Urban Geography

ISSN: 0272-3638 (Print) 1938-2847 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rurb20

Shifting borders, shifting center: hedging-out

uncertainty in west Jerusalem’s urban core

Roni Bar

To cite this article: Roni Bar (2019): Shifting borders, shifting center: hedging-out uncertainty in
west Jerusalem’s urban core, Urban Geography, DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2019.1613137

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1613137

Published online: 13 May 2019.

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URBAN GEOGRAPHY
https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1613137

Shifting borders, shifting center: hedging-out uncertainty in

west Jerusalem’s urban core
Roni Bar
Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article argues that contested cities are inherently characterized by Received 26 May 2018
uncertainty and uses the interconnections between conflict, uncer- Accepted 25 April 2019
tainty and urban planning as a new analytical framework for investi- KEYWORDS
gating conflict cities. In the contested city of Jerusalem, geopolitical Uncertainty; conflict; city
uncertainty stems from the Israeli occupation over East Jerusalem. center; boundaries;
Focusing on recent urban regeneration plans for West Jerusalem’s Jerusalem
city center, the article explores how the municipality locates, plans
and imagines the city center when the city’s external and internal
boundaries are contested and unfixed. A two-tier analysis is employed.
First, a historical analysis shows that the “city center”, as defined by
authorities, is an unfixed locale that shifts in concurrence with shifts in
the city’s boundaries. Then, a geopolitical analysis shows that by
shifting the city center’s boundaries, the Israeli authorities decouple
the city’s economic development (in the west) from Israel’s continuing
ethno-national policies (in the east).

Introduction
Over the course of the last decade, West Jerusalem’s city center has been dramatically
transformed. A new light rail has been constructed along Jaffa Street, the area’s main
commercial street. The street and surrounding areas have been renovated, vehicular traffic
has been restricted and new street furniture has been installed. New residential buildings are
also being constructed in the area, many of which are luxury housing projects that are often
populated by wealthy, religious and foreign Jews (Alfasi & Ganan, 2015; Blander, Moser, &
Avni, 2018). In addition, a vast site at the city center’s western edge is designated to become
a new business quarter with plans to construct high-rise buildings of over thirty floors.
The regeneration of the urban core is not unique to Jerusalem and many cities
worldwide have adopted such a policy. Yet, the plans for West Jerusalem’s city center
were generated within a context of intractable conflict over the city’s borders and
sovereignty. As a disputed territory, Jerusalem encapsulates the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict (Benvenisti, 1987), similarly to other conflict cities in which national and global
processes converge into the locale (Appadurai, 1996; Boal, Murray, & Poole, 1976). This
encapsulation of a national conflict is given particular intensity due to the density of the

CONTACT Roni Bar roniba2@post.tau.ac.il; ronibar@gmail.com Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel
Aviv University, POB 39040, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 R. BAR

urban environment (Boal, 1999), in which two competing groups paradoxically act both
as neighbors and enemies (Benvenisti, 1987).
As territories that encapsulate competing dreams and narratives (Kotek, 1999), conflict
cities inherently embody a dispute over a desired future, with rivalry groups imagining
different scenarios and actively pursuing their realization. To be sure, many cities are sites
of struggle over questions of representation, exclusion and the allocation of resources, with
different groups promoting competing future trajectories. However, in conflict cities, these
struggles are embedded within questions of a higher order over the legitimacy of existing
social and political order (Bollens, 2000; Gaffikin & Morrissey, 2011; Kotek, 1999;
Morrissey & Gaffikin, 2006). Jerusalem itself includes both forms of conflict: an inter-
group conflict over identity, lifestyle and the allocation of resources (mainly between
secular and religious Jews) and an ethnic-national conflict over sovereignty, control and
the political legitimacy of ruling authorities. The latter type of conflict has manifested in
repeating (yet unpredictable) cycles of violence, in deep social and political cleavages, and in
the construction of internal boundaries (e.g. Boal, 2002; Bollens, 2001; Cunningham &
Gregory, 2014; Davis & Libertun de Duren, 2011; Fregonese, 2009; Yassin, 2012) that
continue to influence the locale even in periods of relative calm.
This article focuses on the latter type of conflict. Moreover, it is based on the
understanding that due to this dynamic – of exogenous forces that penetrate the
locale, of unpredictable cycles of violence and calm, and of competing ambitions
regarding the near and far future – conflict cities are essentially characterized by
uncertainty, even when either side portrays the future as certain and fixed for
internal political reasons.
This interconnection between conflict cities and uncertainty is used in this article as
a new analytical lens for examining urban development in conflict cities. From this
analytical perspective, it is suggested to read the urban regeneration plans for West
Jerusalem’s city center as generated within a state of geopolitical uncertainty stemming
from the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and from the unresolved conflict over the
city’s sovereignty and borders. More precisely, the article explores how the municipality
locates, plans and imagines its center when the city’s external and internal boundaries
are under dispute and constant manipulation, in order to better understand the
relationship between the conflict over occupied East Jerusalem and urban development
in West Jerusalem.
The focus of this investigation is the plan or the planning product – the outcome of
a non-linear, intricate process that involves not only planners but also other agents working
in the city. More specifically, the study focuses on plans initiated by the municipality, based
on the understanding that the municipal apparatus serves as the “repository of very
extensive powers and can largely determine what standard of living a Jerusalem resident
will be vouchsafed” (Margalit, 2006, p. 11). This focus on the planning product serves as
a powerful lens for exploring how uncertainty manifests in the planning process and how
planners and decision-makers navigate these circumstances.
To be sure, the claim that plans in Jerusalem are prepared within a context of uncertainty
is far from trivial, for two reasons. First, traditionally, planners aim to reduce, control and
manage uncertainty (Abbott, 2005, 2012; Christensen, 1985) with planning described as
“essentially, controlling uncertainty – either by taking action now to secure the future, or by
preparing actions to be taken in case an event occurs. Both make the future more
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 3

predictable and manageable in terms of present purposes” (Marris, 1987, p. 159). Or as

