HALT [ Stay where you are ]
…THERE IS NO LAND OF PROMISE!
Michael Hadjistyllis
H A LT ! [STAY WHERE YOU ARE]
THERE IS NO LAND OF PROMISE
European Master in Urbanism [EMU]_ Final Thesis Booklet. Mentors: Paola Viganรณ [I-U-A-V] Stephen Read [TUDelft]
Cover page: 1974 Landing of Turkish troops. Source: Press and Information Office, Republic of Cyprus. 2
TU Delft, Rotterdam, June 2009. 3
THE POST-CONFLICT CITY
THE CASE STUDY OF
NICOSIA-CYPRUS
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Content 1. Introduction (All about Cyprus) 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
Geographic position and Terrain De facto population Historical and Social Context Economic Context
2. The Nicosia Urban Area (Major Nicosia) 2.2 Nicosia Master Plan (The first bi-communal planning effort)
3. The main urban challenges 4.Latest Developments on the Cyprus political problem 4.1 Post Conflict Capitalism and World Bank Urbanism
5. The paradoxes for Aristotle (An Introduction to the post-conflict societies). 6. Provocation 6.1 Changing provocatively the story around a city. 6.2 Demographic and territorial changes. 6.3 From the Shakespearian Drama to an institutional Farce.
7. Changes on population and territory 7.1 Changes in the perception of democracy and the decision process between the two communities 7.2 Trojan “trends” and “threats” 7.3 The paradox of the border line that, divides but at the same time provides space for contact.
8. Towards a Manifesto for the post-conflict city. 8.1 The centre as the prisoner of its history, and the periphery as the place of transition 8.2 Memorandum for the constitution of the new state. 8.3 Declaration of a new sovereignty within the green line 8.4 Urbanisation and demilitarization, as the process of civilization. Previous page:Panoramic view of the capital, Nicosia where can be distinguished the old city, which lies within the Venetian walls. Source: Press and Information Office, Republic of Cyprus. 6
9. Epilogue 10.References 7
1. Introduction Being an island, Cyprus exhibits unique characteristics pertaining to urban and rural development. The whole of Cyprus can be viewed as a single settlement or better as a series of large and small interrelated urban and rural settlements, which are separated by vast open spaces in the interior (agricultural land, forests or other government lands etc.) and by undeveloped areas along the Mediterranean coast. That is what makes Cyprus unique and gives the place its special status as an island state/ economy.
1.1 Geographic position and Terrain As a small country Cyprus, covers 9,251km2 (240 km from east to west and 100 km from north to south), of which 1,733 are forested. It is strategically situated in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea (33° east of Greenwich and 35° north of the Equator). Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia. The island is an independent sovereign republic with a presidential system of government and is divided into six administrative districts. These are Nicosia (where the island’s capital and seat of government is located), Limassol, Famagusta, Larnaka, Pafos and Keryneia. [About Cyprus, 2001] 8
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1.2 De facto population The population of the area of the republic, which is controlled by the Cyprus government was 689,565 [Census of Population, 2001]. 474,450 or 69% of the total population live in urban settlements and 215,115 or 31% of the total population live in rural settlements.
1.3 Historical and Social Context Due to its strategic location in the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus had suffered throughout its history from invaders, conquerors and colonial powers, such as the Romans (30 BC-330AD), the Byzantines (330-1191AD), Richard the Lionheart and the Knights Templar (1191-1192AD), the Lusignans (Frankish dynasty: 1192-1489AD), the Venetians (1489-1571AD), the Ottomans (1571-1878AD) and finally the British (1878 and remained on the island as colonial masters until 1960). They have all left their mark on the face of the island and especially on the form and the structure of the urban and rural settlements. Cyprus gained its independence from British rule in 1960. According to the Zurich-London Treaty, Cyprus became independent republic on 16 August 1960. [About Cyprus, 2001] On 15 July 1974, the ruling military junta of Greece staged a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Government of Cyprus. On 20 July 1974, Turkey, using the coup as an excuse, invaded Cyprus, allegedly to restore constitutional order. The Turkish invasion left the island and its capital divided 10
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into two. The centre of its capital city, Nicosia, was suddenly divided and transformed to a dead-end. With nearly 35% of the island’s territory occupied, some 150,000 Greek Cypriots (about 1/3 of the population of the island at the time) had to abandon their homes and properties and flee, as refugees (internally displaced persons), to the south (government-controlled part of the island).
1.4 Economic Context The invasion had a disastrous impact on the economy of the island since 30% of the economically active population became unemployed and because of the loss of: - 70% of the gross output - 65% of the tourist accommodation capacity and 87% of hotel beds under construction - 83% of the general cargo handling at Famagusta port - 40% of school buildings - 48% of agricultural exports - 46% of industrial production etc. [About Cyprus, 2001] Following the severe economic and social disturbance created by the Turkish invasion of 1974, and the continuing occupation of the northern part of the island by Turkey, Cyprus exhibited an impressive economic performance. The success of Cyprus in the economic sector is credited to the adoption of a market oriented economic system, the pursuance of sound macroeconomic policies by the government, as well as, the existence of a dynamic and flexible private enterprise sector and a highly educated/skilled labour force. [About Cyprus, 2001] The economy of Cyprus is primarily dependant on services. The services sector is the fastest growing area and it accounts for about 75% of GDP and 70% of the gainfully employed population. The sector includes tourism, transport and communications, trade, banking, insurance, accounting, real estate, catering, public administration and business and legal services. In addition, the island is a major base for offshore companies, and this is due to the highly educated labour force, the state of the art telecommunications infrastructure, the well-developed intercity highway/road network, the frequent air and sea connections with mainland Europe, a series of government tax breaks/incentives, and finally, but not least, the wonderful Mediterranean climate. 12
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Although Cyprus is an island, its major urban settlement is located in the interior and in particular close to the geographical centre of the island on the western boundary of the Mesaoria Plain. The urban settlement is the city of Nicosia - the capital– and its environs (the Nicosia Urban Area).
2. The Nicosia Urban Area (Major Nicosia) The Nicosia Urban Area lies just to the north of the geographical centre of the island at an elevation of 160 metres above sea level and is being traversed by the seasonal stream of Pediaios. In 2001, the population of the Nicosia Urban Area was 230,000, by far the biggest on the island. 198,200 live in the government-controlled southern quarter while the rest live in the Turkish-occupied northern quarter.
