Green, Grey and Orange: urban democracy and the formation of climate publics in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

This thesis explores the relationship between cities, democracy, and public engagement with climate change. It does so by comparing two attempts to further democracy: one by creating green infrastructure, designed to connect the Belfast’s ethno-communally divided territories; the other by working towards the construction of low-carbon social housing on land left vacant due to the city’s conflicted past. In doing so, this thesis provides a rich empirical account of the way which attempts to realise democracy in Northern Ireland are increasingly intersecting with attempts to engender more sustainable futures, through the reconfiguration of Belfast’s urban territories. In addition, it contributes to understandings of the role which urban greening can play in assembling publics in contexts where existing institutions are no longer able to consistently deliver the infrastructures needed to sustain urban life. More conceptually, this thesis contributes to debates about the role which cities can play in facilitating democratic engagement with climate change in an urbanising, climate-changing world, where cities, and promises of sustainability associated with them, are increasingly coming apart.
This thesis begins from the idea that contemporary democracy is troubled in part because of declining belief in the possibility of governing climate change, and so creating a sustainable common future, democratically. It develops its understanding of democracy and public formation by drawing upon ideas from American Pragmatism, supplementing them with understandings of government associated with Foucauldian scholarship. It develops these theories and ideas, in turn, by bringing them into dialogue with empirical material gathered through a variety of qualitative methods, including interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic engagement with political projects in Belfast.