Politics and Conflict in a Contested City (original) (raw)
Related papers
Politics and Conflict in a Contested City. Urban Planning in Jerusalem under Israeli Rule
2012
This paper asserts that urban planning is a critical tool in designing an effective, attractive, functioning city. A strong urban planning system provides a way of balancing the interests of various groups (public and private) and communities within the city – under an umbrella that protects the public interest, and allows the city to flourish. In Jerusalem, where planning and ethno-national politics merge, the system of urban planning has been used over the last few decades to achieve Israeli national political goals, bolstering the Israeli population and its control of the land in the city, and limiting the urban development of, and control of land by, the Palestinian community. The paper starts with a brief review of contested cities literature, continues with an analysis of Jerusalem’s urban planning history and concludes with a more contemporary analysis of planning and politics in the contested city of Jerusalem.
Planning policy is a major tool determining development outcomes and shaping the built environment. It is commonly used to build better places and promote sustainable communities and development. However, in some extreme cases, the struggle over land has taken precedence. This is especially evident in the Middle East and particularly in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The continued international interest and media coverage from the region places the local geopolitical issues in the world’s spotlight; however, it rarely looks at the underlying conditions for the emergence of these turbulent circumstances. This paper affirms that planning policy holds a fundamental impact on the positive social and spatial development of urban areas; however, in some extreme cases, the politics of conflict produce different conditions as the case of Jerusalem will reveal.
Polarized spaces and divided cities present a set of fast-changing urban policies and control powers. Of its tense history of complex spatial planning and land-use management, Jerusalem is not an exception. In less than 50 years, 1917-1967, Jerusalem was controlled by four variant regimes. The Ottoman Rule, the British Mandate, the Jordanian Control, and the Israeli Occupation respectively. In that sense, Jerusalem is considered a unique spatial entity in terms of its historical and physical development. This chapter explores the evolution of urban planning and land-use management in Jerusalem for these administrative authorities, underlining its impact on the city population and urban growth. During these subsequent administrative transformations, Jerusalem has witnessed quick and variant planning paradigms, and questionable development patterns, that produced numerous socio-spatial challenges. Principally, the altered composition of the population, as well as the paradoxical urban fabric of the city. Indeed, the successive authorities in Jerusalem, ending with the Israeli occupation of the eastern part of the city, have created a maze of wide-ranging rules and regulations, making the planning system complex, spatially unsustainable, and eventually in many ways, intensifying urban conflicts.
Negotiating the City: The Role of Urban Planning and International Law in the Problem of Jerusalem
A veritable microcosm of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jerusalem’s physical character and internal dynamics have been influenced immeasurably by the competing national aspirations of the two parties. The influence does not merely flow in one direction, however. There is rather a dialectic relationship between the local and the national, with the situation on the ground in Jerusalem having important repercussions for the broader conflict as well. Indeed, as a result of the fundamental disagreement the city engenders, and concomitant fears it will derail negotiations, the “problem of Jerusalem” has often been separated politically from other permanent or “core” status issues2 of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although this strategy may temporarily enable negotiations on other facets of the conflict to move forward, it denotes a somewhat troubling tendency to perceive the city as being separate from, or in opposition to, formal political agreements. As this paper will argue, we must instead consider how progressive urban strategies can anchor agreements at the national and international level, enhancing prospects for peace. Following an analysis of the current “partisan” approach to planning in the city, I will suggest a transition to an “equity” approach which seeks to ensure a more fair distribution of urban space and resources.
Jerusalem—its past, present and future— will serve as the foundation of our under- standing of the geographies of cities within contemporary urban theory and prac- tice in the 21st century. The underlying theoretical supposition in this special feature1 is that what have been labelled con- tested cities have growing similarities to less polarized cities—similarities found in the expansion of ethnic, racial and class conflicts that revolve around issues of housing, infra- structure, participation and identity. In this sense, Jerusalem represents a rather excep- tional case study and demonstrates a power- ful spatio-political urban pattern in the field of urban studies. The examination of Jerusa- lem can advance our understanding of the relationship between planning conflicts and urban geopolitics in a growing number of cities worldwide.
CITY, 2018
As far as the relation between planning and politics is concerned, Jerusalem represents an exceptional urban case to study. Jerusalem is a symbolic and tangible focal point in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, earning its position in urban studies and planning literature as one of the most ethno-nationally divided, polarized and contested cities (Bollens 1998; Klien 2001; Dumper 2014; Shlay and Rosen 2015). Competing religious and political narratives have affected Jerusalem’s development and over the past half-century Israeli ethno-national principles have held a significant role in forming the contemporary city. For anyone contemplating about what our urban world can become under forces of extreme nationalism and exclusionary planning policy, Jerusalem is an important lesson and cautionary warning for a growing number of contested cities. It is with these developments that Shaping Jerusalem: Spatial Planning, Politics and the Conflict engages with in further rigour and detail.
Conflict of Sovereignties in the Urban Space of Jerusalem
Middle East Journal, 2014
This article examines the matrix of urban interventions and control through territorial and demographic engineering by Israel to transform Jerusalem into a closer approximation of Zionist colonialist ideology by various means. These include the deployment of archaeological, cultural, socio-political, territorial, and urban design instruments to de-construct or re-narrate the other histories and characteristics of the city in order to preempt alternative sovereignties. Competing visions and discourses are visually evident in urban spaces and practices. This process is a conflict that chooses "identity" as its overt manifestation and its "protection" is consequently used as justification for legal and political discrimination. The construction of this particular form of identity was and is inherently inescapable due to the colonialist basis and practices of the state.