2.1 Division Since the creation of the “Green Line” in 1963 (following inter-communal conflicts) and the buffer zone in 1974 (following the Turkish invasion and the continuing military occupation of the northern part of the island), the Nicosia Urban Area has been divided into two distinct ethnic geographical zones. These zones are the government-controlled southern quarter and the Turkish-occupied northern quarter. These two quarters are separated by a thin strip of land that runs through the centre of Nicosia (core of the city). In the urban fringe the strip is vacant (land) while in the built-up area the strip contains 14
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Green line, photo: Marcos Gittis 16
buildings of historical significance and outstanding architectural value. The buildings remain uninhabited since 1974, and are in bad structural condition. Important and vital parts of the Urban Area became inaccessible and thus fell into decay and the urban fabric lost its cohesion. The United Nations-administered buffer zone is a no man’s land that crosses the island from the western to the eastern coast (it is part of the area controlled by the Government of Cyprus and lies to the south of the positions of the Turkish invading forces). The length of the buffer zone is 187 km and its width up to 5 km. The “Green Line”, which is a component of the buffer zone, bisects the core of the old city of Nicosia (Walled section) and in some parts its width is not greater than that of an alley. The “Green Line” originates as a term in the coloured line drawn on a map by the British General Young on 30 December 1963. The existence of the “Green Line” has undermined the centrality of the old city and turned it into a “border” town or an “edge zone” of marginal importance. The psychological factor, which is associated with “border” areas, forced the relocation of major and important uses and public/civic services in other parts of the city and the Urban Area. Even though the “Green Line” is an invisible barrier - not a built one - it displays similar characteristics with those of the former Berlin Wall as it forcibly separates the two (ethnic) communities of Cyprus and prohibits human interaction. The presence of the “Green Line” and the buffer zone and the lack of interaction between the government-controlled southern quarter and the Turkish occupied northern quarter influenced the spatial structure of the Nicosia Urban Area. These factors caused the transformation of the structure of the Urban Area and the disintegration of its entity. Mainly, between 1973 and 1976, the population of the government- controlled southern quarter increased by 40%. This was due to the influx of refugees from the northern part of the island and the government policy to house a great number of the refugees in purpose-built organized settlements (large housing estates) in the suburbs and in particular on the southern fringes of the Nicosia Urban Area. The government tactic - although correct under the circumstances and social pressures of the post war years – was one of the primary reasons for the continuing expansion of the built-up areas 17
to the south, in order to include the housing estates for refugees in the urban fabric. In addition, housing estates for refugees were built in areas adjacent to the buffer zone, aiming at their revitalization. Following the Turkish invasion of 1974, the Urban Area expanded further in a southerly direction as a consequence of the influx of thousands of refugees from Turkishoccupied northern territory. Thus, many settlements to the south of the capital grew in population. Some of them were upgraded to municipalities and together with the rest communities of environs formed the second ring of suburbs (outer suburbs). The areas (outer suburbs) expanded along the major arterial roads leading into and out of Nicosia, followed for a period of time the ‘’ribbon development’’ concept compared with the compact structure of the firstring suburbs.
Lefkosha (Turkish Cypriot sector)
Lefkosia (Greek Cypriot sector)
The Greek Cypriot suburbs to the north of the walled section of the capital were occupied by the Turkish invading forces and their inhabitants became refugees. Another important factor that influenced the structure of the Nicosia Urban Area was the gradual merger of the municipality of Nicosia with the surrounding settlements (suburbs), therefore forming a ‘coherent’ (metaphorically not literally) multi-nodal urban space (conurbation). Nicosia started being expanded rapidly after the end of the II World War and its population reached 100,000 people in the early 1960s. Its suburbs were expanded rapidly during that period (1946-1965) and were merged with Nicosia. The growth pattern of the Nicosia Urban Area (the government-controlled southern quarter and the Turkish-occupied northern quarter) is shown in the map. Historically, Nicosia has been the main focal point for Cyprus and the seat of national government. Above all, Nicosia is the major centre for employment, culture, higher education and specialized services.
2.2 Nicosia Master Plan (The first bi-communal planning effort) The so-called Nicosia Master Plan is a joint bi-communal planning effort, drafted under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme - UNDP). There is no other common planning document, tool or vision for the Nicosia Urban Area (the government controlled southern quarter and the Turkish occupied northern quarter). The first phase of the Master Plan (1981-1984) contained proposals capable of addressing the planning problems of Nicosia as a whole. The second phase (1984-1986) focused on a more detailed operational plan for the city centre, including the walled section and the adjacent Central Business District (CBD). The major task of this phase was to give priority for the development of the central area and at the same time to restrain urban sprawl. Its present third phase, which started in 1986, concentrates on the walled section of Nicosia [Christodoulos Demetriou, Nicosia urban area (Department of Town Planning and Housing, Nicosia, Cyprus)].
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The growth pattern of the Nicosia Urban Area (the government-controlled southern quarter and the Turkish-occupied northern quarter) Trends are calculated in regards to the evolution of the settlement during the last 30 years. 20
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3. The main urban challenges *The political division (de facto) of the
recent decades has culminated the physical division of the city and resulted to the separate development of each side.
*The centre (previously central and vibrant) was transformed into an “urban frontier�, suffering from depopulation and decline in business activity. *The buffer zone, running along the east-west axis of the Walled City, dividing the city in two, is completely inaccessible and suffers from an accelerating deterioration process. *The buffer zone and the areas adjacent to it are subject to physical decay and socio-economic decline, with a devastating impact on the historic urban fabric and the architectural heritage that the centre contains. *Due to the division and the existence of the buffer zone, investment and economic activity were driven away from the centre to the urban fringe and its architectural heritage was abandoned, being decayed rapidly. *Traffic congestion, created due to blocked axis, shortage of parking places, obsolete public transport system and lack of alternative sustainable mobility modes were some of the problems in the area. *Insufficient green open spaces and luck of community, cultural or recreation facilities to care for the needs of the population, complemented the profile of the centre in the decade after the division (1976-1985). *Administrative and institutional fragmentation, due to difficult political and social conditions, led to uncontrolled rapid urban growth of the city during the following decades. Even after 1990, when a new Town Planning Law was put in force, scattered centrifugal development was not avoided, leading to extensive urban sprawl. The actions that have to be taken in Nicosia are always engaged to the political scene. A scenario for its future can not go further, if it will not be guaranteed within a political context under which urban interventions suit certain political interests. Scriptures from the secretary general’s report of the UN operations in Cyprus, 22 on the Security Council,[Period December 1995- June 1996]. Source: www.unficyp.org
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Official meeting within the buffer zone, photo: Marcos Gittis
4. Latest Developments on the Cyprus political problem - The ‘Annan V plan’ In May 2004, Nicosia became the capital of one of the newly acceded countries of the European Union. In the accession, however, was proceed only the southern part (de Jure Sovereignty in the island). The Island’s North part remained outside, despite the fact that Turkish Cypriots had voted in favour of the UN-Proposed plan for a comprehensive settlement. The Greek side, however, had rejected the plan. The ‘dead Zone’ became the easternmost border of the EU, a problematic boundary that has not allowed the EU to precisely delimit itself in the East. The UN proposed plan, well known as The Annan Plan had undergone five revisions in order to reach its final version. The 5th revision of the Annan Plan [Latest Developments on the Cyprus Problem] proposed the creation of the United Cyprus Republic, covering the island of Cyprus in its entirety except for the British Sovereign Base Areas. This new country was to be a loose confederation of two component states — the Greek Cypriot State and the Turkish Cypriot State — joined together by a minimal federal government apparatus. The plan included a federal constitution, constitutions for each constituent state, a string of constitutional and federal laws, and a proposal for a United Cyprus Republic flag and a national anthem. It also provided for a Reconciliation Commission to bring the two communities closer together and resolve outstanding disputes from the past. It would also have established a limited right to return between the territories of the two communities, and it would have allowed both Greece and Turkey to maintain a permanent military presence on the island, albeit with large, phased reductions in troop numbers.
