URBAN-PLANNING AMIDST ETHNIC-CONFLICT - JERUSALEM AND JOHANNESBURG

This article investigates the role and influence of urban planning in ameliorating or intensifying deep ethnic conflict. It is based on more than 75 interviews with urban planners and officials in Jerusalem and Johannesburg. Partisan Israeli planners utilise territorial policies that penetrate and diminish Palestinian land control. Post-apartheid u rban policy in Johannesburg has pursued both conflict resolution and s ocioeconomic equity and is seeking to restructure apartheid geography. Both policy strategies are problematic. It is likely that partisan Is raeli planning is creating an urban landscape of heightened political contestability and increased Jewish vulnerability. Johannesburg's equi ty planning is likely to be insufficient as economic forces shape new spatial inequalities. Urban planning must be reconceptualised in polar ised cities so that it can contribute meaningfully to the advancement of ethnic peace.