Michael Gunder (2008) puts it: what other purpose does a plan serve other than “to provide
a template of future certainty of spatial design and land use?” (p. 190). The profession’s
inclination towards reducing and managing uncertainty is deeply rooted in the ideology of
the modern state, which is geared towards purging ambivalence (Bauman, 1991) and
increasing legibility (Bollens, 1998). It is furthermore manifested in the visions of the
rational city, where “[c]hance will give way to foresight, and program will replace impro-
visation” (Le Corbusier, 1973). Second, in this specific case plans were prepared for
Jerusalem authorities, who may be hesitant to formally acknowledge the future as open
and may resist any suggestion that Israeli control over East Jerusalem is incomplete, as they
work to reinforce the Israeli control over East Jerusalem through many other urban plans.
Thus, in their professional tradition and their political situatedness, the Israeli planners that
work in Jerusalem are geared towards creating certainty and establishing control; yet, they
operate in a context characterized by chronic instability and uncertainty.
The article will show that plans for the urban regeneration of the city center create
a containment of certainty, stability and normality designed to form an economic hub
and to stimulate economic growth, thus enabling Israeli authorities to generate entre-
preneurial urbanism without challenging the ongoing Israeli occupation over East
Jerusalem. This process is described in this article as “hedging-out uncertainty”, hinting
simultaneously at the act of bordering and at the risk management strategy of “hed-
ging”, used to evade potential losses and to control risks. Here, a conceptual boundary,
or hedge, is constructed to keep the geopolitical instability and inherent uncertainty
associated with Jerusalem out of the city center. To do so, the city center is pulled
away – physically and conceptually – from the occupied areas in the east, forming an
extensive commercial and business area in the less contentious parts of Jerusalem and
transforming the city center into a non-contextual locale reminiscent of other projects
found in various Western cities. With this shift in the city center’s boundaries, the
economically deprived populations of Jerusalem – the Palestinians and Orthodox Jews –
are also dissociated from the city center, which is planned separately from two other
CBDs designated for the two populations. Hence, this analysis demonstrates that the act
of bordering is a political tool even if it is used outside of the disputed areas.
The article is structured as follows. The next section introduces the conflict over
Jerusalem with an emphasis on how the Israeli regime actively shifts internal and
external boundaries to meet political ends. The remaining sections of the article focus
on recent urban regeneration plans for West Jerusalem’s city center, promoted and
partially executed by Israeli authorities over the last two decades. These are investigated
through a two-tiered analysis: historical and geopolitical. First, the article examines how
the planning establishment defined, located and planned Jerusalem’s city center before
1967, shortly after the 1967 War, and after the geopolitical unrest circa 2000. This
historical analysis reveals that the territorial unit known as the “city center” changes its
location, borders and relationships with adjacent areas from one period to another in
response to shifting limitations, opportunities and political agendas. The second part of
the analysis further delves into recent planning patterns manifesting since 2000 and
contextualizes these within their broader geopolitical conditions. The two-tier analysis
illustrates, first, that the formal demarcation of the “city center” is an unfixed normative
decision that can change over time and reveal certain values and agendas. Second, the
4 R. BAR

analysis shows that the latest remaking of its boundaries furnishes necessary conditions
for generating economic growth and for enhancing the city’s competitiveness amidst
conflict, instability and international scrutiny. The final section of the article discusses
the implications of hedging-out uncertainty and further considers how this empirical
case can help us learn from Jerusalem (Rokem, 2016) to inform a more complex and
nuanced understanding of conflictual locales.

The conflict over Jerusalem: hedging and bordering as a political tool

Jerusalem’s borders have been constantly reimagined and remodeled over the course of the
last century (Benvenisti, 1996; Shlay & Rosen, 2010). Notable examples include the town’s
expansion under British rule (1917–1948), the 1947 United Nations partition plan (that was
never realized), and the city’s division between Jordan and Israel following the 1948 War.
Notwithstanding these changes, it is the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in the 1967
War that marks an important milestone in the political manipulation of the city’s internal
and external boundaries. Shortly after seizing East Jerusalem, Israel annexed Jordanian
Jerusalem (of 6.5 km2) into Israeli Jerusalem (of 38 km2) together with additional 64 km2 of
adjacent areas and Palestinian villages (Dumper, 1997; Hasson, 2007; Klein, 2008; Nasrallah,
2005; Shlay & Rosen, 2010). In doing so, Israel has redrawn Jerusalem’s borders to address
a combination of demographic, military and economic considerations (Bollens, 2000;
Dumper, 2014), creating “occupation through municipal expansion” (Lustick, 2004, p. 202).
Yet, the expansion of the municipal border was not enough to ensure Israeli control over
the occupied land, and the process of Judaization and colonization was accompanied with
an ongoing manipulation and reformulation of the city’s internal and external boundaries;
some of which may be informal and invisible to the untrained eye and yet highly present in
residents’ daily lives and in the political construction of space. Shlay and Rosen (2010) show
how urban developments in the occupied areas were strategically used to blur the Green
Line (i.e. the former armistice line between the Israeli and Jordanian territories) and to
create “an aura of political legitimacy to new Jerusalem boundaries, a representation of
space reflecting Israeli hegemony in the region” (p. 382).
One of the main tools in this remaking of boundaries has involved the construction
of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. International law and global public opinion
differentiate between the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem (constructed after
1967 on occupied land and therefore viewed as illegal settlements) and the Israeli
neighborhoods in West Jerusalem (viewed as legitimate and consensual). However, in
the official Israeli discourse, the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem are described
simply as “neighborhoods” with this benign terminology blurring differentiation
between East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem, thus serving as “the initial step in shifting
the Green Line, [and in] shifting the perception of the legitimate boundaries of
Jerusalem” (Shlay & Rosen, 2010, p. 333). Furthermore, these Jewish neighborhoods
in East Jerusalem were strategically positioned to wedge between Palestinian neighbor-
hoods, thus restricting the latter’s growth and fragmenting the Palestinian urban fabric
(Bollens, 1998).
Mobility infrastructure is another key mechanism involved in this political remaking of
boundaries. Notably, a two-tier mobility infrastructure connects the Jewish neighborhoods
in East Jerusalem with West Jerusalem, while simultaneously disconnecting Palestinian
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 5

neighborhoods from their surrounding environment (Pullan, Misselwitz, Nasrallah, &

