New Article: Schipper, Towards a ‘Post-Neoliberal’ Mode of Housing Regulation

Schipper, Sebastian. “Towards a ‘Post-Neoliberal’ Mode of Housing Regulation? The Israeli Social Protest of Summer 2011.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12318

 

Abstract

In the summer of 2011, after decades of virtually uncontested neoliberalization, Israel was swept by unprecedented protests against the rising cost of living, social inequality and, most particularly, escalating housing prices. Within two weeks, a small protest camp established on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv had grown into a mass movement involving hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Given an ambivalent sense of the significance of urban movements in bringing about social change, the aim of this article is to analyze whether the Israeli social protest was able to push forward a post-neoliberal mode of housing regulation. Building on a framework developed by Brenner, Peck and Theodore to grasp transformations in the landscape of regulatory restructuring, this article argues that the movement has indeed achieved a far-reaching hegemonic shift in public discourse and also become an important driver in promoting regulatory experiments. Despite its achievements, however, the movement was unable to challenge the Israeli ‘rule regime’ of neoliberalization, on account of two structural constraints that were shielded by the most powerful state apparatuses: the commodity character of housing; and a neoliberalized land regime, where state-owned land is treated as a profit machine for public finance.

 

 

 

ToC: Israel Affairs 22.2 (2016)

Israel Affairs, Volume 22, Issue 2, April 2016 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online. This new issue contains the following articles: Articles Writing Jewish history David Vital Pages: 257-269 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140346 How do states die: lessons for Israel Steven R. David Pages: 270-290 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140358Towards a biblical psychology for modern Israel: 10 guides for healthy living Kalman J. Kaplan Pages: 291-317 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140349 The past as a yardstick: Europeans, Muslim migrants and the onus of European-Jewish histories Amikam Nachmani Pages: 318-354 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140355 The mental cleavage of Israeli politics Eyal Lewin Pages: 355-378 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140352 Framing policy paradigms: population dispersal and the Gaza withdrawal Matt Evans Pages: 379-400 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140353 National party strategies in local elections: a theory and some evidence from the Israeli case David Nachmias, Maoz Rosenthal & Hani Zubida Pages: 401-422 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140356 ‘I have two homelands’: constructing and managing Iranian Jewish and Persian Israeli identities Rusi Jaspal Pages: 423-443 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140348 Avoiding longing: the case of ‘hidden children’ in the Holocaust Galiya Rabinovitch & Efrat Kass Pages: 444-458 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140350 ‘Are you being served?’ The Jewish Agency and the absorption of Ethiopian immigration | Adi Binhas Pages: 459-478 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140345 The danger of Israel according to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi Shaul Bartal Pages: 479-491 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140343 Leisure in the twenty-first century: the case of Israel Nitza Davidovitch & Dan Soen Pages: 492-511 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140347 Limits to cooperation: why Israel does not want to become a member of the International Energy Agency Elai Rettig Pages: 512-527 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140357 The attitude of the local press to marginal groups: between solidarity and alienation Smadar Ben-Asher & Ella Ben-Atar Pages: 528-548 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140344 The construction of Israeli ‘masculinity’ in the sports arena Moshe Levy, Einat Hollander & Smadar Noy-Canyon Pages: 549-567 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140351 Book Reviews From empathy to denial: Arab responses to the Holocaust Alice A. Butler-Smith Pages: 568-570 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140354 Holocaust images and picturing catastrophe: the cultural politics of seeing Alice A. Butler-Smith Pages: 570-572 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140342s

New Article: Tamari et al, Urban Tribalism: Negotiating Form, Function and Social Milieu in Bedouin Towns

Tamari, Shlomit, Rachel Katoshevski, Yuval Karplus, and Steven C. Dinero. “Urban Tribalism: Negotiating Form, Function and Social Milieu in Bedouin Towns, Israel.” City, Territory and Architecture 3.2 (2016): 14pp.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40410-016-0031-3

 

Abstract

Historically, the tribe was a central pillar of Bedouin society. Recently, the forcibly resettled-Bedouin of Israel’s Negev Desert have experienced profound socio-economic transition and change in addition to spatial relocation. This paper offers a critical examination of the manner in which the tribe has served to inform top-down State-led urban planning, resettlement and housing policies while remaining a vital aspect of Bedouin life. We suggest that in an ironic twist, these policies have generated a new form of urban tribalism that challenges the development of a “modern,” “western” social fabric and practices of citizenship as initially envisioned by State officials.

