Changing direction: Defensive planning in a post-conflict city

This paper considers a number of recently declassified documents from the 1970s and 1980s to show that the security agencies in Northern Ireland played a key role in shaping the redevelopment of the city of Belfast, which extends some way beyond that which had hitherto been considered to be the case. With the aim of creating a cordon sanitaire around the main areas of conflict, the planning system was successfully harnessed to achieve the key military objective of spatially isolating major areas of the north and west of the city. In this respect, the planning system very successfully achieved the objectives that were set for it by the security agencies. However, the legacy of this approach is that there are now large sections of the city isolated from the economic and social mainstream of post-conflict Belfast. This paper argues that what is now required is a reconfiguration of the planning system within the city, embracing the notion of reflexive regulatory aspects of equality law, which can ensure that the planning system within the city is steered in a different direction from one based on exclusion and segregation, to one that embraces cohesion and integration. Only when this is achieved it is argued, can the objectives of the 1998 peace agreement be realised.