Yacobi, 2007). This mobility infrastructure produces different forms of fragmentation and
bounding (Pullan, 2013) and turns the Palestinian neighborhoods into isolated islands
(Handel, 2014). However, the invisible boundaries of these “islands” are also subject to
continuous change: first, Palestinian residents cross them in their everyday lives (Baumann,
2016; Greenberg-Raanan & Shoval, 2014; Shtern, 2016), thus transgressing and reconstruct-
ing boundaries via mundane activities such as commuting, shopping and working. Second,
Jewish organizations penetrate these “islands” as they seize Palestinian properties in the Old
City and in the surrounding Palestinian areas such as Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, through
both legal and illegal means.
The construction of the Separation Wall in the early 2000s has resulted in yet another
manipulation of the city’s boundary: its route does not follow the Green Line, nor does it
follow the municipal border. Instead, it spirals to place Israeli settlements on its western
(Israeli) side, connecting them to the Israeli-Jewish territory while disconnecting Palestinian
East Jerusalem from the West Bank (Chiodelli, 2013, 2017; Cohen, 2013). Because the wall’s
route does not follow the municipal border, some Palestinian areas that officially fall under
Jerusalem’s municipal jurisdiction remain on the wall’s eastern side. These areas are
physically disconnected from the rest of the city, suffer from a lack of basic municipal
services and function as a no man’s land between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
These examples illustrate how Israel has been strategically using different spatial develop-
ments to maneuver the city’s boundaries and to meet political objectives, resulting in the
formation of a web of unfixed boundaries. This unstable nature of Jerusalem’s boundaries can
be traced to contestation and ambiguity revolving around the city’s borders in the first place.
As mentioned, East Jerusalem is an occupied territory, and the city’s expanded borders, as
drawn by the Israeli government, were never internationally ratified. Furthermore, Israel’s
annexation of East Jerusalem was indefinite: as detailed by Lustick (2004), the Israeli govern-
ment used a series of amendments to existing legislation and administrative orders to extend
its law and jurisdiction to the newly occupied territory yet without granting Israeli citizenship
to the Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem. Only on this basis, claims Lustick, “can one
understand the gap that subsequently opened up between the rhetoric of the mythmakers of
‘reunited Yerushalayim’ and the legal, political and practical realities” (Lustick, 2004, p. 202).
Similarly, Menahem Klein (2005) identifies a gap between the official Israeli discourse that
describes Jerusalem as an “open city” (i.e. without internal walls) and the actual urban fabric,
which is highly segregated along ethnic-national and religious lines. In a similar vein, Michael
Dumper (2014) lists some of these sub-political lines and distinguishes between hard, soft,
visible, invisible, and scattered borders – an antithesis to the official Israeli description of
Jerusalem as “united and whole” (Basic law, 1980).
Lately, this unfixed nature of Jerusalem’s boundaries has become a reoccurring
theme in recent studies, describing Jerusalem as a “city of many and shifting borders”
(Dumper, 2014, p. 9) that traces “the concerted efforts of. . . political forces to remake
place and alter the city’s boundaries” (Shlay & Rosen, 2010, p. 361). This debate focuses
especially on “the post-1967 development of different parts of [the] captured territories”
(Shlay & Rosen, 2010, p. 359) or on seam areas positioned along the former Israeli-
Jordanian armistice line (Pullan et al., 2007).
6 R. BAR

In challenging this spatial predisposition, this article investigates how the munici-
pality plans West Jerusalem’s city center when the city’s borders are unfixed and
contested and when its internal and external boundaries constantly shift and change.
Assuming that a conflict over the city’s borders can be unpacked through the processes
that occur at its core, the aim here is to show that the political remaking of boundaries
also occurs in the internationally accepted areas of West Jerusalem and that spatial
developments observed in western (Israeli) areas of the city are also related to geopo-
litical uncertainty in the eastern (occupied) areas.

Methodology: a historical and geopolitical analysis of the “city center”

In unpacking the dynamics of a conflictual locale through its more consensual areas, the
article focuses on the planned (and partially implemented) urban regeneration of West
Jerusalem’s city center, an area that was under Israeli rule before 1967 and that is not
considered to be under international dispute. Recent changes occurring in this area are
explored through a two-tier analysis. The first layer of the analysis is historical. It
examines how planning authorities have delineated and planned Jerusalem’s center
through the last decades. More specifically, three clusters of plans are compared: those
prepared from the 1940s to 1967; those prepared shortly after the 1967 War (i.e. Israel’s
annexation of East Jerusalem), and the current plans prepared after 2000 (i.e. the Camp
David summit and Taba talks1 and the outbreak of the second Intifada2).
For each cluster, the following plans are examined:

(a) From the 1940’s until 1967. Master Plan no. 62 from 1959 (known as the Shaviv
Plan after its planner) was the last master plan prepared for the city of Jerusalem
by Israeli authorities before the 1967 War (and the only statutory outline plan to
be officially approved by Israeli authorities). Since the plan is not an entirely new
document but rather an amendment of a previous plan, it is examined together
with its two predecessors: a British master plan from 1944 (named the Kendall
Plan after its planner Henry Kendall) and an Israeli conceptual plan from 1949
(named the Rau Plan after its planner Heinz Rau).
(b) Shortly after 1967: A new master plan for the city of Jerusalem was submitted in
1968 shortly after the 1967 War. The plan was prepared by Aviah Hashimshoni,
Yoseph Schweid, and Zion Hashimshoni (1972, 1974), and it is examined
together with two related plans: a plan for the Jerusalem CBD prepared by
David Best and Gilbert Vale circa 1969–1970 and a plan for the Old City and
its environs prepared by Arieh Sharon, David Anatol Brutzkus and Eldar Sharon
circa 1970.
(c) After 2000: Two consecutive plans for the urban regeneration of the city center
were submitted in 2000 and 2003. The first plan was prepared by a team headed
by Ofer Manor, the city’s chief architect, while the second plan was prepared by
a private sector team headed by Arie Kutz. These plans were integrated into the
“Jerusalem 2000” Master Plan. These plans are analyzed here together with an
interrelated plan for a new business quarter located on the city center’s western
edge: the Jerusalem Gateway Project.
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 7