 

 

 

New Article: Gonen, Widespread and Diverse Forms of Gentrification in Israel

Gonen, Amiram. “Widespread and Diverse Forms of Gentrification in Israel.” In Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement (ed. Loretta Lees,Hyun Bang Shin,and Ernesto Lopez-Morales; Bristol, UK and Chicago, IL: Policy Press, 2015): 143-63.

 

Extract

My ongoing observations over the last three decades on patterns of gentrification in Israeli inner cities, suburban towns and rural communities have led me to view gentrification from a different geographical perspective to the one shared by many Western researchers writing on gentrification. Research on gentrification originated in the heart of some Western cities and, therefore, gentrification was often characterised as primarily an inner-urban phenomenon. It was first observed and defined in an academic fashion in inner London and subsequently studied in the 1980s and early 1990s in the inner city of some North American and British cities. Indeed, the settling of middle class households in lower-social class neighbourhoods of the inner city has achieved sizeable proportions in Western cities since the 1970s.

[…]

The Israeli experience raises the issue of the need to widen the scope of the term ‘gentrification’ beyond lower-class neighbourhoods. This definitional widening is especially relevant to middle-class neighbourhoods in the inner city that have undergone some social downscaling, later reversed due to the return of middle-class households. I suggest that this return of such neighbourhoods to being again solidly middle-class areas should be included within the definition of gentrification as a special category of ‘regentrification’, added to the one proposed as ‘supergentrification’ for the further gentrification of already-gentrified neighbourhoods by the very rich global elites.

 

 

Research Paper: Sayag and Zussman, Distribution of Rental Assistance Between Tenants and Landlords: The Case of Students in Central Jerusalem

Sayag, Doron, and Noam Zussman. “The Distribution of Rental Assistance Between Tenants and Landlords: The Case of Students in Central Jerusalem.” Discussion Paper No. 2015.1 (February 2015), Bank of Israel Research Department(41 pp).

 

URL: http://www.boi.org.il/he/Research/DocLib/dp201501e.pdf (PDF)

Abstract

Students living in rental apartments in central Jerusalem were provided grants in 2006–11, in order to encourage urban renewal. This led to a marked increase in the number of students in the area. This study examined the distribution of the benefit between the tenants and the landlords. It relied predominantly on rental advertisements as well as actual rents from 2000–2012, and on administrative data of the rent paid by grant recipients. The research method was based on hedonic estimations of the rent using a difference-in-differences method—the rent in the center of the city during the grants period compared with the periods before and after, vis-à-vis that difference in similar neighborhoods (including adjacent to the city center) during those periods. The research indicates—subject to the assumption that actual rents and prices quoted in rental notices moved together—that in the periods around the start of the grant program and around its cancellation, the share of the grants reaching the recipients’ landlords ranged from one-fifth to two-fifths. The grants led to an increase in rents in the center of the city for nonrecipients as well, so that the overall additional rent is equivalent to four-fifths of the grant amounts. These rates are within the broad range of findings worldwide.

 

 

New Book: Shmueli and Khamaisi, Israel’s Invisible Negev Bedouin

Shmueli, Deborah F., and Rassem Khamaisi. Israel’s Invisible Negev Bedouin. Issues of Land and Spatial Planning New York: Springer, 2015.

