The bridge to violence – Mapping and understanding conflict-related violence in postwar Mitrovica

How can attention to spatial dynamics improve our understanding of where, how, and why conflict-related violence (CRV) concentrates within postwar cities such as Mitrovica? Like many other postwar cities, Mitrovica – one of Kosovo’s largest cities – remains affected by violence connected to the preceding war. This violence is not equally distributed across the city but rather concentrates to certain flashpoints while other sites are comparatively calm(er). To date, however, research on postwar cities has not fully explained such patterns, partly due to limitations in microlevel data. In this article we rely on novel georeferenced data on CRV, in combination with in-depth fieldwork, to map CRV in Mitrovica and explore the causes for its spatial clustering. Using this approach, we show that CRV concentrates at Mitrovica’s Main Bridge and explore this concentration using relational space as an analytical lens. The analysis contributes new insights into patterns of violence in Mitrovica, demonstrates the value of combining systematic data on the patterns of CRV with in-depth exploration into its underlying dynamics, and contributes to existing research on Mitrovica as well as on postwar cities and postwar violence more broadly.