(Re)building Spaces of Tolerance

Abstract

Crossovers seldom occur in academic research on social tolerance and post-war urban reconstruction. Social scientists often call for a deeper analysis of the impact of spatial context on intergroup tolerance thresholds, but repairing social relations alongside damaged buildings is rarely the focus of post-disaster resilience design. This article bridges these two areas of study by proposing a pioneering regeneration model, that is, a “symbiotic model” for choosing the most socially and environmentally sustainable approach for site-specific post-conflict city regeneration. More precisely, it demonstrates that the concepts of commensalism, mutualism and parasitism, taken from biology, clearly define the spectrum of the relationships between the existing city tissue and new intervention in post-conflict city regeneration. It is argued that this model (re)builds places of social and political tolerance through (1) the meaningful interaction between social groups; (2) sustainable environmental and economic development; and (3) stratification of symbolic readings in the spatial, collective memorialization of conflict.