theproper direction, and other, younger mengather to listen. They are curious about whyI am there on a busy Ramallah streetcorner; many express a deep friendship withAmericans that I honestly do not think isthere on our part (or at least our officialgovernment policies do not support such aclaim.)One senses in the Arab West Bank in 1995psychological exhaustion and depletion.Rami Abdulhadi, a mechanical engineer,describes how the last 30 years of occupationhave deprived Palestinian people of theopportunity to develop a framework ofpublic interest; absent this framework, self-interest has risen above public interest. ThePalestinian Economic Council for Develop-ment and Reconstruction (PECDAR) wasestablished as a conduit for foreign assistancepursuant to the 1993 Israeli–Palestinianpeace accord. Due to restrictions by Israel, itsheadquarters cannot be located withinIsraeli-defined Jerusalem. Instead, it islocated about 500 feet outside the municipalborder in A-Ram, a bizarre political geog-raphy characteristic of disputed cities. SamirAbdallah has a PhD degree in economics andis director of economic policy. A graciousman, he nonetheless takes the governingPalestinian National Authority to task,asserting that a “one-man show is not theway to build a civil and modern economicsociety”. I travel back inside Israeli-definedJerusalem to the Arab village of Shoafat andinterview Maher Doudi, American-educatedproject officer for a non-governmentalorganization. He expresses frustration withPalestinian leadership (“flag-waving will notput food on the table”) and describes howIslamists are filling the vacuum by respond-ing to the economic needs of the averageperson.

Abdallah and Doudi represent a class ofwell-educated Palestinian professionalsimportant to state building and society build-ing. It appears that democracy and humanrights are essential for bringing back themany well-trained and well-educated Pales-tinians who emigrated during the long yearsof occupation, and for retaining those thatare now here. This emerging and politicallymoderate professional class is in the middle,frustrated with the remote leadership of thePNA but not aligned with the Islamists’ viewof a religious society. In Jerusalem, the powerof the old guard of community and religiousleadership has been in decline since 1990. Yet,an alternative local leadership has yet toemerge. Much of the younger generationgained experience during the intifada(1987–1990); according to community elderIbrahim Dakkak, they “don’t know how todeal with local issues, but are interested innationalist issues”. At the same time, due toIsraeli restrictions on institution building inthe city, the Palestinian professional class hasbeen unable to nurture the type of commu-nity governance that would hold this impor-tant moderate group together. Ironically,unilateral Israeli actions that restrict thedevelopment of civil society in Arab Jerusa-lem may be creating the very outcome—anauthoritarian and radicalized Palestinianpresence on its doorstep—that these restric-tive policies have been seeking to avoid.

“It’s all about identity”, states NehemiaFriedland, a specialist in terrorist situationsand professor of psychology at Tel AvivUniversity. And ethnic and communal iden-tity is at its most unclear in Jerusalem. Thereis not the tacit acceptance by Arabs of Israelisovereignty as occurs within a Tel Aviv orNazareth. At the same time, open hostilityand confrontation between the two sidesseen in the West Bank is less likely inJerusalem because both sides are aware of itsdetrimental impacts on the city’s economicwell-being. Friedland suggests that tensionincreases when identity boundaries becomefuzzy and permeable. Thus, in Jerusalem,there must be a clear demarcation of the


Jewish and Arab parts of the city in order tomaintain identity boundaries, with ethnicsymbols and segregation condoned as waysto build and reinforce group identity.

In the end, one learns in Jerusalem aboutwhat can and cannot be achieved throughpolitical power supported by militarystrength. Israeli policy has likely strength-ened her ability to control Jerusalem politi-cally, yet it has weakened her moral andauthentic hold on the city. In this endlessstruggle for political control, Israel will needto construct further Jewish developments incontested zones as a way to regulate an urbanfabric of complex ethnic geographies andunstable Jewis–Arab residential interfaces.Yet such actions further manipulate ethnicgeographies, create new spatial axes of ten-sion and deepen the grounds for conflict.

Partisanship in a contested city appears afallacy, in that its very ‘success’ in Jerusa-lem—in creating urban conditions of dom-ination and subjugation—leads to an urbanand regional instability that is corrosive ofIsrael’s genuine control of the city. Interfaceareas between Jewish and Arab neighbour-hoods created through partisan planning aresignposts of territoriality and segregation,leaving legacies of disparity and relativedeprivation to Palestinians much as apartheidcities have done to black South Africans. TheJerusalem of subordination and inequalitycreated by Israeli policy over the past 30years has produced a destabilized urbansystem that will likely buttress Israeli argu-ments during uncertain peace-building forthe renewed implementation of partisanplanning so as to protect and solidify Jewishneighbourhoods. This internal and self-ful-filling logic of Israel’s partisan policymakingstands as the biggest impediment to a sharedand equitable peace in the Holy City.