 

This Brief provides a contextual framework for exploring the settlement rights of Israel’s Bedouin population of the Negev desert, a traditionally pastoral nomadic Arab population. In 1948, the Israeli government relocated this population from the Negev region to settlements in Siyag. The explicit aim was to control the Negev area for security purposes, sedentarize a nomadic people, and to improve their living conditions and bring them into the modern economy. Since then, many of the Bedouin population have continued to urbanize, moving into smaller towns and cities, while some remain in the settlement. The Israeli government’s has recently proposed a new settlement policy towards the Bedouin population, that would expel many from their current homes, which came into recent controversy with the UN Human Rights commission, causing it to be withdrawn. Israel as a whole has very complex social, cultural, and political fabric with territorial uncertainties. This Brief aims to provide an overview of the current situation, provide a theoretical, historical and legal context, explore barriers to implementation of previously proposed policies, and provide potential solutions to improve individual and collective stability and balance the cultural and territorial needs of the Bedouin population with the larger goals of the Israeli government. This work will be of interest to researchers studying Israel specifically, as well as researchers in urban planning, public policy, and issues related to indigenous populations and human rights.

 

Table of Contents

Front Matter
Pages i-xi

Introduction
Pages 1-4

Bedouin: Evolving Meanings
Pages 5-12

Arab Communities of Israel and Their Urbanization
Pages 13-20

Theoretical Context: Justice, Urbanism, and Indigenous Peoples
Pages 21-29

Negev (in Hebrew) or Naqab (in Arabic) Bedouin
Pages 31-35

Evolution of Local Authorities: A Historical Overview
Pages 37-45

Resettlement Planning 1948–Present
Pages 47-68

Lessons Learned
Pages 69-75

Proposals for Flexible Bedouin Resettlement and Collaborative Planning
Pages 77-90

Back Matter
Pages 91-102

Dissertation: Bardi, Cleansing, Constructing, and Curating the State: India/Pakistan ’47 and Israel/Palestine ’48

Bardi, Ariel Sophia. Cleansing, Constructing, and Curating the State: India/Pakistan ’47 and Israel/Palestine ’48 , PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 2015.

 
URL: http://gradworks.umi.com/36/63/3663495.html

 
Abstract

This dissertation looks at the ways in which the landscape and the built environment have been called upon and transformed into conduits of national belonging, focusing on the near-simultaneous emergences of Israel, India, and Pakistan. It considers the role of space in consolidating new national bodies, drawing on a variety of texts from both regions: memoirs, films, archival and field photos, housing plans, and the architectural landscape itself.

The first chapter explores the Jewish and Indian Muslim bids for sovereign lands along with the rise of Hindu nationalism. Looking at the founding of Pakistan and Israel, it considers the self-replicative logic of partition and the emergence of the homeland state. Arguing for the importance of image and space in conjuring new nationhoods, the second chapter compares systems of spatial control, visual regimes that mounted and imposed new national imaginaries. In India, Pakistan, and Israel/Palestine, selective acts of destruction transformed formerly shared spaces, inflecting the landscape with three distinct new states.

The third chapter looks at post-state refugee rehabilitation projects, focusing specifically on Mizrahi, or Arab Jewish, immigration to the Israeli hinterlands, and Mizrahi, or Indian refugee, resettlement within the Pakistani province of Sindh. In both regions, housing projects re-circumscribed place of origin, challenging the purported unity of each religiously pooled state and relegating refugees to the margins of each new nation. Tracing the relationship between architecture and partition, it considers the different modalities bound up in the process of national absorption. The fourth chapter compares historical preservation projects in India, Pakistan, Israel, and Palestine, and examines the role of heritage sites in visualizing statehood and homogenizing mixed spaces. Considering the furor over India’s Babri Masjid, it posits preservation as a corollary to demolition, and examines a selection of heritage locations in Israel and Pakistan while arguing for the uses of the past in upholding majority collectivities. Finally, the conclusion considers the afterlives of partition in places such as Kashmir, the West Bank, and India’s far northeast, in ongoing occupations that are as visual and spatial as they are material, economic, and political.

