Removing the walls between us
Lessons for the public realm from Belfast, Northern Ireland
Since launching 8 years ago, Reimagining the Civic Commons has always centered the importance of cross-city learning. While much of this learning has focused on U.S. cities, there is much that Americans can learn from other countries: it helps us all as practitioners to get out of our comfort zone, reinforces the universality of public space as places of connection, and teaches us how others leverage public space for societal benefit.
This past year, I served as an advisor on a global research project on social infrastructure — the network of physical and social structures that build relationships and foster thriving communities — hosted by Gehl and supported by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
My participation included a study trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland focused primarily on this question: How do long-divided communities engage in place-based reconciliation processes and create shared gathering spaces? Through a series of 8 site visits over the course of 2.5 days, our multidisciplinary team observed and experienced a variety of projects and programs (some of which were supported by the EU’s PEACE IV Programme) reconnecting Northern Irish communities physically and culturally separated for decades.
The history and context of Belfast is very different from American cities, yet a number of insights on the role of the public realm in setting norms and encouraging connection across divides are particularly relevant to the U.S.:
1) Design for the behavior you want to see
Your everyday environment influences both your perception and your behavior, in ways big and small. For instance, research has shown that people are more apt to litter in locations that already show signs of litter. Observing metal bars on windows, fences along sidewalks and rarely seeing passersby can cause people to feel unsafe, even if neighborhood crime stats indicate otherwise.
If we want a less divided society, we must consider how to design the public realm to “cue” our perceptions of a place, and encourage connection.
While downtown Belfast’s public realm felt quite welcoming, in northern Belfast neighborhoods “Peace Walls” (erected starting in the 1960s) act as physical barriers that intentionally separate predominantly Irish republican neighborhoods from predominantly British loyalist ones, with the aim of discouraging physical violence between the two groups. The walls (some of which are up to 26’ tall) divide physically, but their impact on perceptions and cultural norms of the neighborhoods are even more stark.
Since the construction of the peace walls, many of the neighborhoods have been reconfigured, in effect reorienting communities away from one another. Along with the walls, we observed a general fortification of property throughout northern Belfast neighborhoods, with fencing of public and private property the norm rather than the exception. We rarely saw people out and about on neighborhood sidewalks or out in public open spaces.
While the peace walls intervention was seen as effective at the time, in the decades since one has to ask: Might the walls’ existence actually encourage the exact behavior they were originally erected to stop? Is the public realm now partially responsible for reinforcing hatred and violence against “the other?” Has an over-reliance on defensive architecture created a negative feedback loop, heightening division and distrust, while suppressing public life?
The impact of the peace walls on people and neighborhoods is similar to many American communities’ barriers to connection in the public realm. Highways, busy streets lacking crosswalks, deteriorating sidewalks, an unwelcoming entrance to a recreation center — all of these unintentionally reinforce racial and economic segregation, strengthen outgroup bias, and negatively impact perceptions of safety.
Simply removing the barrier to connection is not enough. Instead, neighborhoods must be actively reknit to one another.
One U.S. federal program seeking to do just that is the Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program. This is the first-ever federal program dedicated to dismantling physical and social barriers caused by transportation facilities like highways or rail lines, and seeks to reconnect communities, improve access to daily needs and foster equitable development and restoration. This competitive program (currently open for applications) offers planning grants and capital grants to respond to community-driven efforts at different stages, and even offers technical assistance for cities eager to embark on these types of efforts, but which are not yet ready to apply. It’s an enormous opportunity, if we focus not only on physical connection, but on reknitting the social fabric of communities. Read more about how three communities are reconnecting neighborhoods through this grant program here.
Discouraging people from disconnecting from public life often requires rethinking your approach to safety. A renovation of Gaston Park community center in Memphis, Tenn. prompted Memphis Parks’ staff to shift from a “security-first” mentality to one emphasizing human connection. The upgrade of the building prioritized light and openness, to encourage a sense of safety and welcome. Windows that had been boarded up for 50 years to reduce vandalism were restored, letting light pour in. At the entrance, staff that previously sat within a plexiglass-protected area are now seated at an open and airy check-in desk where community members are greeted as they come in.
“Light both literally and figuratively, makes people feel safe, it makes people feel invited, feel welcome and I think we hit it out of the park with this.” —Nick Walker, director of Memphis Parks.
2) Opportunities for 1:1 interaction
During the visit to Belfast, we found that one-on-one and small group interactions can be even more fruitful for humanizing “the other” than large events. What might start as a single tie across different groups can catalyze greater connection across people in different communities.
The Black Mountain Shared Space Project was one such catalyst. Sitting at the seam of two distinct neighborhoods — one Irish republican and the other British loyalist — this newly-opened community center was under construction during our visit. During the construction process, staff were actively building cross-community relationships while the capital project was underway.