4.1 Post Conflict Capitalism and World Bank Urbanism Once peace agreements are signed, every post-conflict country and city must tackle the same crucial challenges of reconstruction and combine their efforts with the development of community’s usual suspects, namely UN or¬ganizations, governments of donor countries, development banks and NGO’s. Millions of dollars are allocated through grants and loans to post-conflict countries during 34
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The Annan V scenario
prestigious international conferences organized by the UN or the World Bank. Complete armies of highly recognized international experts and development workers spring into action. Hundreds of donor organization placards and logos are placed in front of brand new or freshly reconstructed buildings. The world Bank City is a mutation in the world city, a new form of urbanism that is developing in the context of post-conflict reconstruction. Like other word cities, the World Bank city is enmeshment with globalizing forces and dynamics. Globalization provides economic opportunities, primarily to those who are already able to take advantage of them. [Caroline Arnulf, To leave and let live] With no intention to criticise both communities by either accepting or rejecting the Plan, I will attempt to reflect on the contemporary issue around the post-conflict city, and the World Bank Urbanism. World-Bank Urbanism: a newemerged phenomenon that conscripts neo liberalism, and Post-conflict capitalism, for the reconstruction of the destroyed territories and societies. The latter is becoming more and more an Institutional farce following the tragedy of a recent war, by evoke “ideologies” for fostering economies, and stricken societies. A new confusion, being added in the worldwide western ideological crisis, where liberal democracy equalized into a post-capitalism, neoliberal economy, is gradually becoming the best conceivable socio-political system for fostering freedom.
Previous page: The ‘Annan V plan’ as it was given into publicity (March 2004) [territorial adjustment - attachment 2a] Source: Press and Information Office, Republic of Cyprus. 36
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5. The paradoxes of Aristotle. An introduction to the post-conflict societies. Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good... [Aristotle A 1.1] The polis conceived in the idealized sense, as the site for public political encounter and democratic negotiation, the spacing of (often radical) dissent and disagreement and the place where political subjectiveness literally takes place. Polis (the City) has been considered from Aristotle as ‘the highest of all forms of association’. As the highest of all forms of association, [Aristotle A 1.1] polis contains the society. In Aristotle’s ‘Politics’, we find a succinct and pointed constellation of terms in which polis is defined as ‘koinonia politon politeias’. Moreover, what suggests the essence of such an association is in fact a shared visionary power concerning the future of citizens and their shared territory. However the experience of the post-conflict city or that of a divided city -even if it cannot be characterised as a contemporary phenomenon- it could never been within Aristotle’s imaginary sphere of the City-State. What suggests Polis, according to Aristotle, is the constitution of a society from citizens that are capable of a political right concerning the state. In that period the notion of city coincides to the notion of state. In post-conflict cities (especially those that are capitals), city can be understood as a territorial consti38
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Nicosia as depicted in a 16th century map source: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 40
tution in respect to two societies of citizens within different states. And here is the paradoxical of a territorially and virtually unique settlement that contains two different citizenships and societies that they don’t share the same dreams for the future. Bollens [1999] provides a useful and relevant discussion of divided and contested cities. His wide discussion, concerning such urban sides suggests that a relevant context for the examination of Nicosia would be that of other sites such as Beirut, Sarajevo, Jerusalem, Belfast, Montreal (or even Brussels as a more positive example). While all cities and capitals contain different kinds of division and boundaries (such as those of race, class, gender, ethnicity etc.), the issue is precisely what kind of boundary is relevant for each case. Nicosia’s particular predicament places it within the context of ethnonational conflict where groups posit competing claims for state sovereignty or secession that may implicate a divided city or capital. [Yiannis Papadakis, Nicosia after 1960] What strengthens out the tension between the two formed communities within the city is the fact that Nicosia is the capital city of the state. Capitals are generally regarded as the space exemplifying nationalistic ideologies. In Nicosia, in particular, these processes acquire added urgency due to the ethnic conflict that took place in Cyprus, which led to almost obsessive efforts to inscribe the national self on the landscape and erase the other. As a result of this, we are asked for once to think of the characterisation of the city, as this was given by Aristotle (society of the citizens of state). The ‘Green line’ in between is a UN supervised cease-fire line, dividing the city into two parts that are both capitals of a different state. Lefkosia -its Greek appellation- lies on the south of the division line and is the capital of the Republic of Cyprus, a fully independent state and de Jure (though not de facto) capital of Cyprus as a whole. However, its north part constitutes the capital of the self-declared “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” which is internationally unrecognised (except of Turkey) being an independent state in its own right. The city, that seems to be virtually unified by scrolling from above, is inhabited by two separated communities, which are formed by two different societies of citizens, 41
A city is built the same as history, always by the winners, and always according to the winner’s history. Those who control the physical space always control the cultural space, and they are never the ones who lost the battle over history.
that are capable of the ‘right’ to take political decisions within a different state. The notion of living in a divided capital is for both communities pronounced in a very different way. Greek-Cypriots experienced living in Nicosia, as living in a “divided Lefkosia”. TurkishCypriots apprehended this as another capital of another state, which lies beyond the divide. However what does it constitute nowadays as political within a Nicosia-City cannot being manifested beyond these described spatial properties.
[Sharon Rotbard] 42
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6.1 Changing provocatively the story around a city The following narration indicates the relationship between territory, population and their control. It illustrates, in several ways, deferent alternatives of that scheme. Our narration dates back to the 16th century and takes place in the south east corner of the Mediterranean. The island of Cyprus, situated in the ‘levante’, served as an outpost of Christendom, was at that moment threatened by Ottoman Turks. The Republic of Venice, under its administrative authority the island was, gave too much importance in the defence of the island by repairing or constructing defensive fortification elements (Castles, walls, Towers, Battlements (Merlons and Crenels), Parapet Walks (Chemin de ronde), Gates with Machicolations, Tunnels etc. Julio Suborbiano, a military engineer, has been chosen to be in charge of the design and the realization of the new fortifications of Nicosia. His name was related with the construction of Palmanova, a revolutionary new settlement, which was constructed on regards to the latest military innovations of 16th century. Julio has been for days desperate and unable to conceive a way to encircle the city. The city was spreading and crawling in a long distance, on a level plain territory around the Byzantine period wall that was still standing unable to defend anymore the city in an imminent war. When Julio realized that were no many alternatives, he placed a compass on the town’s plan (map) and having as a centre, the square around Hagia Sophia Cathedral, he inscribed a circle within the Byzantine wall. Everything that was encircled within Julio’s circle would constitute the city of Nicosia for the forthcoming centuries. On the contrary, all the constructions that had remained outside the circle were demolished. The edifices’ building material was re-used for the construction of a massive circular stone wall, of five Kilometers in circumference with 11 projecting bastions around its perimeter. Applicating the latest military innovations of the 16th century, Julio encircled the town within an eleven-pointed star fortress. In between the points of the star were protruded ramparts, so that the points could defend each other. A moat was also constructed, surrounded the wall. Three large, guarded gates allowed entry to the city. The Pediaios river was initially flowing thought the medieval city of Nicosia until 1567. Since then it was diverted 44
