Designing segregation: architecture and the spatial politics of desegregation in Belfast

Abstract

This thesis critically investigates the persistent spatial segregation of ethno-national communities in post-conflict Belfast, situating it within broader comparative contexts of US desegregation initiatives. The configuration of this thesis eschews conventional chapter formatting in place of four research papers, bookended by an opening prologue and closing epilogue, which fulfil a tetraptych of thematic inquiries, forming distinct investigations analytically interwoven into a coherent discourse.

Drawing on Foucault’s governmentality framework, the research develops a novel analytical lens, Technologies of Desegregation, to examine how state-led housing policies, architectural practices, biopolitics, and peacebuilding discourses operate as entangled technologies of spatial governance. Through detailed case-history analyses, employing spatial and qualitative fieldwork, the research reveals how desegregation efforts in both Belfast and the US have functioned less as authentic processes of integration and more as regulatory, performative acts that reproduce and manage division.

In Belfast, this manifests through the institutional entrenchment of peacewalls, euphemistic shared space initiatives, housing allocation mechanisms, and levers of local power that obscure the underlying persistence of segregation under the pretense of reconciliation. The research highlights the ambivalent role of architecture as both an instrument of governmental rationality and a potential site of civic resistance, revealing how everyday spatial practices contest dominant power relations.

The thesis reflects on Belfast’s contested urban morphology informed by histories of trauma, and memory, yet subject to ongoing processes of spatial negotiation. It confronts dominant narratives of peacebuilding as progressive programs, arguing instead for a reimagined approach to spatial equality that is rooted in democratic principles and tethered to community agency and architectural counter-practice.

Date of Award	May 2026
Original language	English
Supervisor	David Coyles (Supervisor) & Gavan Rafferty (Supervisor)