Nicosia . . . all the appearances of peace,yet every north–south street isdisconnected by camouflaged sandbagsand barbed wire. Southern Nicosia is thecapital city and seat of government of theRepublic of Cyprus, the part of the island

inhabited by Greek Cypriots. NorthernNicosia is the capital of the TurkishCypriot “Turkish Republic of NorthernCyprus”, declared in 1983 butunrecognized internationally. The Turkisharmy in Cyprus since its invasion (peaceoperation) in 1974 controls that part ofthe island. An estimated 175,000 GreekCypriots were displaced from the north;about 40,000 Turkish Cypriots from southto north. The city is separated by theGreen Line, a UN-maintained bufferzone, established during the 1974 war butbuilt upon ethnic demarcation lines firstdrawn in the early 1960s. Intercommunalviolence in 1958 and 1964 had necessitatedforeign intervention and de facto ethnicenclaves as ways to stabilize thestrife-torn city. Today, lacking specialpermission, none of the 650,000 GreekCypriots may enter the north and noneof the 190,000 Turkish Cypriots may enterthe south.

Neshe Yashin has the petiteness and gentle-ness of a poet and the strength of a warrior.The 40-year-old Turkish Cypriot, educatedin Ankara with experience as a journalist, hasfor the past two years chosen “to live withthe enemy”. This is a rarity in hermeticallysealed Nicosia and Cyprus. She “chose” todo this as a way to show her displeasure withthe false choice of a divided country enforcedby 50,000 Turkish, Turkish Cypriot, GreekCypriot and UN soldiers. “Why did I dothis?”, Yashin asks, “this was not a choicebecause I am against the choice”. She goesfrom one side of the divide to the other byflying from northern Nicosia to Istanbul,Turkey; from there to Athens, Greece; thento Greek Cyprus and southern Nicosia. Thechange of three planes is needed to cross adistance of about 150 feet, “the longest 50meters in the world”. Yashin sees her role ashelping reconciliation in Cyprus through thegiving of speeches in schools and villages inthe south, through her participation in aweekly radio show, and though her poetry.For her own understanding since living in thesouth, “it is more painful to live in a dividedcity when I also empathize with the other


and appreciate their pain and suffering aswell. Seeing the victimization of Greek Cyp-riots changed the image of the enemy insideme”. She has a clear sense about which arethe real enemies of peace—“the problemabout ethnic conflicts is that they create astratum that benefit from the conflict. We cancall these conflict breeders. Conflict is theirincome and their identity”.

In Nicosia, both sides seem victims andboth sides seem perpetrators. Turkish Cyp-riot residents view the 1960s period of ethnicharassment and forced enclaves as a period ofdisunity and the period since 1974 as one ofhope and stability. Greek Cypriot residentslook back at the 1960s as a time of unity andthe post-1974 period as a time of disaster anddivision. Similar to Jews and Arabs in theMiddle East and Protestants and Catholics inNorthern Ireland, both sides’ perceptionscomprise a ‘double minority syndrome’.Turkish Cypriots feel like a minority in theface of the substantial Greek Cypriot major-ity on the island; Greek Cypriots feel athreatened minority in the face of the com-bined interests of Turkish Cypriots andmainland Turkey 40 miles from the shores ofnorthern Cyprus. The perception of threat incontested cities and societies seems to mag-nify one’s own ethnic identity, leaving nospace for the complex character of the other;it becomes simplified, darkened andconspiratorial.

One gets the sense that this physicalpartition does not represent an equilibriumand sustainable state of affairs. Yet, it has beenthis way for 25 years. I pass from one side tothe other—thanks to a day pass orchestratedby a Fulbright Fellow in Nicosia. It seemssurreal—the different symbols, uniforms, theguns pointed at each other, the smile of theTurkish Cypriot soldier as the van pulls up tothe checkbooth for the checking of papers.From the top of the Saray Hotel in NorthernNicosia, the view is startling—the two halvesof the old city within the Venetian walls couldnot be more different—the Turkish Cypriotside is green, human scale, low rise; the GreekCypriot side is slick, bustling and modern.

