Return to Titanic and lost in the maze

The search for representation of 'post-conflict' Belfast

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5822005
AutoresWilliam J V Neill (Queen's University Belfast, autor correspondente)
Ano2006
Volume10
Fascículo2
Páginas109-120
Data de publicação2006-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSpace and Polity (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1356-2576 • E-ISSN: 1470-1235
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13562570600921477
OpenAlexW2007403176
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas34
Referências citadas8

Urban planning and development have long been at the forefront of official efforts in Belfast to project an image of the possibility and incipient reality of a more normal city and society. This article revisits the continuing difficulties associated with government supported attempts to reimage and represent through development what has now been called the 'post-conflict' city. The argument is made that competing symbolic cultural endowments of space, which construct 'Belfast' in spatial imagination, still leave scant non-controversial representational resources for official place promotion. The use of the legacy of the Belfast built Titanic to fill this vacuum by branding 'post-conflict' space is explored and the conclusion reached that this is too heavy a cargo for a ship already doomed-once. Meanwhile, on what is arguably the major representational battlefield of cultures in Northern Ireland-the Maze Prison on Belfast's doorstep-the true face of the post-conflict city is on public view. This gorilla as yet awaits an extreme make-over

Argument (complex analysis · Face (sociological concept · Government (linguistics · Northern ireland · Political science · Politics · Promotion (chess · Public space · Representation · Representation (politics · Social science · Sociology · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Engineering · Irish and British Studies · Urban Planning and Governance · Law