The strength of such a historical analysis lies in its ability to identify processes and
reoccurrences of previous ideas, placing the current plans in broad perspective and
demonstrating that the formal demarcation of the “city center” is a normative decision
that can change over time and that can reveal values and agendas. Following the
historical analysis, the geopolitical analysis further delves into the recent trends and
contextualizes them within their broader geopolitical conditions.
The analysis is based on primary sources such as historical documents, drawings and
texts (for all plans), protocols and observations in public events and in-depth interviews
(for the post-2000 plans). Interviews were conducted with seven high-ranking planners
and decision-makers who have led planning processes or who have assumed prominent
roles in determining Jerusalem’s overall urban policy and its implementation (see list A).
Additional materials were collected from protocols of the Jerusalem District Planning
Committee and from conferences and seminars attended by planners and policymakers
such as the then Mayor of Jerusalem, the city’s Chief Planner, a former Director General
of the municipality, the then Deputy Mayors, and others (see lists B and C). These
primary sources were supplemented with secondary sources (e.g. Bollens, 1998, 2000;
Dumper, 1997; Nitzan-Shiftan, 2005, 2017; Shapiro, 1973).
It should be noted that although a third of the population in Jerusalem is Palestinian,
planners and decision-makers working within the Jerusalem municipality are predomi-
nantly Israeli and Jewish. This ethno-national homogeneity reflects the substantial
constraints placed on the participation of Palestinian planners in the planning process
in Jerusalem (Rokem & Allegra, 2016) and demonstrates that the Palestinians are not
participants in the decision-making process neither at the political level nor at the
professional level (Margalit, 2006). Due to this misrepresentation in the planning
process and since this study focuses on planners and other agents who were involved
in the making of plans, the respondents in this study are Israeli and Jewish.

Planning the city center: a historical analysis

In the first cluster of plans, prepared from the 1940’s to 1967, the city center is marked to
the west of the Old City, and this westward orientation intensifies from one plan to another.
The Kendall Plan, the British plan of 1944, marks the main commercial area along Jaffa
Street, stretching from the Old City to the west (Kendall, 1948). This pattern adheres to
previous British plans and to a preexisting urban development. Particularly, it complies to
the Jewish disengagement from the Old City – a process that began in the 19th century and
that intensified over periods of ethnic unrest (Dumper, 1997). The British planners
supported this urban development since it corresponded with their worldview, which
perceived the Old City as a religious and historical relic that must be shielded from any
modern development and daily activities (ibid.). This dichotomy between the sacred and
secular, old and new, east and west, also deepened the divide between the Palestinian
population (centered in the Old City) and Jewish population (centered around Jaffa Street)
(Roberts, 2013), a divide that was compatible with Henry Kendall’s view of Jerusalem as an
inherently segregated city divided into sub-communities (Kendall, 1948).
After the 1948 War and the establishment of the State of Israel, this divide became
a geopolitical fact. The Israeli plans maintained this general pattern and strengthened the
city’s orientation to the west (Bollens, 2000). The Rau Plan, a conceptual plan of 1949,
8 R. BAR

designated a vast area in Givat Ram, a site in the city’s western area, for government
institutions, and suggested relocating the city center from its previous location to the city’s
western entrance (Schweid, 1994; Shapiro, 1973). The Shaviv Plan, a statutory plan of 1959,
rejected the suggestion to relocate the city center altogether but expanded Givat Ram by
adding the Hebrew University Campus and the Israel Museum, thus creating a substantial
governmental-cultural-educational anchor in the western area of the city (Shapiro, 1973)
(Figure 1). Similar to the British plans, the Israeli plans reflected binary opposition with the
governmental-cultural-educational anchor of Givaat Ram representing a new and modern
core for a new and modern state – a mirror image to the historical, religious and traditional
Old City of East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule.
The second cluster of plans, prepared after the 1967 War and the Israeli occupation
of East Jerusalem, represents a break from these planning patterns. In these post-1967
plans, the westward orientation of the city center is replaced with a condensed CBD
that engulfs the Old City from west and north, spanning both sides of the former
armistice line between the western and eastern cities (Figure 2).
This was an intentional modification. According to the 1968 master plan, the city’s
central areas had deteriorated “in the last twenty years [when the city] was bisected into
two parts” (Hashimshoni et al., 1972, p. 9). Under these conditions, it is argued in the
plan, four separate centers had developed: a religious and touristic center in the Old City,
a central business area in the eastern Palestinian part of the city (north of the Old City),
a central business area in the western Jewish part (west of the Old City) and the
governmental-cultural center in Givat Ram. Criticizing this fragmentation and describing
the previous westward orientation of the city center as “doomed to fail” (ibid., p. 74), the
plan suggests extending the Jewish city center in the opposite direction to the northeast,
thus merging it with a Palestinian commercial area that had developed north of the Old
City between 1948 and 1967 (ibid.; Schweid, 1987).
The post-1967 plans serves an explicit goal, to create one compact city center for one
united city and to ensure that the city “will never be dissected again by barriers”
(Hashimshoni et al., 1972, p. 47). This aim is reflected in words of the CBD planning
team, when justifying the location of the city center:

Figure 1. The location of the city center (CBD) under the Shaviv plan of 1959.
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 9

Figure 2. The location of the city center (CBD) under the 1968 master plan.

“One of the Master Plan’s goals was to create a strong and continuous link between the
eastern commercial nucleus and the western commercial nucleus, in order to encourage
interaction between the Jewish population and the Arab population and to blur the
remains of separation between the two parts of the city, like the no man’s land that crosses
the CBD” (Best & Vale, 1972, p. 2).

An additional goal was to integrate the CBD with the Old City and to reintroduce Jerusalem
as a modern capital for the Jewish state, a contemporary city “that is not just a memorial
monument for the past. . . but rather symbolizes the renewed Jewish sovereignty in Israel”
(Hashimshoni et al., 1972, p. 49; see also: Nitzan-Shiftan, 2005, 2017). As articulated by the
head of the CBD planning team: ‘What we create in the centre of Jerusalem must not only
be a life-sized museum of the past. . . [but] must provide a vital link through time – as both
a statement of the grandeur of the past and the possibilities of the future – while at the same
time acting as a centre for the present’ (Best, 1970). Accordingly, the post-1967 plans
suggest demolishing existing urban fabrics in the urban core and replacing them with new
buildings, mega-structures, elevated streets and vast roads on a grid structure, reconstruct-
ing a modern city in lieu of the past.
Notably, the suggestion to create a condensed urban core was not implemented. In the
1970s, urban development was directed outwards to the city’s outskirts, where Israel
expropriated vast areas to build new Jewish neighborhoods. These two distinct approaches
to urban development – convergence inward vs. expansion outward – also represent two
different means of ensuring the city’s “unification”: the former through the city’s core and
the latter through its edges. In building the Jewish neighborhoods on newly occupied land,
Israel chose to pursue the latter, leaving the urban core to further deteriorate.
This outward expansion serves as a background for the third cluster plans instituted
in the early 2000s. These plans were prepared with the aim to redirect economic,
commercial, and cultural activities from the urban periphery to the core “after decades
of mindless suburbanization” (private sector planner, interview, December 2014). In
these plans, the city center is marked once again almost exclusively to the west of the
1967 border, extending westward from the Old City along Jaffa Street (Figure 3).
10 R. BAR