Turkish-controlled Cyprus is not as well offeconomically as Greek Cyprus, but surprisesme because it does not feel depleted anddisembowelled like the West Bank did when Itravelled across the Israeli border in 1994. Icannot imagine advocating a dividing wallbetween Israel and a new state of Palestine;yet, the 25 years of separateness on Cyprusseems to have protected a group identity andnurtured a society in the north in a way notseen for West Bank Palestinians under Israelicontrol.

There are heroes today. Lellos Deme-triades has been mayor of Greek CypriotNicosia for 27 years, a warm and graciousman, colourful and outspoken, with a gleamin his eyes as he walks around his city. I methim first in Salzburg, Austria in 1987,observing him and his Turkish Cypriotmayor counterpart, Mustafa Akinci, talkingand sharing, remote from the cameras and theattention of nationalists on the island, like theintimate friends that they were. Such friend-ship produced something amazing—thedevelopment in the 1980s, under the auspicesof the UN Development Programme, of aNicosia Master Plan that disregards thedividing line and plans for the city as ahypothetical unified entity. It has facilitatedthe European Union-funded development ofpedestrian areas in the commercial and his-toric centres on both sides of the line in waysthat would enable them to be connected inthe future.

Demetriades is more the showman, theconsummate host who makes sure everyone’sneeds are tended to; Akinci is more low-keybut also warm and affable. For 13 years, thesetwo men met once a week in Nicosia, Akincidriving through two checkpoints in a UN-escorted car to have lunch at Demetriades’home in the south. People do, and can, makea difference amidst conflict, acting either asthe ‘conflict breeders’ fingered by Ms Yashinor as peace brokers in the case of the leadersDemetriades and Akinci. While Demetriadesremains as mayor in the south, Akinci hasmoved on. The current leader of the northernside is Semi Bora, a young and likeable


39-year-old man who began his presentationat an international conference in Sarajevo bydistributing a small souvenir flag of the“Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”, notan auspicious start in developing strategiesfor urban peace-making. I did not feel Borawas a nationalist at heart, but rather playing arole choreographed by someone else. Bora’sgreenness makes one think he will excel atthe easier and inviting use of subtly deliverednationalist rhetoric rather than at the patientand incremental understanding that is essen-tial for peace brokering in a divided city.

The physical partitioning of Nicosiacleanly separates opposing sides. Some feelthat this may be a solution to ethnic conflictbecause it allows self-sufficiency and self-confidence to build on both sides that couldthen set the basis for collaboration amongequals to meet basic urban needs. De factosovereignty over the city is divided andethnic groups are isolated from one anotheras a means to allow time for each to regroup.Yet, one must contemplate whether the cost

Figure 7 Nicosia. Looking north from Turkish Cypriot side at the buffer zone.

Figure 8 Nicosia. Lellos Demetriades, mayor of dividedNicosia for the past three decades.


of this physical separation—the death of thecity’s soul—is a worthy sacrifice in pursuingthis risky enterprise.

Two personal experiences with “bicommu-nal” efforts to create a politically sharedCyprus confuse me. In Nicosia, I am part ofa UN-sponsored conference intended tobring Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriotcity-builders together to examine the “revit-alization of historic cities”. The conference’sname is intentionally non-controversial toincrease the chances that both sides will beallowed to come by their respective govern-ments to the barbwired and UN-maintainedLedra Hotel conference site within the bufferzone. Despite this effort at innocuousness,Turkish Cypriots are not allowed to come bytheir governing regime because bicommunalmeetings are perceived frequently by thatside as disguised efforts at the re-unificationof the island. UN officials start off theconference with well-rehearsed monologuesthat are vacuous commendations of theirpeace-building efforts. Then, at the firstscheduled morning break in the proceedings,these suits and dresses get up and leave afterwishing us all the best in our endeavours.

My other bicommunal experience occursoff-island in southern California. There, 10Greek Cypriots and 10 Turkish Cypriots—lawyers, judges, police officials—gather tolearn about how the administration of jus-tice can take place under a federal solutionto the island’s sovereignty. Such a solution isthe official stand of the USA. It wouldprovide some autonomy to the TurkishCypriots (more than is acceptable to GreekCypriots) while providing for some centralgovernmental functions (more than isacceptable to Turkish Cypriots). Efforts tohold such meetings on the island within thebuffer zone have become increasingly diffi-cult due to the intransigence of the TurkishCypriot national leader. Thus, the only wayfor the American sponsors to accomplishthis gathering was to arrange for offshoremeetings like this one (and others in Osloand Jerusalem). The Cypriot meeting partic-ipants were warm and cordial, at times

laughing at the absurdity of their conditionand bending over backward to accommo-date each other. At this professional level,and among a group that favours a sharedpolitical co-existence on the island, therewas hope for a way forward.

