Urban Peacebuilding in ethno-nationally divided and contested cities: the case of Mostar

This article seeks to outline a conceptual landscape that can assist us to better grasp how urban communities torn and traumatised by violent conflicts remain divided in peace and resistant to liberal peacebuilding efforts. It suggests that peacebuilding needs to be urbanised to better address and mitigate tensions and ethnocratic spatial practices in divided cities. The urban is suggested as a prism through which to view and understand peacebuilding processes localised in the city space and describe whereby the urban conditions the construction, maintenance or resistance to peace. As an exercise in conceptual scoping this article unpacks the multidimensionality of peacebuilding and conceptually develops the notion of urban peacebuilding. By marrying critical peacebuilding literature and urban studies the ambition is to advance an orientation that connects peace with urban space and the everyday, thus providing a complementary lens through which to analyse peace and peacebuilding.