Authenticity and stakeholder planning in the segregated city

This paper is concerned with the production and reproduction of segregation in Northern Ireland and how territoriality has impacted on the Protestant community in Derry/Londonderry. The city was pivotal in the development of the most recent conflict, has a majority Catholic population, sits on a contested border and has attempted to respond to expressions of alienation that have emerged from the Protestant community. The research used multiple methods to understand the nature of alienation and exclusion using secondary data, a quantitative household survey, in-depth interviews and focus
groups. This empirical commitment was important in identifying and unpacking the claims of various stakeholders with an interest in the use and development of the area. It is argued here that a version of Collaborative Planning provides a loosely articulated conceptual and methodological framework for drawing Protestant communities into the wider planning framework for the city. The data, however, suggest that the nature of stakeholders is complex and contradictory, and discursive practice that seeks consensus has limits, especially in validating or legitimating the assertions of self-acclaimed stakeholders. The research shows that the Protestant community had declined and residualised but had little experience of direct conflict with the majority community. Moreover, the Protestant community is now more likely to use the city centre (a predominantly Catholic space) for consumption and work, and its demographic decline has stopped. These findings are important as policy responses and community relations programmes have failed to distinguish between measurable socioeconomic needs and claims concerning ethnic alienation based on emotion and manipulation. Such alienation has tended to bolster single identity communities who have little or no prospect and/or knowledge of the collaborative efforts required to deliver meaningful regeneration. More realistic strategies based on agonism focus attention on power relations and the authenticity of positions adopted by competing interests in land use management and change. The paper concludes by highlighting the need to acknowledge and value contestation but to challenge sectarian discourses represented as legitimate claims about community needs and priorities.

The death blow to unlimited liability in Victorian Britain: The City of Glasgow failure

In 1878, one of Britain's largest banks, the City of Glasgow Bank, collapsed, leaving a huge deficit between its assets and liabilities. As this bank, similar to many other contemporary British banks, had unlimited liability, its failure was accompanied by the bankruptcy of the vast majority of its stockholders. It is generally believed that the collapse of this depository institution revealed the extent to which ownership in large joint-stock banks had been diffused to investors of very modest means. It is also believed that the failure resulted in bank shareholders dumping their shares unto the market. Our evidence, garnered from ownership records, trading data, and stock prices, offers no support for these widely held beliefs. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Informalilty in the Social and Culture Life in the City Centre of Nairobi

We live in a world of advanced technology, stiff global competition and rapid transformation of all facets of life and as a result architecture has not been spared. These transformations affect the social relations, cultural consumption and political economy that have influenced the manner in which people perform in and out of space in the city centres. The residents have adopted strategies for negotiating through the spaces sanitized by authorities and other agents. The public spaces provide the background materials for informal urban practices that are sometimes deemed illegal yet are necessary for animating the city spaces. Cities market themselves ecstatically beyond the baroque with a more visible presence of the contending parties through trademarks, public relations invasively advertised in streets, monuments (signature buildings or projects), and language. This paper comes out of a research carried out in Nairobi in February and March 2007. It examined how the notions of globalisation are reflected in the life in the city centre; the impacts on the quality of life of users of the city centre and how informal urbanism has developed as copying strategy to deal with the transformations due to liberalization and globalization.