Research grant to project on vulnerable cities
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic, senior researcher at UI is one of the members of a research project on vulnerable cities that has been awarded a grant by FORMAS. The project "Vulnerable Cities: conflict prevention within urban planning, urban development and urban governance" will run for five years and is headed by Annika Björkdahl at Lund University. The other two project members are Ivan Gusic (Lund University), and Kristine Höglund (Uppsala University).
Urban phenomenon
The project's point of departure is that armed conflict is becoming an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon. In the city, streets are the frontiers; squares the sites of violence; neighbors the enemies; and terrorist attacks are affecting people's everyday life. Urban conflicts such as those in Sarajevo, Jerusalem, Grozny, the largely urban war in Iraq, as well as the Syrian army's street warfare in Aleppo loom large in debates about urbanization of warfare. These developments pose severe challenges to conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Yet, despite the significance of urban space for armed conflict there is still a lack of research on how war as well as peace is manifested in the city.
The aim is to deepen understanding
This project seeks to deepen our understanding of urban violence and its links to armed conflict. It will analyze various conflict preventive strategies used in vulnerable cities and assess whether they can prevent the outbreak of armed conflict. The research findings will be used to develop 'a toolbox' of conflict prevention strategies and measures. The project will focus on four vulnerable cities: Nairobi (Kenya), Belfast (Northern Ireland), Jerusalem (Israel/Palestine) and Mitrovica (Kosovo).
The project will develop in three parts
Based on research in these four cities, the project will develop in three parts. The first part will map and categorize urban violence, its forms (political, economic, institutional, social), causes, intensity and duration, and identify the link between different forms of urban violence and armed conflict. Building on this detailed knowledge of urban violence the second part of the project assesses how various strategies employed in the cities may generate, sustain, or prevent violence and armed conflict. The project will use urban planning strategies that create access to or exclusion from housing, employment, public spaces, and service deliveries. It will also analyze urban regeneration strategies concerned with economic urban growth, entailing for example 'slum upgrading'. Finally urban governance will be in focus for our analysis, that is, the governing of the city through political, security and service institutions. In many vulnerable cities, services are inadequate and unequally provided corruption widespread, and the security situation poor. Sound urban governance can restore legitimacy and prevent dissatisfaction derailing into armed conflict.The third part of the project will translate our findings into a conflict prevention 'toolbox'.
The project will suggest concrete strategies and measures to reduce violence, insecurity and vulnerability that will be of direct use to policymakers and practitioners involved in urban planning, regeneration and governance.
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic latest publication: Mannergren Selimovic, J. (2016) 'Frictional Commemoration. Local agency and cosmopolitan politics at memorial sites in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda' in Peacebuilding and Friction.