The static and semi-permanent feel of theethnic buffer line in Nicosia belies the painin people’s hearts and souls. When I ask inthe Nicosia conference whether the divisionis politically sustainable, one Greek Cypriotprofessional rises to his feet wavering innervousness and with tears in his eyes, andsays why it cannot be and that the pain ofloss inside him is unsustainable. Afterwards,I am admonished by a Greek Cypriotwoman, who asserts, “look what you didbringing up this question—whether Nicosiais sustainable as is—you people come inhere and just don’t know what you aredoing asking such”. I start to withdrawemotionally. Then, I come forward to thegentleman and I enter into a mutual hugbecause it is too important to our basichumanity not to.

History weighs down hard and heavy onSarajevo, Jerusalem, Nicosia andJohannesburg. These cities share acommon sorrow of tormented pasts andunpredictable, turbulent futures.

Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert explains aquality of that city shared by other politicallycontested cities—that “when you debate thecontrol of Jerusalem, you debate not just thepresent and the future, but also the past”.And Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai described acommon feeling in these cities—“The airabove Jerusalem is filled with prayers anddreams. Like the air above cities with heavyindustry, hard to breathe”. While historyweighs heavily and must assuredly beaccounted for in contested cities, it must alsoassuredly not be used as an armament.Ricardo Perez Casado, former administratorof the European Union in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina tells us why—“if we evokehistory as a weapon, it is always the citizens


who lose”. It seems that one cannot solvethese conflicts without reference to history,yet there must be an ‘intentional forgetful-ness’, or more majestically stated, a forgive-ness, concerning past injustices and harms inorder for societies and cities to move awayprogressively from conflict.

The ‘no-man’s lands’, buffer zones andpeace lines that inhumanely divide contestedcities seem, on the one hand, to be intractableurban fixtures; yet, on the other hand, theyshow a significant ability to evolve as placesand symbols, and to perform important rolesin stitching together torn cities. The BerlinWall evolves into a Mecca of capitalistbuilding at Potsdamer Platz. The ‘green line’in Nicosia still divides that capital but is nowreally green, with trees and shrubs untouchedfor 25 years growing up and filling in thebuffer zone. In Sarajevo, one of the fewplaces in the city where you found a growingstand of trees after the war was along theformer line of hostility between Serb militiasand the Bosnian Army in the Grbavicaneighbourhood. These trees existed becausethe constant sniping and bombing along thefront lines prevented the cutting of trees forfuel so widespread elsewhere in the city. Thephysical barrier that divided Jewish fromArab Jerusalem between 1949 and 1967 isnow, just north of the Old City, a major roadand meeting place for Israeli truck driverslooking for cheap Arab labour. And inJohannesburg, the apartheid system of landuse separation created buffer zones to segre-gate white from black and produced a ‘white’

inner city of ample public services and low-density development. Ironically, these spatiallegacies of urban apartheid provide goldenopportunities, not to be found in normalcities, for restructuring and eradicating thecity’s landscape of racial hate.

Divided cities challenge us to confrontwhether we are hopeful or pessimistic aboutour ability to get along together. A puzzlefaced by policymakers in multicultural cit-ies—whether Beirut or Detroit, Sarajevo orNew York, Nicosia or Miami, Montreal orJohannesburg—is a basic one that forces usto confront our own beliefs and predilec-tions. In an urban situation where there areantagonistic, or potentially antagonistic, eth-nic or racial groups, do city-builders encour-age these groups to live together and interact,or do they facilitate the development ofethnically segregated neighbourhoods anddistricts? Decisions such as these will sendemotive symbols to future generations aboutwhat we either aspire to in hope or accept inresignation.

Scott A. Bollens is Professor and Chairman,Department of Urban and Regional Plan-ning, University of California, Irvine. He isauthor of On Narrow Ground: Urban Policyand Ethnic Conflict in Jerusalem and Belfast(Albany: State University of New York Press,2000) and Urban Peace-building in DividedSocieties: Belfast and Johannesburg (Oxford,UK and Boulder, CO: Westview Press,1999).

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