outside and inside the newly constructed moat for protective reasons. “Othello, the moor of Venice”, was also called by the Duke of Venice to defend the island, assuming his mission as a General. [Othello, by Shakespeare, II.i.35-6,30] When Othello embarked to the island, Suborbiano’s wall was probably BYZANTINE PERIOD 330 – 1191 AD already constructed (According to the testimony of the sources the construction of the fortification works has been completed within few years). Othello responded with ‘prompt alacrity’ to the Duke’s instruction to proceed immediately to the island, assuring him about his duty to assume ...the ‘serious and great business’s military governor of the island [Othello, by Shakespeare, I.3.230, 258-71]
What does the city define within the VENETIAN PERIOD 1489 – 1571 wall, are its nominated history, traditions, civilization and citizens. Is what exactly Othello unsuccessfully is called to defend. The climax (korifosis) of the unearthly of this drama is characterized by an inescapable, as happens in every tragedy, FALL. The fall of the unfallen (invulnerable) since then Othello and the un-conquest since that moment walled Nicosia. The conquest of the city by the Ottoman Turks resulted many territorial and demographOTTOMAN (TURKISH) PERIOD ic changes. A new cultural sovereignty 1571 – 1878 was established within the walled city, and a number of significant erasure palimpsests stigmatized the future and the history for the city. Everything that does not harmonise to the new tradition and the cultural behaviour of those who won the battle over the city, is going to be erased, transformed or replaced. By this way a new cultural sovereignty is being installed. BRITISH PERIOD 1878 – 1960
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6.2 Demographic and territorial changes A line crosses walled Nicosia in medieval maps-another line in contemporary ones. They more or less coincide, crossing the city in an east-west axis. On medieval maps this was a river, a natural divide which much later turn into a human –made divide. Even thought the river later became a bridge, later then once again thought human effort, it turned into chasm, a dangerous “noman’s land”: dead zone. [Yiannis
Hermes Street -an area of bloodshed- is turning into a Dead Zone fulfilling the association of Hermes, not now as the god of traders but as psychopompos, the one who directed the souls of the dead to Hades. 46
Papadakis,
Nicosia
After
1960]
New demographic changes characterise the social morphology (structure) within the wall city. The river that was initially flowing through the medieval city of Nicosia until 1567, was diverted outside and inside the newly constructed moat upon Saborbianos’ plans, for protective reasons. In 1570, when Ottomans took over Nicosia, the old Pediaios river bed through the walled city, which was still left open, being used as a dumping ground for refuse, where rainwater would rush through, clearing it temporarily. During the following years the major administrative 47
Nicosia, the Divided City, photo: Marcos Gittis 48
centre lay north of the river bed, while the Byzantine one lay south. In 1882, during the British rule, the old riverbed has been covered for hygienic reasons, and a road emerged in its place in the Hermes Street. This road that bridges the old river in its entirety, became the major commercial sign-axis of the city, a trading zone which would draw on together the multiethnic inhabitants of Nicosia for commercial exchanges. Thus, it brought people together, bridging simultaneously side-by-side humans’ ethnic particularities. [Hermes is the ancient Greek protector deity of trade]. This area that was converted into a periphery, being located between two centres in north and south within the walled city, it finally became an important trade axis of the city. In due time, this side would fulfil the meanings of its many different names with their various associations and diverging functions. It came to fulfil functions, such as a bridge and a chasm, between the major communities of Nicosia. [Yiannis Papadakis, Nicosia After 1960] After 60s inter-communal conflicts were brashly intervened over border, in this site of everlasting bloodshed. It even became the modern city’s main carrier of dirt. In all this river bridge became a particularly revealing site for the multiple and contested realities of Nicosia’s modern post independence era. The physical division of Nicosia took place in 1956 when the island was under the British colonial rule [Drousiotis 1998]. During this period, the British exploited interethnic differences which led to interethnic violence and turned to the erection of a barbed wire division in various parts of the city, known as the “Mason-Dixon Line”. Later, in 1958 renewed and more protracted interethnic violence flared up, on the score of the issue of whether separate municipalities would be established in a future Cyprus. This led once more to a capital’s division. From this time onward, Turkish Cypriots established de facto separate municipal councils. This municipalities’ issue remained a major source of fiction between the two communities after the 1960’s agreement of independence. In December 1963 major interethnic violence erupted once more in Nicosia, being spread all over Cyprus and leading to the establishment of a UN Peace Keeping Force and the creation of a UN supervised “green line”, dividing the 49
two communities all over the island into two. The line remained as a fearful division throughout the period of interethnic violence until 1967. Later, it became a permeable boundary as the relations between the two communities were improved. Finally, in 1974 this division was once more formidably established, taking the form of a heavily armed cease-fire line. Turkey by forming a military attack invades the island led to the division of the island and to a population exchange, by making each side ethnically homogeneously(Ethno catharsis).
North part –Turkish Cypriots
North part – Turkish Cypriot
South part – Greek Cypriot
Walled Centre, Space Syntax Analysis Visibility study: highlight the most visible block frontiers, and the most integrated urban networks. The north part of the city, in contrast to the south is transformed in order to be less integrated to the entirety of the fabric system; [Depth map analysis] 50
South part
–Greek Cypriots Source: Google earth
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Divided City Normalization of Urban areas- Node count/Mean depth [R=n] (Depth map analysis)
The diagram highlight the networks with the higher integration (topological centrality) that have the dynamic to attract central activities. The analysis points out the two centralities in north and south respectively, and the low integration to the city network of the historical centre. 52
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United City Normalization of Urban areas- Node count/Mean depth [R=n] (Depth map analysis) The space syntax analysis illustrates the high integrated areas within a unified city, the calculation is not proceeded separately into the two parts but into one network city. The unexpected result, where the centre is still being disintegrated is due to the transformation of the street network that the ottomans proceed after the invasion of the city in 16th century. The corrosion of the urban network as this is pointed into the quarter, in order to provide a more disintegrated -to the rest of the city- living environment (something related to their Muslim culture) is the main reason that the historical centre does not have the dynamic to become for once again the topological centre. 54
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Nicosia, walled city Source: Google earth_2007 56
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Everything in history
happens twice... Karl Marx
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6.3 From the Shakespearian Drama, to an institutional Farce. In the post-dependence period the two ethnic groups presented different aspirations regarding the future, the Turkish Cypriots pursuing a more separatist policy, while the Greek Cypriots followed a more integrationist one. After 1974 the Turkish Cypriot official aim was that of division, either in the form of a separate independent state or in the form of a confederation. Greek Cypriots were instead insisting on a federal solution within a single state. These factors have led to significant divergences between the two sides’ constructions in past, ones which were subsequently inscribed in the landscape of the divided capital itself: its symbols and physical structures (such as monuments and museums) along with related erasures. Turkish Cypriots, who aimed officially for separation, created a historical narrative, emphasising on events of conflict and animosity between the two sides, one focusing on Greek Cypriots’ aggression against them, in particular during the 1960s, but often projected deeper into past. This is also a view from the past, emphasizing on the boundaries and separation among the two. In this way, future separation is legitimated through the argument that ‘’the past proves that the two ethic groups cannot live together’’. On the contrary, Greek Cypriots, desiring reunification, tend to emphasise on past events of cooperation, creating a historical narrative whereby the two ethnic groups are said to have “peacefully coexisted”. This legitimates their aim of reunification, suggesting that “the past proves that both communities can live together” [Yiannis Papadakis, Nicosia After 1960].