 

 

Report: A Picture of the Nation, 2015; Taub Center for Social Policy

The Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel Presents:

A Picture of the Nation: Israel’s Society and Economy in Figures, one of the Center’s most popular publications, provides concise and thought-provoking information on Israel’s long-run economic and social trajectories.  Each page of this booklet contains a single graph and short, accompanying text that, when combined, provide the reader with a broad and comprehensive understanding of key socioeconomic issues in Israel today.  Policy makers, the media, the general public, and the global Jewish community look to the Picture of the Nation as an invaluable and highly accessible resource on topics ranging from the labor market to education, poverty and much more.

For the English page, including PDF and PPT versions of the report, as well as previous reports (2002-2014), click here.

For the Hebrew page, click here.

PDF version in English: Picture of the Nation, 2015.

PDF version in Hebrew: תמונת מצב המדינה, 2015.

New Article: Feniger & Kallus, Israeli Planning in the Shah’s Iran

Feniger, Neta, and Rachel Kallus. “Israeli Planning in the Shah’s Iran: A Forgotten Episode.” Planning Perspectives 30.2 (2015): 231-51.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2014.933677

 

Abstract

In the 1970s, while the rest of the world was undergoing recession, vast economic growth in Iran, leading to fast urbanization, generated a growing international building market in which Israeli construction firms and architects also participated, benefiting from the good bilateral relationships at the time. To examine the experience of Israeli architects working in Iran and how it influenced their professional practice, this paper focuses on two projects planned and built simultaneously by Israeli teams. The Navy project was comprised of three massive housing estates and public amenities for the Iranian Navy’s troops and families on the coast of the Persian Gulf. The Eskan Towers in Tehran was a complex of residential luxury towers and a commercial centre catering for the Iranian elite. Review of these cases indicates that national knowledge was not always the basis for transnational planning, and that the international arena itself became the source of knowledge and flow. In the Navy project, the architect derived his ideas from professional practices acquired back home, while in the Eskan Towers project the team was confronted with the free-market economy and a globalized practice.

 

New Book: Wilhelm and Gust, eds. New Towns for a New State (German)

Wilhelm, Karin and Kerstin Gust, eds. Neue Städte für einen neuen Staat. Die städtebauliche Erfindung des modernen Israel und der Wiederaufbau in der BRD. Eine Annäherung. Bielefeld: transcript, 2013.

URL: http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-2204-1/neue-staedte-fuer-einen-neuen-staat

Abstract

Israel and Palestine – What is today presented as a seemingly hopeless political situation, began with optimism, albeit a naive dream, towards building a peaceful society for all religions with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. For this purpose, the economist Edgar Salin (1892-1974) founded in 1958 “The Israel Economic and Sociological Research Project (IESRP),” which was to play a central role in the establishment of the “new towns” in Israel. The contributions here examine for the first time in a systematic way this project and its cultural and political importance, as well as relevant topics including planning debates and construction issues in the Federal Republic of Germany.

With contributions by Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Meron Benvenisti, Jörn Düwel, Zvi Efrat, Anton Föllmi, Rachel callus, Ruth Kark, Anna Minta, Andreas Nachama, Willi Oberkrome, Martin Peschken, Bertram Schefold, Axel Schildt, Julius H. Schoeps, Korinna Schönhärl, Yaakov Sharett, Thomas Sieverts, Joachim Trezib, Stefan Vogt, Georg Wagner Kyora, Karin Wilhelm, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn and Moshe Zuckermann.

Click here for a Table of Contents (in German)

Lecture: Israel’s Housing Policies

The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

The Ruth Ellen Steinman and Edward J. Bloustein Memorial Lecture

The Evolution of Israel’s Housing Policies: Planning in the Face of Crisis
Rachelle Alterman, David Azrieli Chair in Architecture/Town Planning,
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Thursday, February 25, 5:30 p.m.

The Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
Civic Square Building

 

RSVP by Feb 16,  2010.

Source URL: http://jewishstudies.rutgers.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=361&Itemid=200