Peace-walls, Flags, and Dark Passages

Abstract

The cites of Belfast and Londonderry in Northern Ireland are fractured with a network of walls, fences, and barricades, that divide traditionally Loyalist- Unionist-Protestants from Republican- Nationalist-Catholics communities. They were mostly constructed between the late 1960s and early 1990s, during a period of conflict known as ‘The Troubles.’ Since 1995, the walls have been rebranded with the official euphemism ‘peace walls,’ and the groups they divide renamed as ‘interface communities.’ They are due to be removed by 2023, as part of commitments drawn out in the Good Friday Agreement; the 1998 accord that largely brought an end to the conflict. However, due to Northern Ireland’s devolved government, and a lack of funding towards the advocacy groups needed to bring these opposing communities together, among other opaque issues, this goal is increasingly unattainable. Woven throughout this network of fortification infrastructures is a nascent tourist typology and muralscape that is complex and murky, bound up in underexplored emergent identity politics. This article leans on spatial post-conflict theory, and first- hand accounts of encounters with this architectural typology, to explore the nebulous context in Northern Ireland.