As is the post-1967 plans, planners and decision-makers identify four distinct centers
in the city: a so-called “general” CBD around Jaffa Street, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish
CBD to the north, a Palestinian CBD to the northeast and the Old City (Regional
Planning Committee, 2008a, 2009). Yet, unlike the post-1967 plans, this segregation is
not challenged but is rather accepted as an inherent (and even desirable) feature of
Jerusalem. A report that accompanied the “Jerusalem 2000” Master Plan describes it as
“a mostly voluntary segregation that reflects the will of each population group. . . [and]
also reduces the potential friction between the groups” (Jerusalem Municipality, 2004,
pp. 208–209). Accordingly, the post-2000 regeneration plans focus exclusively on the
so-called “general” city center, while the designated centers for the Palestinian and
ultra-Orthodox populations are planned separately despite their physical proximity.
Furthermore, in the post-2000 plans, the boundaries of the “general” city center are
extended to include a site at the western entrance to city. This site is intended to
become a hub of commerce, business, culture and tourism and to attract new firms and
visitors. The area is described in interviews, documents and protocols as a site with few
limitations (due to its distance from the historic core), with large land reserves and with
good accessibility to Tel Aviv, to the coastal area and to Israel’s international airport.
This site is depicted as a place where planners can “go wild” (Regional Planning
Committee, 2008b; see also: public sector planner, interview, June 2015; Kutz, 2003)
and “create a new city. . . a story that is completely new” (former head of the local
planning committee, public talk, October 2015).
This new site is planned to include 24 high-rise buildings and 1,500,000 square meters of
floor area. When realized, the project is meant to create 60,000 new jobs, to add 2,000 hotel
rooms to the city and to attract tens of dozens of visitors a day thanks to the intersection
between a fast train, two light rail lines and over 450 inter-urban bus routes (Jerusalem
Gateway Project website, accessed March 2019). Intense development around
a transportation hub demonstrates a TOD (Transit Oriented Development) form of
urban development, which has become a prominent policy worldwide (Calthorpe, 1993;
Dittmar & Ohland, 2012). In Jerusalem, this intense construction in the west represents
a mirror image to the historic east – “a contemporary western anchor, tolerant and open,

Figure 3. The location of the city center (“general” CBD) under the post-2000 plans.
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 11

facing the anchor of tradition, sanctity and spirit in the Old City” (Plan no. 101-51490,
2015, p. 2). This development is also expected to generate revenue for the municipality,
which is at present dependent on financial support from the state (which also funds most of
the investment needed for infrastructure in this project).
The TOD is not the only globally mobile planning policy to be employed in the post-
2000 plans. The entire regeneration of the historic city center is justified by citing pre-
cedents from a combination of Western cities, as planners explicitly acknowledge that
Jerusalem, as a Middle Eastern city, lacks such an urban tradition (Manor, 2011). The 2003
plan, for example, mentions numerous cases from Europe and the United States to justify
the urban regeneration of the historic center (Kutz, 2003). While some of the references are
general (e.g. “from the experience of other cities across the world”), others are more
specific, referring to cities such as Amsterdam, Strasburg, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Berlin,
London, Boston and Paris (ibid.). This reliance on foreign traditions is echoed in the
physical design: in using dark granite paving and street lights commonly used in European
cities, the urban design of the regenerated city center deliberately creates a new and non-
contextual image that is not identified with Jerusalem (Manor, 2011). This new urban
language is meant to serve as a subdued background to the clutter typically associated with
the Middle East (public sector planner, interview, June 2015).
The maps shown in Figure 1 to 3 show the location of the city center in all three
clusters of plans. When analyzed together, these maps reveal that the “city center”, as it
is defined and planned by the authorities, is an unfixed locale that changes its location,
borders and relationship with adjacent areas from one period to another in response to
limitations and opportunities. The analysis further reveals that current plans for the city
center represent a variation of the pre-1967 planning patterns, as they direct the city
center to the west, perceive the new and the old as binary and reinforce ethnic and
religious segregation in the city (to be sure, continuing attempts to Judaize East
Jerusalem and to change the demography of Palestinian East Jerusalem create
a transitional mix between Jewish and Palestinian residents, yet these are meant to be
only intermediate stage in the path toward Jewish dominance).
While the contemporary Israeli plans are reminiscent of the British plans, a closer look
reveals that the groups and forces that drive urban development are different: while the
British plans promoted a division of the Arab and Jewish populations, the current Israeli
policy distinguishes between three (and not two) populations: the ultra-Orthodox Jewish
population, the Palestinian population and the so-called “general“ population (i.e. Jewish
but not ultra-Orthodox). Thus, ethnically based segregation present in the British plans was
replaced with a segregation based on national (Jewish/Palestinian) and religious (ultra-
Orthodox/non-ultra-Orthodox) characteristics. Furthermore, forces pushing for the segre-
gation have also undergone a change: from a colonial force that encourages the separation
of two local populations – into a force that is simultaneously colonial (in relation to the
Palestinians) and hegemonic (in relation to the ultra-Orthodox) and that separates itself
from two populations perceived as the ”Other”.

