Students of urban fragmentation have either examined ‘the ethnology of intermingled and socially mixed places’ or their ‘institutional and political fragmentation’ (Rhein and Elissalde, 2004:123-124). These two aspects have frequently been associated. ‘A direct intellectual connection has been established between the political fragmentation of territory and the worsening of spatial segregation, each reinforcing one another’ (Estèbe and Talandier, 2005:38, cf. Le Goff, 2006:41). An important notion here is that of
governance and the subsequent analysis of the effects induced by city management. The
management of intergroup relations within urban space occupies a significant place in the literature of divided cities. The divided city is seen as a place affected by intense inter-communal conflict and violence reflecting ethnic and nationalist fractures (Bollens, 1998a). I will first focus here on the notion of group competition on which urban divisions rest, before analysing in more detail the issue of urban management.
Urban divisions along ethno-national lines are described as resulting from a process of mobilisation of groups competing for their exclusionary right to the city:
To enhance its power, each community mobilizes its members through the construction of difference, as a convenient platform for reinforcing ethnic and racial solidarity. This does not take place in isolation but by groups in constant relation (often contestation) with other groups and interest […] Competition for spatial, cultural and political resources includes control over territory, relation to place, and the right to cultural expression. (Tzfadia & Yiftachel, 2004:43)
In his analysis of Belfast, Nagle (2009a and 2009b) places the right to access the city centre and public space as central to the claims formulated by groups in conflict. The public space is a ‘crucible’ for groups to test their rights in the wider society.
The ‘politics of territoriality’, as deployed by nationalist leaders, have an essential impact on divided cities. One of the first goals of ethno-national entrepreneurs is to create purified and homogeneous spaces which legitimize a series of discursive activities and social group practices (Shirlow, 2003; cf. Nagle, 2009a). I would like to
stress that this connection between a nation (ethnically defined) and a territory was foreign to the Balkan Ottoman society. While the territoriality of the nation and that of the state had found a relative convergence in Western Europe, the application of the nation-state model turned problematic in South-Eastern Europe. In a space characterised by the overlapping of its iconographic strata, the territorial representations forged at the end of the 19th century by the new nation could not converge. This resulted in states endowing the main ethnic group with exclusive rights within the national territory, while treating the other communities as minorities external to the nation. The capital cities, as the main showcase of the new states’ choices, bear the traces of this opposition. As I will argue in the case of Macedonia, the policies implemented by the nation-state are often in contradiction with the reality of national territories where ethnic groups are interwoven.
Yiftachel and Ghanem (2004) suggest that ethnicising territory resorts to structural segregation to facilitate the expansion of the group in power, and the construction of minorities as a ‘threat’ to the project of ‘purifying’ ethnic spaces. Divided cities are torn by the antagonistic strategies of groups which seek to ethnicise territories. Power contests play a central role. To Murtagh et al. (2008), such competition is not simply reducible to consensual management or finite agreement. It does not only take the form of a symbolic competition for the city but intergroup conflict concerns distributional issues at the municipal level – service delivery, the allocation of resources, land use compatibility, etc. However, when combined with ethnic and nationalist claims, as in divided cities, these potential factors take on a very different salience in group competition. Bollens (1998:189) analyses the impact the intersection of nationalism and urban system has on urban governance. According to him, ‘the role of urban policy in ethnically polarised cities is problematic in that urban policy-makers must contend with both the particular exigencies of daily urban life and broader ideological imperatives. With the legitimacy of the political framework disputed, service delivery and policy regarding the use of space are transformed into major territorial conflicts.’ To appreciate the role of policy-makers and urban elites in divisions, I will now examine the issue of urban management.
Studies of divided cities sees urban management as often determined by the ethno-nationalist claims and aims of the groups which share urban space. To Bollens
(1998a:191), ‘fundamental ideology in an urban environment is implemented primarily through urban planning and policy decisions that seek to reify its vision on the ground [...]. Urban implementers of ideological goals seek to give concrete meaning to ideological goals such as political control, ethnic separation, security, or fairness’. This is why ‘the emphasis should not concentrate on the conduct of planners and their practices but rather on the broader power structures’ (Murtagh et al., 2008:51). Yiftachel and Huxley (2000) refer to the ‘dark side of planning’ as a ‘double-edged sword’ which may either exert domination and cause inequalities, when used as a means to repress and control subordinate groups, or, on the contrary, may be a key to foster equal and ‘rational’ development. According to Bollens (1998a:1993), ‘the maintenance of group identity is critical to the nature of interethnic relations in a polarised city, and can be affected by urban government actions’. To illustrate this connection between ideology and planning, Kliot and Mansfield (1999) show that partitioned cities often give rise to separate systems of urban governance, directly paralleling intergroup divisions. Cities such as Nicosia, Berlin or Jerusalem have all witnessed the emergence of dual urban infrastructures.
However, the governing ideology may not always be translated into urban policies in a straightforward way: ‘Ideology, to be actualised, must be translated into technical prescriptions that seek to move a society or [...] a city toward final goals or vision. Yet, ideology may be fraught with ambiguity that engenders multiple interpretations as to which actions are appropriate to achieve chosen ends’ (Bollens, 1998:191). While, in some cases, there is a concordance between ideology and urban policy, there may also be a disconnection between the ideological pursuit of ethno- nationalist goals and the outcomes of policy implementation. The complex interdependencies of social, economic and psychological factors that compose the urban arena may make it difficult for ideologies to directly shape the city. ‘Formal ideology [is] not always [...] readily translatable onto the urban landscape’ (Bollens, 1998a:191). Because of this, social scientists have to be all the more cautious and attentive when studying divided cities.