...the
first
as a tragedy 60
The paradox in this case is that, despite the aspirations of both communities, when both sides called to take a position on the Anan V plan, the reality proved that Turkish Cypriots, who follow during the last years a more separatist policy, accepted the idea of unification. On the contrary, the Greek site rejected it. It is preferable to avoid explaining the reasons why Greek Cypriots rejected the plan in contrast to the Turkish-Cypriots, who accepted it. From the 16th century scenario of the threaten city by an immanent ottoman occupation, to the 20th century second 61
Turkish occupation, there is always the repletion of a very similar scenario. Some days before the accession of the Republic of Cyprus in the EU family, the people of Cyprus, where asked in a referendum, to either accept or reject a new revised plan of UN political scenario for the future of the island. What more or less coincide in this occasion, are the penetration and the mediation of the third parties, for the ascendancy of the peace in the island. In the 16th c., the story took place according to Shakespeare’s scenario, who authorizes the Black-Moorish Othello (African as Neutral in the debate between East and West, Asia and Europe) to mediate as the “defender of Cyprus” over its people and the interests of the Republic of Venice over the island. Four centuries later, coming out with a UN scenario (Annan V), an institutional mediation leaded from the one “who keeps the international law” (referring to Kofi Annan) to achieve the ascendancy of peace in Cyprus, among the two ethnic communities that live in the same island. These ethnic groups are eternal enemies, however, would be allies within the same federation: NATO. At this point, a quotation from Marx is substantial: In history everything happens twice. The first as tragedy and the second as a farce! This view of the repetition of the history, either as a “tragedy” or as a “farce”, can be intellectually conceived as analogous with the Othello’s story. From Othello to Kofie Annan, from the Republic of Venice to NATO and from the old Pediaios river bed through the 16th c. city to the 20th c. dangerous “No Man’s Land”, the repetition of the same play is tangible: either as a Shakespearian tragedy or as an institutional Farce! The aim of this thesis is to deal with Annan’s plan and the main philosophy around institutional processes that are constructing a new state, a new capital city and engineer societies.
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and the second as a farce! 63
In May 2004, Nicosia became the capital of one of the newly acceded countries of the European Union. In the accession, however, was proceeded only the southern part. Thus, only Lefkosia (Greek name of Nicosia) became part of the EU. The island’s north part Lefkosha (Turkish name) remained outside, despite the fact that Turkish Cypriots had voted in favour of the UN-Proposed plan for a comprehensive settlement. The Greek side, however, had rejected the plan. The ‘dead Zone’ became the easternmost border of the EU, a problematic boundary that has not allowed the EU to delimit precisely itself in the East. 64
7.1 Changes in the perception of democracy and the decision process between the two communities In contrast to the 1960’s constitution of the Republic of Cyprus where a presidential representative democratic political based on the conception of the democracy as: the system that entitles the majority to exercise power, within the state of privileged minorities. That in the case of the 1960’s constitution had the right to block by veto any political decisions of the majority. By this sense in the case of Cyprus the main political debate concerns firstly the bi-communal dissent and secondly the any political positions regards to the right wing and left. In the latest Anan’s plan, the constitution of the reunified state as a bicameral, bi-zonal federation with territories allocated to the Greek and Turkish communities within a united island had as main precondition, the political equality of the two communities. A new perception, concerning the way that democracy can be considered, escapes from is post-modern constrains, that define political groups with different political aspirations into majorities and minorities. However, the agreement was never reached on its greater details, since it has been rejected from the vast majority of Greek Cypriots. The new state, that was to be a confederation of two component states -the Greek Cypriot State and the Turkish Cypriot State- joined together by a minimal federal government apparatus, was to my believes threatened from a territorialized control over the two societies. Even if a political equality is proclaimed, and there is a withdrawal of any political limitations (Turkish Cypriot embargo), the fact that both societies are still being divided and territorially controlled constitute a threat for the new state. The territorialization on the control of a society derives originally from the Hebraic pastorship and gestates a lot of dangers for the futures of both societies that are still strongly depended on their background attached to Christianity or Islam. This thesis does not intent to create a manifesto on the post-conflict city, though as a provocation, suggests an alternative way of handling the post-conflict divided city, escaping from the dead ends that high politics led the Cy65
66
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prus problem. The provocation proclaims a change, offering an alternative to the institutional way of engineering the societies, their urban space and its political sphere. The main debate on my project was to decide whether am going to choose between a spatial strategy or on the construction of a scenario for the future. A scenario always needs to be relayed on trends. In the context of the island, however, changes are fast and unstable. The concept to apply a unique strategic planning for the city seems impossible, due to the fact that both sides-communities of Nicosia reflect on a different vision, that in the best of the cases the one ignores the vision of the other. Both communities have a different way of dreaming and viewing their future, adopting totally different political strategies. These strategies in the most of the cases block many opportunities for development. My understanding, concerning the demographic and political changes in the island, pointed out a non-linearity in the sense that we can narrate the history and imagine the future. Turkish Cypriot workers are returning buck from their works,
photo: Marcos Gittis
7.2 Trojan “Trends” and “Threats” When the ‘green line’ opened, allowing the population to come together after more than 30 years, nobody expected the series of goings-on that totally changed the political aspirations of the two sides. Let me characterize these silent undergoing processes as Trojan horses (slight changes constitute factors that finally bring silently violent and radical changes within the city). The difficulty to form a real reliable trend usually brings to the urban space and life, unexpected and non linear consequences. The Trojan horse, known from the Homeric era, has an urban context. It refers to the process of a silent invasion of a walled city. The discontinuity and non-linearity of the history can be understood as a silent, unexpected, though a radical and violent change.