Contextualizing current trends: planning in geopolitical uncertainty

The return to pre-1967 planning patterns and the break from post-1967 planning ideas
did not occur in a vacuum and should be understood within a broader context. Around
12 R. BAR

the year 2000, when the recent plans were prepared and submitted, the question of
Jerusalem’s borders and sovereignty was placed for the first time on the negotiation
table between Israeli and Palestinian representatives, first at the Camp David summit in
July 2000 and later during the Taba talks of January 2001 (Klein, 2004, 2005; Lehrs,
2016). Although unsuccessful, the talks broke the taboo that the 1967 annexation
borders are eternal (Klein, 2005) and raised the possibility that sovereignty over East
Jerusalem could be divided. The talks’ failure and the outbreak of the second Intifada in
September 2000 further accentuated the de-facto division of the city, as residents
changed their travel behaviors to avoid the “Other” and as physical barriers were
constructed between areas (Klein, 2004).
These issues are absent from official planning documents prepared and submitted
during these years. Formally, any uncertainties regarding the future are put on hold in
daily practice, and the unification of Jerusalem is considered “a national consensus” (public
sector planner, interview, May 2014). One planner explains when asked about the city’s
contested future: “in our professional daily life we do not think about it, we do not prepare
for future scenarios, we do what we have to do. It sits in the back of our minds but it does
not translate into practice” (public sector planner, interview, July 2014).
Yet the geopolitical conflict does penetrate the planning process: planners and
decision-makers often describe the decision to build (or to refrain from building)
new projects in Palestinian and Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem as ex-
territorial to the municipality and as determined by national and international political
dynamics. The city’s chief planner addressed this issue in a public talk, explaining that
“the decision-making, in policy, planning and implementation, is not done only by the
people of Jerusalem [municipality], and I would say not even by the Israeli government.
I always jokingly say: the planning committee member [Barack] Obama” (conference,
February 2014). On another occasion he said: ‘everybody meddles in every decision,
everyone has something to say. Sometimes [the construction of] a house is stopped
because of a [Joe] Biden here or a [Joe] Biden there’ (Jerusalem Chief Planner,
symposium, May 2016).
These statements unearth the contestation over East Jerusalem that is formally masked
in the Israeli hegemonic discourse, and point to what one planner describes as “planning
uncertainty [when] you don’t know if and when a plan will be approved” (public sector
planner, interview, May 2014). Planners have also stressed that these restrictions are
relatively new, as the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that “were always perceived
as obvious. . . do not enjoy the same esteem anymore“ (Jerusalem Chief Planner, confer-
ence, February 2014) and the vast land confiscations in East Jerusalem ”that were possible
after 1967. . . cannot continue any longer” (private sector planner, interview, March 2014).
These external pressures merge geopolitical and economic considerations, as com-
panies often avoid the occupied areas east of the Green Line due to international
boycotts. This issue was raised in the regional planning committee when it discussed
the “Jerusalem 2000” Master Plan, as some participants emphasized that industrial areas
should be allocated west of the Green Line (Regional Planning Committee, 2008b).
A senior member of the Master Plan team similarly said in an interview, that due to
international boycotts on firms situated on occupied territories, an exporting high-tech
firm could not be positioned east of the Green Line (private sector planner, interview,
March 2014). In the same vein, one of the Master Plan’s reports determines that an
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 13

advanced industry employment cluster should be located “with good accessibility to the
core of Israel, i.e. in the western part of the city” (Jerusalem Municipality, 2004, p. 114).
In light of these restrictions, it is worth noting two shifts in Jerusalem’s overall
planned development – first westward and then inwards – as reflecting an unofficial
distancing from the contested areas in East Jerusalem, in which uncertainty is high and
the municipality’s autonomy is low. First, a westward expansion plan, known as the
West Jerusalem Plan (or as the Safdie Plan after its planner), was promoted from the
late 1990s until it was rejected in 2007 following a public campaign that objected to the
destruction of vast natural areas. The plan was to allow for the construction of 20,000
residential units and for 500,000 square meters of employment areas. The plan was
described by a senior planner as an alternative to the Jewish neighborhoods in East
Jerusalem and as a way to address demands from firms to be positioned west of the
Green Line in an area accessible to Tel Aviv (private sector planner, interview,
March 2014). Thus, this expansion area was to accommodate new firms – as well as
Jewish, secular, young professionals that tend to emigrate out of the city.
After the plan was rejected, the municipality adopted a policy of urban generation
and densification focusing on the inner city rather than on the city’s fringes (Jerusalem
Chief Planner, conference, February 2014). The former head of the local planning
committee ties this inward convergence to constrains at the city’s edges, stating that
“in the east we have a difficult problem, in the west they don’t want to let us build, and
the most pressing challenge today that many people are working hard to resolve is how
to implement urban regeneration” (Symposium, October 2015).
It should be stressed that these constrains do not by any means imply that the Israeli
authorities refrain from promoting new projects in East Jerusalem. On the contrary: it is
the official policy of the Israeli authorities to promote projects for Jewish residents in
East Jerusalem and to encourage the encroachment of Jewish organizations into
Palestinian areas. The plan for the Kedem Visitors Center in Silwan just outside of
the Old City demonstrates such an effort. The center is promoted by the Jewish
foundation “Elad” in the midst of a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem and
is significantly smaller than the Jerusalem Gateway site (15,000 square meters of
commercial and tourist space in comparison to 1,500,000 square meters of floor area
allocated under the Jerusalem Gateway Project). Yet, it draws ample international
criticism and is being promoted as a political statement of the Israeli government
(Emek Shaveh, 2017). the contestation revolving this project demonstrates the general
claim made by planners and decision-makers, who describe the decision whether to
implement plans in East Jerusalem as subject to exogenous forces and unpredictable
dynamics. This state of affairs entails the above mentioned “planning uncertainty”,
embedded in the contestation over the Israeli occupation and in the unfixed and
contested nature of Jerusalem’s borders.

