Managing urban conflict through urban design; insights from the Northern Ireland for Italy

Several contemporary European and Italian cities are plagued by issues derived by social conflict, due to the presence of different groups divided by their income, culture, religion or race. These issues need to be tackled through an integrated approach, thus pushing planners to use cross-cutting and multifaceted tools. The main thesis is that, by incorporating social and cultural features in the current urban design methods, it is possible to cope with the challenges of those neighbourhoods, where the effectiveness of traditional tools is undermined by particular issues (i.e.: urban violence, crime, religious conflict...). In operational terms, this goal is pursued by recasting the Kevin Lynch approach (The image of the city, 1960) in a wider perspective, thus creating a new taxonomy of the urban elements showing the (hidden or not) conflict (i.e.: edge, border, barrier, door, visual control point, access node, shared space) and implementing it to read, interpret and manage the urban form. The methodology is first built and tested in some areas located in Belfast, then retested in Naples, in order to verify its transferability from the UK to the Italian context. The paper aims to produce useful tools for coping with contested spaces in European cities. It pushes the existing body of knowledge forward, by introducing an innovative methodology in the urban design practice, suitable to be implemented in contested neighbourhoods. It may be further developed through research programs aimed at involving local stakeholders in pilot action plans, to demonstrate the possible effectiveness of the proposed approach.