Womxn’s Agency in Divided Cities: Mapping Marginal Actions in Nicosia

Abstract

People of minoritized genders struggle the most in contested environments. Cities are shaped by marginalized communities constantly claiming agency and space to thrive. Designers and planners should develop intersectional lenses to identify such marginal forces and better understand urbanization, especially in contexts of ongoing conflict. An inclusive viewpoint must shed light on absent or obscured voices. Thus, mapping from the margins is essential to understand how informalities work and to build a more profoundly democratic practice. In this article, the divided city of Nicosia in Cyprus is analyzed to understand how womxn raise their voices for peace, shifting the focus of Nicosia’s geopolitical conflict to a social territory reproduced by their bodies while traversing the quotidian in the city. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this article distorts the conventional idea of borders as strict lines, presenting them as porous, dynamic landscapes affected by the social groups around them.