The city center as a space of manufactured certainty

Analyzing the recent plans for West Jerusalem’s city center in the context of “planning
uncertainty” reveals a dual trajectory of urban development: in the east Israel continues
its incremental project of Judaization, colonization and territorial control, driven by
ethno-national politics and subject to international criticism. Simultaneously, in the
14 R. BAR

west, the municipality works to redirect economic activities into the urban core while
pulling the city center towards the west. Officially, this westward orientation is meant to
distance intense development from the Holy Basin around the Old City and to leverage
the accessibility to Tel Aviv and to the coastal areas; de-facto, it also pulls the city center
away from the contested areas. This dual motivation is embodied in the planning of
a so-called “new city” – a mirror image of the Old City, supposedly free and unrest-
ricted, which will provide an extensive volume of office space, congress halls and hotel
rooms west of the Green Line.
This demarcation of the city center west of the Green Line and the suggestion to
develop a new high-profile quarter at its most western edge correspond with current
policies that systematically deprive the Palestinian areas, for which hardly any plans are
authorized or implemented, and where municipal investments are lacking in compar-
ison to those for Jewish areas (Ir Amim, 2016; Margalit, 2006). However, this develop-
ment pattern serves yet another goal – it furnishes necessary conditions for stimulating
economic activities, for attracting foreign investments and for increasing the city’s
financial independence vis-à-vis the state. Taking into account the context of geopoli-
tical conflict and “planning uncertainty”, this pattern represents an attempt to hedge-
out uncertainty and to create a space of manufactured stability and normality, under
which plans can be approved and implemented regardless of the Israeli occupation that
continues uninterruptedly in the east.
The hedging-out of uncertainty is an active process that is based on a three-layered
strategy:

(a) Flexible Boundaries. As described above, in the post-2000 plans the city center’s
boundaries are expanded to include a site at the city’s western entrance, while
creating a distinction between the “general” city center and the Palestinian and ultra-
orthodox sub-centers. In doing so, the demarcation of the “city center” shifts, once
again, in concurrence with the intensifying uncertainty regarding the city’s borders,
as the future of Jerusalem was discussed in the Israeli-Palestinian talks circa 2000.

While other city centers in various cities may also be characterized by unfixed boundaries
that change over time, in the case of Jerusalem these boundaries are molded to hedge-out
uncertainty, contestation and international intervention, to exclude the ultra-orthodox and
Arab populations, and to market Jerusalem as an economically competitive city. The main
argument here not only stresses the boundaries that planners construct in the face of
uncertainty, but also the flexibility of these boundaries, which are shifted on a local scale as
a tool for dealing with shifting boundaries at the national scale.

As noted above, the idea of dynamic borders is not new in the context of Jerusalem (Dumper,
2014; Shlay & Rosen, 2010). However, the case of West Jerusalem’s city center demonstrates
that the political remaking of boundaries can also occur in the urban core and not only along
a city’s edges. Furthermore, it shows that these boundaries constitute (in)visible demarcations
of economic opportunities and spatial transformations. Although they are not composed of
physical barriers, the boundaries are nonetheless tangible, as they direct planning efforts and
public resources within the city. In this case, the boundaries direct resources towards a new
hub of commerce, business and tourism that is meant to attract high-end firms, visitors and
investors. This hub represents an antithesis to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish and Palestinian
populations, which are both economically disadvantaged groups perceived as the “Other” and
framed as a burden on the city’s economic independence.
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 15

(b) Co-dependent Trajectories. The concurrence of the westward expansion of the city
center (in West Jerusalem) and the ongoing project of Judaization and territorial
control (in East Jerusalem) can seem unsystematic or even paradoxical. In unpacking
this apparent paradox, two possible explanations can be given. According to the first,
the municipality distances its commercial core from the contested areas and ostensibly
conforms to international pressure, thus challenging hegemonic state discourse that
formally denies any such considerations. According to the second explanation,
although they seem to represent two different logics, the market-driven development
in the west does not contradict the national-territorial agenda dominating the east. On
the contrary, the former can support the latter: it creates opportunities for economic
development free of international scrutiny and establishes an appearance of normality
and stability within a precarious urban and political setting. Put differently, while the
Israeli authorities continue to develop projects in East Jerusalem, the development in
the city’s Western edge provides certainty, stability and economic opportunities that are
lacking in the Eastern projects. From an historical perspective, while the post-1967
plans aimed to eternally bind the “united city” (and reinforce the occupation) through
the creation of one compact core that merges the Palestinian and Jewish centers, the
post-2000 plans sustain the status quo with a different strategy: pulling the city center in
the opposite direction into more consensual territories.
(c) A-contextual Imaginaries. The urban regeneration of the city center was based on
precedents from various Western cities, with planners intentionally employing a non-
Jerusalemite urban language and drawing inspiration from globally mobile policies that
are not associated with local traditions. This strategy generates a global, universal and
non-contextual space that serves multiple goals. First, it conforms to the aesthetic
preferences and needs of the global market, creating a place that can simultaneously
be everywhere and anywhere (Zukin, 2010). Second, in using an urban language that is
new to the city, it can provide a sense of escapism and normality, as an antithesis to the
instability and conflict associated with Jerusalem. Finally, it reframes the city center as
a global and liberal place that can cater to young, liberal professionals, in contrast to the
ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian populations, who are perceived as more traditional and
religious. In this respect, the “new city” at the western edge not only distances the center
of gravity from conflictual areas in the East but also from the image of Jerusalem as
economically deprived. Thus, the city center is shifted to avoid the “Other”, both from
an ethnic-national perspective and from an economic-cultural one.

Discussion: conflict, uncertainty and urban planning

This article investigated the urban regeneration of Jerusalem’s city center through a two-tier
analysis: a historical analysis has shown that the “city center”, as defined and planned by
authorities, is an unfixed locale that shifts and changes in concurrence with shifts in the city’s
borders and in response to limitations and opportunities. More specifically, the analysis has
shown that the post-2000 plans echo the pre-1967 planning patterns, with the westward
orientation of the city center and with the distinction between sub-groups. Building on this
understanding, a geopolitical analysis has shown that the shifting boundaries of the city center
can serve as a political tool, enabling the municipality to create a space of manufactured
16 R. BAR

