The Role of Urban Planning and Architecture in Sustainable Peacebuilding: Lessons from Belfast to Syria

Abstract

The peacebuilding process plays a critical role for urban planning in paving the way for sustainable peace or upcoming conflicts, where it is not innocent and not impartial. The paper aims to draw out lessons learned from Belfast to Syria, focusing on the urban intervention role in sustaining the peace process. The article reviews Belfast’s literature review, using the timeline to scan the recovery process and extract a few lessons learnt. This is followed by reviewing the current interventions for the recovery of Syria based on chosen articles in the Venice charter on reconstruction that define specific indicators of the role of architects and urban planners. Authors debate the way and the aspects of urban intervention in dealing with conflicts. The paper shows the critical role of urban interventions in sustaining peace process implementation and concludes with essential areas to ensure the integration of the urban intervention part of the peace process.