Crafting Territory and Negotiating Identity in Third Places in Belfast

Abstract

I analyze how informal territories, particularly third places, are build and negotiated, and argue that access to third places and territories is an important component of spatial justice and the development and expression of identity. I use Belfast, which is a city in which territory negotiation and place identity have been intense and fraught for decades, as a contrast agent for understanding these issues more broadly. I conducted ethnographies of the built environment in Belfast in 2024, focusing on sectarian third places and on third places that are attempting to be nonsectarian. Based on these ethnographies, I analyze the material, social, geographic, and aesthetic structure of these spaces, and how they function as territory and for whom. Cities owe their residents access to nontoxic third places and the means to develop them. Belfast faces distinctive challenges in meeting this obligation.