stability and normality while the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem continues just a few
kilometers away.
This space of stability and normality functions on both practical and symbolic levels.
Practically, it provides office spaces, congress halls and hotels rooms west of the Green Line.
Symbolically, it reframes the center of Jerusalem as global and universal and detaches it from
the instability, conflict and economic deprivation associated with Jerusalem. Both levels enable
the municipality of Jerusalem to promote entrepreneurial urbanism, to stimulate economic
growth and to work towards economic independence from the state, in a climate of conflict
and contestation. To do so, the plans orient the city center both physically and conceptually
towards Tel Aviv and to other Western cities, while disassociating from issues strongly
affiliated with Jerusalem: geopolitical conflict, international critique and the city’s economic-
ally disadvantaged populations (i.e. Palestinians and ultra-Orthodox Jews).
This process was described in the article as “hedging-out uncertainty”. Yet, as Zeiderman,
Kaker, Silver, and Wood (2015) assert, “uncertainty is rarely if ever eradicated from the urban
milieu; rather it is managed, displaced, deferred, reconfigured, or reproduced” (p. 299).
Moreover, the burden of uncertainty is unequally distributed, and as the powerful work to
diminish uncertainty and to establish autonomy, their actions produce uncertainty and
restrictions for the weak (Marris, 2003). Indeed, in Jerusalem, the act of hedging-out uncer-
tainty holds political significance: the diversion of the city center to the west denies economic
opportunities from the Palestinian East Jerusalem, de-facto creating a disengagement yet
without providing a long-term solution for Palestinian sovereignty. This process entails
a dual form of injustice, as planners do not formally engage with the openness of the city’s
future (thus abiding to the formal Israeli agenda) yet at the same time distance the city center
and its inherent opportunities from the Palestinian neighborhoods. Hence, the shifting of the
city center’s boundaries results in (a) an exclusionary and differential allocation of economic
opportunities, and in (b) the legitimization of Jerusalem as an economic hub, by physically
decoupling the city’s economic development in the west from Israel’s ethno-national policies
in the east.
Importantly, the case demonstrates that the Israeli control over East Jerusalem is not only
achieved through grand gestures, such as land confiscations, the construction of Jewish
neighborhoods and the uneven provision of infrastructure. The Israeli control over East
Jerusalem is accomplished also through aesthetics, symbolism and a nuanced remaking of
boundaries, all of which create the appearance of non-contextual normality in the urban core.
These insights challenge the existing analytic distinction between “West Jerusalem“ and ”East
Jerusalem” and stress that both areas are currently planned under the same system (albeit with
different consequences) (Wari, 2011). These insights also demonstrate that conflictual locales
should be examined through their more consensual areas and that the city center is just as
much a political sphere as the city’s boundaries.
Furthermore, the case of Jerusalem reveals a juxtaposition of ethno-national ideologies and
neoliberal interests (Yacobi, 2012) and illustrates the intersection of socio-cultural conditions,
elite preferences and national political forces (Blander et al., 2018). Notably, the findings
demonstrate a need to move away from unidimensional explanations (Allegra, Casaglia, &
Rokem, 2012; Rokem, 2016; Yiftachel, 2016) and to direct more attention to otherwise
neglected “ordinary” urban developments (Charney & Rosen, 2014). This understanding of
Jerusalem at the juncture between the ordinary and unordinary challenges the “predominance
of ethno-national splits and contested sovereignties” (Boano, 2016, p. 460), which often
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 17

sidelines ostensibly benign urban policies and models adopted from other cities. In conflictual
cities such as Jerusalem, the global mobility of “ordinary” urban policies is intermingled with
“unordinary” local conditions, demonstrating that the “process of ‘making-up’ policy is an
acutely political one” (Ward, 2006, p. 70).
In revisiting the interconnection between conflict, uncertainty and urban planning,
this article has shown how uncertainty manifests in the planning process and how this
has shaped and continues to shape the development of Jerusalem’s city center.
Importantly, the case reveals an inherent tension between planners’ agency and their
contextual constrains when planning in a state of conflict and uncertainty. On one
hand, and at least in this case, planners and decision-makers exhibit an “ability to act
strategically in relation to the context in which they operate” (Rokem & Allegra, 2016,
p. 640), as they do not consider uncertainty to be paralyzing or overwhelming but
rather a given state in which they carve out a space that they can influence. They work
to reduce, control and manage uncertainty as often described in the literature (Abbott,
2005, 2012; Christensen, 1985; Marris, 1987), conceiving a “new city”, or a clean slate,
in which their autonomy is relatively high and the geopolitical uncertainty is relatively
limited. Yet, on the other hand, the agency of planners and decision-makers is imma-
nently confined, as they reduce, control and manage uncertainty by focusing on
a specific locale (the city center) and a specific aim (generating economic activities).
They deal with uncertainty by retreating to a safe harbor of stability and economic
opportunity, while the conflict beyond the boundaries of this locale remains overlooked
and the openness of the future is officially ignored.

Notes
1. These were two Israeli-Palestinian summits that aimed (and failed) to reach a permanent
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The question of Jerusalem was discussed in
these talks for the first time.
2. The Second Intifada (also known as the al-Aqsa Intifada) was the second Palestinian
uprising against the Israeli occupation. It started in September 2000 after Ariel Sharon
visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (where al-Aqsa Mosque is located).

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Tali Hatuka, the head of the Laboratory for Contemporary Urban Design at
Tel Aviv University, for her assistance and insights throughout this research project, and the
faculty and fellows at the Safra Center for Ethics, both at Harvard and at Tel Aviv University,
where earlier versions of this paper were presented.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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A. Interviews:

● A senior planner in the “Jerusalem 2000” Master Plan; March 2014, Jerusalem.
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 21

● A senior planner in the Jerusalem Municipality; March 2014, Jerusalem.

● A senior planner in the Jerusalem District Planning Bureau; March 2014, Jerusalem.
● A senior planner in the Jerusalem District Planning Bureau; March 2014, Jerusalem.
● A senior architect in the Jerusalem Municipality; July 2015 and June 2015, Jerusalem.
● A senior planner in the urban regeneration plan for the city center; December 2014, Jerusalem.
● A senior official in Eden - the Jerusalem Center Development Company

B. Observations in conferences and seminars (attended by senior planners and decision makers):

● A lecture and discussion during the Israeli Planners Association Annual Conference, Jerusalem,
February 2014.
● Lectures and roundtable discussions during the symposium “Jerusalem 2020: the five year
plan for competitiveness and economic growth”, Jerusalem, May 2015.
● Lecture and tour in the Jerusalem Gateway Project, Jerusalem, October 2015.
● Symposium about future prominent projects in Jerusalem, Jerusalem, October 2015.
● Symposium at the Jerusalem municipality about “development patterns in Jerusalem”,
Jerusalem, May 2016.
● Discussion at the Economic Development Committee at the Jerusalem Municipality, Jerusalem,
May 2016.

C. Transcripts and official records:

● Jerusalem Regional Planning Committee, 25/03/2008.

● Jerusalem Regional Planning Committee, 13/05/2008.
● Jerusalem Regional Planning Committee, 29/07/2008.
● Jerusalem Regional Planning Committee, 05/05/2009.
● Economic Affairs Committee in the Israel Parliament, 27/05/2014.