Fragile Tangible and Intangible Constellations in a Divided City. Urban Planning and Architectural Preservation Perspectives in Nicosia

The chapter discusses and unfolds the dimensions of territorial fragility in Nicosia in light of Cyprus’ partition and its multiple reverberations on the city’s-built environment and everyday urban life. The essay builds on academic debates on contested spaces and urban division from a planning and heritage preservation perspective, highlighting the most prominent lines of research and interrogating the same definition of Nicosia as a “divided city”. The chapter also recounts the genealogy of the Green Line and the Buffer Zone, from tracing a line on a map to its implications on the ground and on people’s perceptions and identities. The second part of the essay draws on and recounts on-site and empirical work performed in the city. Through collective “walks” on both sides of the Buffer Zone—adopted as an explorative method and a narrative device—a series of “constellations” of open and built spaces, semi-public and secluded lands, images and narratives emerge. Even though discontinuous and episodic, these spatial narratives provide a composite, multi-dimensional, and multi-layered image of Nicosia and its tangible and intangible urban conditions along and inside the Buffer Zone. These narratives allowed a horizontal (in space) and vertical (in time) reading of Nicosia’s cityscapes. Ultimately, the chapter provides the thematic and methodological elements of the research-by-design explorations proposed in this volume, drawing on and feeding back the theoretical and empirical contributions of the book.