For example, the project leader was intentional in hiring from both of the adjacent neighborhoods. This led to a primary project leader and a construction foreman with differing religious and political affiliations, yet who worked side-by-side, everyday. The comfortable banter between the two showed us how a productive working relationship could develop over time while working together on a community asset meant to deliver exactly this type of bridging social capital.
Ideas for programming for the community center were developed by a small working group of participants sourced from the two nearby adjacent neighborhoods. At the first few monthly meetings, residents from the different neighborhoods would sit on opposite sides of the room, but today, that is no longer the case. One of the working group’s projects was hosting a genealogy program, which served to demonstrate how much the two groups actually have in common. Another project was creating a men’s club and a women’s club, to encourage connection through the shared identity of gender. Many surprising cross-cutting friendships emerged. The bonds created among a small group of diverse people served as a catalyst for connections to be created as the center opened its doors to the larger community.
When seeking to connect people across divides, numbers aren’t everything. Creating opportunities for smaller scale interactions can include research-informed activities like moving in sync with others, singing together and communal eating. Programs and engagement practices that elevate a common shared identity among a small group work to humanize “the other,” creating new bridging social capital — the foundation for wider connection across diversity.
3) Universal desires at the seams
In places that have faced decades of segregation, it is important to focus on common desires. While honoring diversity, there are many universal human wants that public spaces are particularly well-suited to deliver — joy, beauty, awe, nature, water and food. Intentionally incorporating these elements can elevate one or more of these universal experiences. Whenever possible, practitioners should aim to locate these public spaces at the seams of neighborhoods, to make the seams easily recognizable as shared space.
Belfast’s Fourth Meadow Community Greenway was one of the best examples of this approach that we saw. A project still in process, the 7.5 mile pathway will connect existing and new open spaces in north and west Belfast, stitching together once-divided communities across the city. Springfield Dam Park is a key part of the greenway’s first phase. Once home to a factory that closed in the 1960s, the park’s named dam was fenced off for decades, and thus became a site of anti-social activity. Located in between neighborhoods that have been separated for many years, the reimagining of the dam park’s natural beauty is an invitation for people to spend time in public. It has become an everyday hangout, and we observed people walking across the new bridge, biking, picnicking and watching the swans, ducks and cormorants float by on the park’s water feature under the shade of mature trees.
4) Traditional public planning processes maintain the status quo
In many public planning processes, the loudest voices usually win — and more often than not, those voices are in support of simply maintaining the status quo. In Northern Ireland, the vast majority of residents recently surveyed indicated they want the peace walls down, but just “not quite yet.” There is an inherent tension between the recognition of the real harm being done to communities by the walls, and the fear-based response to change.
In these situations, it’s often best for governments to be bold, to lead with a shared vision, and to find ways beyond public meetings to work with residents at co-creating a new future for the public realm.
As described in our Transform Your Practice: A community engagement card deck, when the goal of community engagement is to collect resident input, the result is often a transactional process and a missed opportunity to more deeply understand or address people’s needs. To co-create a solution with the community, we have found that shifting to an action-oriented approach is more effective at changing minds and hearts.
Working toward a set of quick wins can compel residents to feel differently about change. Akron Civic Commons has been using this technique for nearly a decade now, to good effect. By leading with pilots, a collaborative, iterative approach to the public realm has built trust with residents and led to a high impact effort to rebuild the connective tissue of the city.
A vicious cycle requires catalytic investment and innovation
While the histories of disconnection in Belfast and the U.S. are different, the two share an urgent need to reknit communities. From the U.S. Surgeon General to U.S. Senator Chris Murphy and Utah Governor Spencer Cox, leaders across the country are recognizing the epidemic of loneliness is a major national challenge with local roots.
In both places, a vicious cycle is at work. A lack of robust social infrastructure reinforces segregation and social isolation, which then encourages hunkering down, fear of “the other” and political extremism. What follows is a general distrust of government and a lack of willingness to invest together, leading to continued disinvestment in social infrastructure.
Yet in Belfast, I learned a hopeful truth: the cycle of disinvestment and disconnection can be broken with purposeful attention and catalytic investment in a public realm designed to connect people to each other. In many countries, in many ways, people are driven apart — we as practitioners have the opportunity to reconnect them, through the creation of joyous shared places that are welcome to all.
Community leaders, residents and elected officials must focus on catalytic and intentional investment in the public realm, combined with a willingness to try new practices for bringing people together. To do both well, we must elevate and truly understand the importance of the public realm to connect us to each other and overcome decades of people being driven apart.
Explore the report, Social Infrastructure: Connecting People & Places for Thriving Communities.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