Bollens (1998a, 1998b, 2002) distinguishes four urban political strategies with respect to ethno-national divisions which I will use in my analysis of urban management in Skopje. First, the neutral urban strategy is associated with a government’s broader civic ideology according to which urban planning should follow functional-technical criteria. The role of urban planning is not to ‘change society’. Planners should address
only the symptoms, and not the root causes, of urban problems by depoliticising and ‘de-ethnicising’ them. This strategy is deeply rooted in an Anglo-Saxon tradition, and a good example of a divided city where it is applied is Belfast. Second, the partisan strategy appears when the city’s governing ideology merges with one group’s ethno- national ideology and assumes an ethnic (or religious) understanding of citizenship. By choosing side and seeking to give a monopoly or preferential access to both policy- making and urban territory, urban governance becomes a regressive agent of change that exerts an ideology of domination in the urban arena and landscape. The city of Jerusalem has been governed by this type of urban management. Third, the equity strategy gives primacy to ethnic affiliation to compensate for and decrease intergroup inequalities. The ethnic criterion is here used in allocating urban services and spending. This is the case of contemporary Johannesburg, whose urban policy also has some shared characteristics with Bollens’ last strategy, the resolver strategy. The latter is the most demanding strategy: it aims at transcending urban-based symptoms by solving the root causes of divisions. By resorting to means such as minority empowerment, it seeks to resolve, and not only manage, conflicts, in order to establish peaceful intergroup coexistence within the city (Bollens, 1998a, 1998b, 2002). The actual outcomes of these strategies may differ from what is expected by urban planners. For example, Belfast’s neutral strategy reproduced sectarian space and reified divisions in the city (Murtagh, 1999; Bollens, 1998a, 1998b, 2002). Even in its most ‘neutral’ or ‘unbiased’ form, urban management always impact on group mobilisation and divisions. Urban management is not a neutral actor, but it plays a central role in shaping the city.
As argued by the above studies, urban management may be strongly affected by ethno-national divisions. In turn, urban policies in ethno-nationally divided cities may affect not only the material, but also the psychological forms of intergroup relations and their relative stability or volatility. In my thesis, I will consider how urban planning may be manipulated by groups and political leaders and link these processes with theories of urban fragmentation. Studies of divided cities show that the general citywide interest is relegated and subordinated to the aims of specific political interests by urban governance. In this approach, as in the theory of urban fragmentation, the city as a unit is called into question. Based on the literature on urban divisions, I characterised the notion of divided city and specified the position my research takes in these issues. I discussed the main processes leading to urban divisions and characterised their
differences and similarities with other urban dynamics, such as marginalisation. Although the above notions and theoretical frameworks aim at and enable a general discussion of what a divided, segregated, polarised or fragmented city is, such labelling should not blind us from studying each city separately as a unique case. The general framework may be useful to analyse a single case, but a case-study may also be useful to revise or amend the framework. This dual position will be my strategy in the case of Skopje.
2
The controlled city
There is one key dimension which I believe to be missing in the above analysis of divisions in urban space, with the exception of neo-Marxist theories, which I will examine in the following section. The above mentioned researchers studied urban divisions by examining social processes occurring in space. Such perspectives approach space as an instrument in the hands of competing elites. Space is considered to be a platform on which power or policy is exerted, or a material which is shaped. In these traditional views of urban divisions, space is a ‘territory’ ruled by wider political phenomena: fragmented, partitioned or disputed, it is a mere support of social relations. Only rarely has space been considered as an entity or actor in itself, endowed with power.
Space is not only a passive platform: it is also a producer of power. Cities are not the already-made projections of a society which would, as a homogeneous entity, be ‘propelled’ and directly ‘translated’ onto an abstract space. Cities are as much the products of their society as they are a place where power may be created and shaped. For these reasons, urban space and society should be analysed in a dialectical relation. Understanding urban divisions implies a more general focus on the relation between space and power.
Is it conceivable that the exercise of hegemony might leave space untouched? Could space be nothing more than the passive locus of social relations, the milieu in which their combination takes on body, or the aggregate of the procedures employed in their removal? The answer must be no. (Lefebvre, 1974:11)
As urban inhabitants, we are so used to the built environment that surrounds us and to its taken-for-granted language that we easily forget that space is not neutral. The play of meaning and the construction of place in the built forms of urban space are neither
arbitrary nor innocent (Dovey, 1999). In urban space, representations intervene, and knowledge and ideology are shaped and used (that is to say, power is exercised and encoded). With the term of ‘occupation’ of space, Le Corbusier (1948) referred to the process in which an agent loses his control of space. He saw this loss as a deprivation of an essential mode of existence. To him, denying an individual his/her power of spatial agency meant robbing away his/her spatial aspect of free will (Le Corbusier, 1948; cf. Findley, 2005). The nexus between the built environment and power may even appear tautological, since place creation is always determined by those in control of resources. Place-making is inherently an elite practice (Dovey, 1999). I will first here focus on the normative and hegemonic power of space, before focusing more precisely on architecture and then on the issue of public space.