7.3 The paradox of the border line that, divides but at the same time provides space for contact. In May 2004, Nicosia became the capital of one of the newly acceded countries of the European Union. In the accession, however, was proceeded only the southern part. Thus, only 70
71 2003 check/dead points opens,
photo: Marcos Gittis
Lefkosia (Greek name of Nicosia) became part of the EU. The island’s north part Lefkosha (Turkish name) remained outside, despite the fact that Turkish Cypriots had voted in favour of the UN-Proposed plan for a comprehensive settlement. The ‘dead Zone’ became the easternmost border of the EU, a problematic boundary that has not allowed the EU to delimit precisely itself in the East. A year earlier, in April 2003, the Turkish-Cypriot leadership opened for first time the checkpoints on the ‘dead Zone’, under pressure from massive demonstrations led by the Turkish Cypriot left and other liberal forces. Despite the initial discouragement from the authorities of both sides, people chose to cross both ways in large numbers. [Yiannis Papadakis, Nicosia After 1960] (The line was lifted on, firstly in “Ledra Palace” dead-end, secondly in a suburb in the west called Ayios Dometios and finally in the centre of the city within the walled city on the dead point of “Ledra street”). The curiosity for the unreachable, the places of memories and of mystery, the curiosity to approximate the land of promise (in the case of the Greek-Cypriots), initiate the need for crossing the lines. People, however, since today do not seem to share the same city and the same equipments. When the checkpoint in Ledras Street opened, in 2008, what was added in the whole process was just a pedestrianized passage from the one side to the other, revitalised the very domestic market that was existing on that street before 1963. In fact, people started rabidly exchanging things. People thought never shared the same city and the same space of the city (the publicity of the public spaces). Thus, it is gradually emerged a new problematic, on account of the fact that communities exchange things, regarding their gratification of their basic needs and leisure activities. Work and labor cities within the same territory are being rapidly developed. The paradoxical existence and preservation of the ‘dead zone’ in the city attracts more and more the interest of the tourists. In addition, the passing from the one side to the other just for some hours is been motivated by curiosity or by the fact that somebody can find in the other side something that does not exist in his/her side. That creates a kind of conviction 72
Opening of the Ledra Street crossing point in old Nicosia 3 April 2008 Source: www.unficyp.org 73
that a “liberated condition” within the city promises what for years have been Utopias. By this, I am referring to the post-capitalist Utopias, where Greek-Cypriots can find hedonistic moments in a Cabaret or a Casino of the north side (since there are no casinos in the south) or the Turkish-Cypriots can finally have an accession to a shopping mall or even a simple supermarket, where a large variety of first need products can be found, products that do not exist in the north. In addition, a great number of people from the north part of the city can find a job in the south, whereas many employers from the south part can easily employ labour workers from the north, by offering them a low salary. In this sense, the space of the city is turned into a huge de-politicized place where very few things are bridging the gap between the two parts. Even though what both communities are sharing is marginally little, in respect to what they are exchanging. In fact, exchanges among both sides are prospectively positively comforted. The space of the historical centre has not the dynamic to attract people from both sides anymore, since it holds a very rigid nationalistic-oriented role. The nationalistic context around the public space, that in both sides has been created, makes the space unavailable for the one community to reach the other. Two scenarios are probably defined in the horizon of the city and its own compatible development. The first one includes the scenario of a divided Nicosia and the second of a united one. What I prefer from those scenarios, is a third entirely different one. Is the one that escapes from what the previous two proclaimed. Is the one which is not probable, in the sense that nobody can ever imagine to be happened, though as a “Trojan” scenario can be a possible one. My scenario non-linearly begins from the dead end that the previous scenarios assign. The projected ideas suggest new understandings around the way that we are contributing into the formation of urbanity, in respect to the societies.
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8.1 The centre as the prisoner of its history, and the periphery as the place of transition Looking the city not as a place where we share things, but by using more contemporary understandings around the urban space such us, the place of where mostly things are been exchanged, I attempt to repose the problematic of the centre into the periphery as a new dynamic space, never precise but always in a perpetual change. Ontologically periphery can be understood as the place where the city as a becoming is fostering, and the place where there the connotations that history is neutralized. The importance thought on that critical shift from the centre to the periphery derives from a new understanding of the periphery. An understanding that does not equalise “periphery” into “perimetry”, and recognise into the “periphery” a very modern way of life that emerges and a new (sub)urban culture that insists for recognition. Peripheries are the more flexible and easily adaptable part of a city and, in the case of Nicosia, can be considered as the new places, around to which political and public spheres are redefined. The place for exchange and for modern lifestyle, relayed not to the accession on history but on the availability of a faster accession in the facilities networks. It can be characterized as the ordinary “place”, using De Certeau [1984] and Auge [1995] “place” can be opposed to what they specify as “proper space”: the one that is constructed from above by officials and town planners with rationalistic and political considerations. That’s according to Papadakis [2001] naming of streets, erasing museums and monuments, essentially limited the centre into a “proper space”. Augé opposing to “place” the “non place” is juxtapose to the place of identity and history, the latter “non place” which in fact lack of such qualities is although much more adaptable into the global changes, and the supper-modernity, and particularly in the pronounced modes of mobility which demands. As people are on the move they come to “inhabit” more and more sides of transition. [Yiannis Papadakis, Nicosia After 1960] The question of periphery is not a question initiating from the debate between the centrification of a city and its perimeter. Though periphery, escaping from the capital-city constitutional “propriety”, it can simply be considered as the place of an ordinary life. What characterises the 75
Like land and waters, walls and fences, the semantic sphere is another frontier in the process or re-bordering. We had special interest in drawing alternative lines within buffer zones and to develop other palettes in the grey areas. The research of the liminal spaces of today’s geopolitics is also a fascinating study of a new terminology that emerges in the fog of war; it is said, that it is politics by other means. Likewise, rhetoric, naming conventions, and other modes of lingual discourse are the new battlefields of unfinished histories. [William Safire] 76
super-modernity of the contemporary city, away from the traditional historical centres of the past (historical in the sense that were constructed by the winners, in regards to their history and their culture), is the accessibility (regarding the global future) opposed to the stability of the past’s history. Since cease-fire lines are withdrawal into some checkpoints, the recorded interaction is closely related to the periphery than to the centre. (The first checkpoint that opened was not in the centre. The checkpoint in the centre opened last after a marathon of political argumentation). Activities away from restrictions of the cultural heritage and the propositions by history, of how we are socialized and how we can form a society that can just being defined from something more or something else. Not the conflicting history and the divided centre. The turn into the periphery, to the existing area outside the Venetian wall that virtually or visually unifies the city. Both sides promote the existence of the walls and the exchange among them, expressing for the first time in their history the same Eurocentric intention for their future. This Eurocentric ambition concerns to the aspiration of Turkish-Cypriot citizens to participate on the world-wide hegemony of liberal democracy. This thesis is always threatened by my fear to be banal or either naïve and, this due to the ideological confusion that somebody can find, characterising this project. What I believe is that we should do some important changes in our way to understand things. While I proclaimed the social, I proposed a totally liberal condition, which on the contrary is setting up a Darwinian rule, in the way that political territories are preceding something that actually works once again against societies. We should try to change our understanding about liberalism, being away from the way that equalizes it with the post-capitalism. Undoubtedly, Neo-liberalism derives from the end of duel between capitalism and communism with the “unabashed victory” of the former over the later (Joachim Declerck). It forms a new political reality that, in a no alternative ideological constellation deprive the large majority of people of any meaningful “cognitive mapping”. Liberalism, as it is commented by Žižek (2006), is the first socioeco77
Proclamation of a third sovereignty. Dead zone is expanding into a life container, reserving all the current military and no mans land.
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nomic order which de-totalizes meanings and can accommodate itself to all civilizations. As is giving no alternatives in other ways, is the only given option for bridging cultural chasms between people and societies. From Christianity to Islam, liberalism promises to everybody the same right on a welfare condition. In that sense, Liberalism can be seen as a socio-political need that releases societies and territories from being constrained of their past and are still defined by ethnical or cultural configuration. The intervention initiates in regards to the geo-political condition, while it provides a liberated territory to both communities. Proper liberalism should be understood as a socio-political alternative, and not as a socio-economic that transforms the urban areas into free market zones. It should be conceived as an alternative that releases the formation of a society, from the engineering by the institutional organisations and Ngo’s that are nowadays gaining a much greater role in policy-making negotiation regarding the civic society, by managing of what until recently was provided or organized by the national or local state. [Swyngedouw 2008] Priority in the formation of the new territory should be given to the social. A unified society is defined not anymore from its own constructed history and culture, but a new modern need of coexistence within the same territory. The formation of the new society should be not just based on what they are exchanged, but particu79
larly gradually rich the necessities of sharing the same territory, vision and will.
