Routledge City and Soul in Divided Societies: Epic Cultures and Urban Faultlines (Planning, History and Environment Series)

In this unique book Scott A. Bollens combines personal narrative with academic analysis in telling the story of inflammatory nationalistic and ethnic conflict in nine cities – Jerusalem, Beirut, Belfast, Johannesburg, Nicosia, Sarajevo, Mostar, Bilbao, and Barcelona. Reporting on seventeen years of research and over 240 interviews with political leaders, planners, architects, community representatives, and academics, he blends personal reflections, reportage from a wealth of original interviews, and the presentation of hard data in a multidimensional and interdisciplinary exploration of these urban environments of damage, trauma, healing, and repair. City and Soul in Divided Societies reveals what it is like living and working in these cities, going inside the head of the researcher. This approach extends the reader’s understanding of these places and connects more intimately with the lived urban experience. Bollens observes that a city disabled by nationalistic strife looks like a callous landscape of securitized space, divisions and wounds, frozen in time and in place. Yet, the soul in these cities perseveres. Written for general readers and academic specialists alike, City and Soul in Divided Societies integrates facts, opinions, photographs, and observations in original ways in order to illuminate the substantial challenges of living in, and governing, polarized and unsettled cities. Review "City and Soul in Divided Societies offers a telling perspective about how people divided by race, religion, ethnicity, class, and history manage to coexist and in some circumstances even to thrive. Bollens achieves this through a deft combination of carefully crafted and thoughtful analysis, insight, and guidance, interspersed liberally with the words of residents and champions of these cities and presented with images, figures, and set-aside boxes of imaginative prose." – Journal of the American Planning Association "One of the strengths of this book is its ability to capture nuanced contextual factors within brief capsules, mixing discussion of local views, major events, governmental structures, and urban policies. This provides the reader with a swift but flavored overview of the past of each city under investigation... Other strengths of the book are its reader-friendly format and the personal voice of the author.  For those who haven’thad the opportunity to read Bollens’s earlier work, City and Soul in Divided Societies will give a thought-provoking snapshot of the main storyline he has developed, which concerns features that distinguish polarized cities." - Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review "Overall, City and Soul is a welcome corrective to some of the more preva-lent accounts devoid of normative or reflexive reasoning, as the personal insights sharply convey a real sense of struggle (at a more emotional level) that is so often encountered while doing research in conflict areas… The engaging style of the author makes the book a very pleasant read, and will surely capture a wide audience of both specialists and non-specialists alike."― Giulia Carabelli, Queens University Belfast About the Author Scott A. Bollens is Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California, Irvine, where he holds the Warmington Chair in Peace and International Coooperation. He is author of Cities, Nationalism, and Democratization (2007), On Narrow Ground (2000), and Urban Peace-Building in Divided Societies (1999).