6533b82dfe1ef96bd12918da

RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Reality and Unreality of Jerusalem

subject

description

Urban Planning emerged out to achieve welfare and progress of human being. Many theorists wrote about the utopian and the good city. Planners has been working hard to create suitable and workable cities. However, there are situations in which planning is used to strengthen a dominant group upon marginalized groups. Jerusalem is one of those cases in which planning is used as a control tool upon other groups. The occupation of Jerusalem from the Israeli side and the injustice in the city, has forced many theorists to think about the future of Jerusalem. Since the beginning of the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis more several solutions have been proposed for the context of Jerusalem (Khamaisi, 2002). One of these proposals is a bi-national capital that proposed by Yiftachel and Yacobi (2002). They proposed a united capital under sovereignty of Palestinians and Israelis, proposing a new description for Jerusalem to be a capital region. While the old city of Jerusalem with its surrounding reaching an area about three square kilometers -according to their point of view- this area should be managed by international religious committee named by 'Holy City Council'. This presentation investigates the Israeli practice of planning in Jerusalem which aims to control Palestinians by land confiscations, building Israeli settlements, and limiting their natural expansion. In addition to that it discusses bi-national proposal mentioned above in relation with the reality. The analysis and discussion bases on analysis of the existing situation of Jerusalem and theory developed by Friedman which connects planning with ideology and politics. Friedman points out that “modern planning practice is a political process " and “Planning was regarded as an alternative to politics” (Friedman, 1987), arguing planning is a primarily ideological activity, and emphasizes that “Planning is done by individuals whose fundamental motivations derive in part from an ideological interpretation of the function of planning in society. This influences the choice of problems, method of work and proposed solutions” (Simmie, 1974).