8.2 Memorandum for theconstitution of the new state. The proposed intervention on the provocative political scenario, concerns this redefinition on a semantic perception of what is a dead zone. Can a naming convention, a rhetoric way for turning over a reality by the use of a different lingual mode, positively turn the so called buffer zone, from a “dead zone”, into something that else, capable to curry out a substance of life? In the previous mention, a research question is formed, for my coming ideas of my project. The scenario has no alternative that the one of using the dynamic of liberalism, to release the societies from the territorialized control, that either their governments or west forces them. Though, I intend to discuss about proper-liberalism and properdemocracy in a way that escapes from the equalization with post-capitalism. This suggests me the safest way to avoid the fall into any ideological confusion.
Main elements reinforcing and catalysing the urbanisation process are considered into the scenario as: the ‘de Jure’ land-lord regime, the links between both sides and the dynamic of the new airport as the gate into the rest of the world. 80
8.3 Declaration of a new sovereignty within the green line
+ Within the city will be, according to the proclamation of my scenario, a third sovereignty that is committed to keep neutrality between the two sides. 81
+The
proclamation of independent sovereignty within the city, will be also extended within the buffer zone and the surrounding non inhabited areas or abandoned municipalities, from the airport area until the walled core of the city. This area had a very important political significance since it contains some very significant key functions for the post-war city of Nicosia. The ‘green line’, as a border can be understood as a content wall. Within this area, an invisible UN city has been developed during the years after 1974. Within that side are located the Nicosia airport, the “Ledra palace” hotel, which has been the major point for cross-ethnic contacts, and the three until today opened checkpoints.
8.4 Urbanisation and demilitarization, as the process of civilization.
+The
new state (in depended sovereignty) coincides with the green line. It acquires a thickness, and is becoming an in between zone, occupying every space that was reserved for military reasons. By this way, the intervention is characterized by a minimized social cost.
+The
commitment of the new state is to devolve the hold over territory (the territory of buffer zone and the territories that both military sides hold over) to their former nominated land lords. Though, a free rule is simultaneously setting up that liberalises the land properties. Land marketing is open to public, allowed it a voluntarily participation in the whole process. Nobody is forced to participate in the new constituted status. In this way a very important rule is given, society is entitled on a volunteer participation that initiates the process of formation of the new city-state. “Volunteer participation” in a society, suggests as a process, an opposition to the institutional top down engineered formation of the collective life. In the scenario, an exploration of the possible territorial changes is proceeded, whether we provide the minimum of infrastructure and facilities networks. This exploration, pointing out the initiation of new patterns of urbanity, contributed by the former (before 1974 mixed) land-lord constitution (regime). 82
+Political compromise between the two communities, regards to an agreement on the shared territory, with the decline of any military development, on a new European citizenship, with not any furthermore ethnic definition and the withdrawal of the embargo for the area that the new state sovereigns. Citizens from both communities (since the territory owned by both citizens) will inhabit the territory. The new area attracts the interest of both sides, by providing with privileges its inhabitants. (withdrawal of the economical isolation). +The minimum provided infrastructure activates the dynamic of land properties, initiating on that way an emerging process of new settlements. This emerging urbanities are reserving the space, from any other institutional or “proper” large in scale development. The process is not necessarily turning against the entrepreneurship, and the market economy, within a city, though is working in a very precise way in order that prioritizes the formation of the society. Everything that contributes to the process of formalizing urbanities into a “proper space” is marginalised, while involves the danger of a constructed from above, by officials concerning rationalistic or nationalistic political considerations. +The dynamics of the new urbanities are relayed on this, refusing the formation of a “proper space” in the institutional and formal sense of the term, as it is used by De Certeau (1984). A term that suggests in an overview through history, of what in urbanities can be accepted and be nominated, in opposition to what simply can be characterised as a place. (In that point I remind you once again the Othellos’ narration of the Venetian wall, as the outline of the city around it distinct the ‘place’ from the walled ‘proper space’). The dynamic of a super modernity is been used -even if this can still being reduced and negatively connotative on the characterization of a ‘non place’- in the pronounced modes of mobility which demands. As people are in the mood of moving, they come to ‘inhabit’ more and more sides of transition. The area around airport and that around the main highway connections between north and south can be 83
considered as the main attractors. A new national grid is proposed to connect up the island- and the new urbanity is finally called to carry up national or preferably international scale equipments, related to the commerce, medication, education, administration etc. The new territory-space is appeared holding the intermediation role between the two, and the new attracted uses are more and more specialized and adapted on that role. The space was already been reserved by a prioritized much finer in scale urbanity (which have been initially prioritized) restricting and reserving with its fine grained scale the space for a finer and a more human form of life. Complementary infrastructures and network facilities are coming. Finally, the installation of any shared equipments and facilities within the city should be an internal issue for debate for the new formed society. This constitutes another political decision traversing any ethnic constitutions, directing a more into “sharing” urbanity that just in to “exchanging”. The formation of a finer grain life that can be also found into a “place”, is just constructed away and in opposition to the nomad and consumerist marginalized way which dislocates from civil the notion of civilization. Nothing for which someone should feel proud of but just shame of, is turning a dead end into a gate, and a part turned to a periphery of the city, into a reclaimed new centre. Not a historical one, not a cultural one, but an exchange centre that mediates among both sides. An interethnic-cooperation will be demanded with no alternatives for the better supply of goods to both communities, through the mediation state. The commitment of the new state into a liberal land regime, and economy, withdraws from any political and economic limitations that their past engendered. The share territory does not just allow the development of a bi-communal entrepreneurship among the two sides, but let me remind you the existence of life in between that zone, that has initially prioritised. In this way the hostile border is demilitarized and is been turning into a hospitable territory where new urbanities (settlements) will constitute the space, where the new citizens will be settled. Sharing facilities and equipments are some things that in a society are coming afterwards and are always defined according to their needs and their priorities. Adding impetus to these contacts by providing space for interethnic-developments, communication and new debates for the future of a new territory, and a new formed society, in the way that can be taken into account the any ethnic group aspirations and fears, while also giving due to the multiplicity of experience 84
and voices within each side. If the presence of the ‘dead zone’ created a formidable chasm between the official interpretations, the exchange and sharing space can provide, throughout this opportunity for mutual interchange, the right on a proper dialogue and questioning. The paradox of the border is that, it provides sites for contact while it divides at the same time. This paradox provided us with the opportunity and strength of such a scenario: The turnover of the function of a border from division, to a point for contact exchanges.
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Declaration of a new sovereignty within the green line Reservation by the new sovereignty of the territory and the settlements in vicinity to the former, green line 86
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Stage 1_ provision of main facility Networks
Stage 3_emerging of new settlements, reservation of space
Stage 2_interraction of the land property system into the provided networks
Stage 4_provission of complementary networks, share equipments and main facilities 91
The 3rd sovereignty:Reservation of space, by local settlements
92
93
Territorial adjustment of the buffer zone into the new proclaimed sovereignty 94
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_Topology 96
97
_Installation of a new national grid 98
99
_Immediate urbanized land 100
101
_Configuration of the new urban scales and build-up sizes 102
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_Intensification of the new urban programs _Configuration of the new activities in regards to the scale exhortation/ prohibition 104
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_Urban prohibition as constructive process for the formation of the new emerging Urbanities 106
107
_Green prohibition as the process of preservation of the ‘wild vegetation’ and the possible agricultural areas 108
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Main networks
Intensified urban areas relayed on the main networks Normalization of Urban areas- Node count/Mean depth [R=n] (Depth map analysis)
Calculation of capacities
Intensification of urban program relayed to the scale grain and plot capacities 111
112
Integration [HH]-global networks-external- (well integrated areas to the network)
Complimentary prohibition to the ones of scale and size prohibition that I already mention as “pathetic prohibitions” are the two Green and Red prohibitions. Both are a more active-”energetic” ways of prohibiting the development into the preserved wild-landscape and are forming in a way building regulations more that prohibitions. “Green prohibition” concerns to the preservation of the wild vegetation and landscape.
T1024 Total Depth R10.00 metric -local networks-internal connections(development of local settlements)
The “Red prohibition” concerns the limitation throughout the use of building rated. The building rates are gradually decreased on the outskirt of each settlement, in a way that disables the attraction for building developments on the outskirts of the settlements. By this way building rates contributes to the preservation of the consolidation of the settlement. 113
The 3rd sovereignty: emerged network system
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The 3rd sovereignty: emerging ‘urbanities’
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Before
after the Intervention
3rd sovereignty within the City Highlight of Intensified Urban Areas Normalization of Urban areas - Node count/Mean depth [R=n] (Depth map analysis)
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_New developments within the ‘green–line’ Study on sizes and scales. 120
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_Developments along the main highway-link from North to South. Study on sizes and scales. 122
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9.Epilogue
remain for us to do, is instead of changing the city, is better to change the story around a city. [Sharon Rotband, White city, Black city]
Economy is, in some way, formed to invade into walled spaces. It works in the same silent though violently, as the Trojan. The new working opportunities in the north part, the opportunity of employing low-income workers from the south part, the free access in services of public beneficence, such as the General Hospital and other important facilities and equipments, the huge Shopping Malls, the Ikea Store in the south, the Casinos and Cabarets of the military oriented north part, constitute the Trojans that invade through the walls and initiate new networks of consumption within the city. New post-capitalistic Utopias are just treating citizens as nomads from the one site of the city to the other. The marginalization and decline of the politics and the significant disconnection of the civilization from its direct spatial setting are what exactly characterise periphery. The experience of the peripheral modernity suggests an essential shift away from space as a significant element of society. A supposedly total disconnection between our physical context and the experience of contemporary culture- symbolised in the contemporary nomad and the consumer- allows finally contemporary man to liberate himself from the borders of history’s constrains and to live a radically modern existence. It is indeed this widely shared conviction that the “truth” of our globalize post modernity is not to be found in the specificity of spaces or “proper spaces”, but is significantly altered to the order of our world and to a new respective role of urbanism. City that always was one of the most complex manifestations of civilization ceases to be the historical dormitory under an ethno-religious orientation and is becoming the physical expression of the society that it accommodates. The end of the history will be for the city a very sad moment. A time described by Francis Fukuyama [1989], some months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Though the antilogous on Fukuyama’s gnome, turns against history as it has always been created by the winners. What perhaps 124
The dispersion of liberal democracy around the world answers, according to Fokuyama’s profound conviction, an expectation that is assumed to exist in different agglomeration of world’s civilization. While is acknowledging the existence of a significant part of the world that did not participate in the hegemony of liberal democracy and economy. The north part of the city, while still being a ‘’de facto’’ state with a military status, it cannot be participated into the global hegemony of liberal democracy and economy devoid of freedom and the right to a modern life. However, I critically doubt the power of liberal democracy, as a best conceivable social-political system for fostering freedom. What I suggest, is the engage of space with the proper political contemporary debates, into a new political landscape. A new landscape that is not erasing history, but is opposed to the global, Disnayfication strategies, that are turning the city into a museum of human history. The institutional UN plan for a comprehensive state, constituted by two modern states with a separate territorial sovereignty, threats more that ever the city of Nicosia. In the day after the accession of Cyprus in the EU, the changes in Nicosia entered into a tragic Disnayfication or medinterranization strategy of its space. Something paradoxical powered on the ability to attract the curiosity for a promised experienced on a post-conflict urbanity, within a very safe European, or at least Eurocentric context. The city is re-branded for once again: as the last European divided capital! A norm process in which cities are becoming the branch of economy. What anyway preserves citizenship in Nicosia from the institutional Farce of high politics to become a process of nomadization (nomads) of the population into their own territories where their right on it doesn’t exist, is the adoption of an alternative way to understand the city, the citizenship, and the civilization, as processes attached to the space of the city. Nomadism can be characterised as the process of de-politicization that enables any right and vision of the citizens on their territory and its future. 125
9.References Parisis, N., ‘Aristotelous Politika’, Athens: Papiros (1975). Perry Anderson, The Divisions of Cyprus, Trans. Kostas Raptis, Athens: Agra (2008). Rotband Sharon, White city, Black city, published in GOING PUBLIC’ 06, Mediterranean Atlas, (edited, Claudia Zanfi), Milano: Silvana editoriale (2006). Safire William, Diplolingo, section On Language, in “The New York Times” June 11,2006. Shakespeare William, Othello, edited by Kenneth Muir, London: Penguin (2005).
Bibliography: Arnulf Caroline, To leave and let live, Published on Volume 11, Cities Unbuilt, pg 16-17, Amsterdam: Archis (2007). Attalides Michael, Social Change and Urbanization in Cyprus: A study of Nicosia, Nicosia: Zavallis Press (1981). Augé Marc, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1992). trans. J.Hope (1995) London: Verso Bollens Scott A., Urban Peace-Building in Divided Societies: Belfast and Johannesburg, Boulder, CO and Oxford, UK: Westview Press (1999). Christodoulos Demetriou, Nicosia urban area, (Department of Town Planning and Housing, Nicosia, Cyprus).
Swyngedouw E., 2007, ‘The Post-Political City’, in: BAVO, Urban Politics Now: Re-Imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City, Rotterdam: NAi publishers (2007). Žižek, S 2006,Some Politically Incorrect Reflections on Urban Violence in Paris and New Orleans, in: BAVO, Urban Politics Now: Re-Imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City, Rotterdam: NAi publishers (2007).
Other sources: BBC News. 2003-03-11, “Cyprus peace process collapses”. http:// news.bbc.co.uk Retrieved on 2008-11-25. Marcos Gittis, Aruras Baltenas, Katerina Attalidou, Nikosia, the Wall, exhibition catalogue.
De Certeau Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. St. Rendall, University of California Press (1984).
Press and Information Office, Republic of Cyprus, “Latest Developments on the Cyprus Problem”- http://www.cyprus.gov.cy (Retrieved on 2008-11-25).
Declerck Joachim, Emblems of the city after the end of History, in: Visionary Power, international architecture biennale, Rotterdam: NAi publishers, 2007.
Press and Information Office, Republic of Cyprus, About Cyprus, 2001
Fukuyama Francis, ‘The End of History?’ the national interest (1989) Papadakis Yiannis, Nicosia After 1960: A River, A Bridge and a Dead Zone, published in GOING PUBLIC’ 06, Mediterranean Atlas, (edited, Claudia Zanfi), Milano: Silvana editoriale (2006). 126
Press and Information Office, Republic of Cyprus, About Cyprus, 2001 UN:United Nations official website, [www.un.org] UNFICYP:United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus [www.unficyp.org] 127