New Article: Biger, International Boundaries and the Change of Landscape

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Aryeh

Biger, Gideon. “International Boundaries and the Change of Landscape: The Israel-Egypt Boundary as a Case Study.” Studia z Geografii Politycznej i Historycznej 4 (2015): 55-64.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/2300-0562.04.03

Abstract

International boundaries, their history, location, disputes concerning their exact delimitation, their strategically importance, and other facts led many scholars to deal with that important subject. International lawyers, geographers, historians, political scientists, researchers of international relations, cartographers, military people, all are concerned with the location of a boundary, its legal status, its history, its defensible ability and so on. However, the influence of the international boundaries upon the landscape where they run has not received the attention to its merits. This article will present some areas of this kind, where a political boundary brought changes to the landscape on both sides of it. The boundary between Israel and Egypt will be the case study, although some other areas will be presented.

New Article: Lerman & Omer, Urban Area Types and Spatial Distribution of Pedestrians

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Aryeh

Lerman, Yoav, and Itzhak Omer. “Urban Area Types and Spatial Distribution of Pedestrians: Lessons from Tel Aviv.” Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 55 (2016): 11-23.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2015.09.010

Abstract

This study examines the role of two urban area types – traditional and contemporary – with regard to pedestrian movement volume and distribution. This study focuses on four dimensions of urban areas which have potential influence on pedestrian movement: (i) a spatial dimension based on road network structure; (ii) a functional dimension of land uses such as retail fronts; (iii) a physical dimension of road sections; and (iv) a demographic dimension of population and employment densities. Four research areas in Tel Aviv are examined and each of these areas is divided to two adjacent sub-areas — a traditional sub-area and a contemporary one. The aim is to clarify: (i) the character of urban areas that were created following different urban design paradigms; (ii) the relative contribution of the spatial, functional, physical and demographic dimensions to pedestrian movement in urban areas of different types. The findings show significant differences between adjacent traditional and contemporary sub-areas. Specifically, traditional sub-areas have higher levels of spatial connectivity and retail fronts distribution as well as higher pedestrian movement volume. The spatial dimension has the strongest overall connection to pedestrian movement, and particularly for traditional sub-areas, while the physical dimension has the strongest connection to pedestrian movement for the contemporary sub-areas.

New Article: Omer & Goldblatt, Spatial Patterns of Retail Activity in Israeli Cities

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Aryeh

Omer, Itzhak, and Ran Goldblatt. “Spatial Patterns of Retail Activity and Street Network Structure in New and Traditional Israeli Cities.” Urban Geography (early view; online first).

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2015.1101258

Abstract

The association between spatial patterns of retail activity and the spatial configuration of street networks was examined by means of the space syntax methodology in eight Israeli cities that represent two city types, characterized by different planning approaches and urban growth: (i) new towns, which were established according to a comprehensive city plan and modern planning concepts of “tree-like” hierarchical street networks and “neighborhood units”; (ii) older cities, where street networks and the spatial patterns of retail activity were formed incrementally during their growth. Unlike in older cities, retail activity in new towns concentrates in relatively less-accessible and intermediate locations. This is indicated by a weak correlation between retail activity and the street network’s Integration and Choice centrality measures. The comparison between Israeli cities illustrates the influence of urban growth and planning approaches on the formation of retail activity and its interaction with the structure of the street network.

New Book: Kotef, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Aryeh

Kotef, Hagar. Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.

We live within political systems that increasingly seek to control movement, organized around both the desire and ability to determine who is permitted to enter what sorts of spaces, from gated communities to nation-states. In Movement and the Ordering of Freedom, Hagar Kotef examines the roles of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces. Ranging from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, this book shows how concepts of freedom, security, and violence take form and find justification via “regimes of movement.” Kotef traces contemporary structures of global (im)mobility and resistance to the schism in liberal political theory, which embodied the idea of “liberty” in movement while simultaneously regulating mobility according to a racial, classed, and gendered matrix of exclusions.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements

Introduction
1. Between Imaginary Lines: Violence and Its Justifications at the Military Checkpoints in Occupied Palestine / Hagar Kotef and Merav Amir
2. An Interlude: A Tale of Two Roads—On Freedom and Movement
3. The Fence That “Ill Deserves the Name of Confinement”: Locomotion and the Liberal Body
4. The Problem of “Excessive” Movement
5. The “Substance and Meaning of All Things Political”: On Other Bodies
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

HAGAR KOTEF is based at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University.

New Article: Hananel, Rethinking Israel’s National Land Policy

Posted on July 21, 2015 by Aryeh

Hananel, Ravit. “The Land Narrative: Rethinking Israel’s National Land Policy.” Land Use Policy 45 (2015): 128-40.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.01.015

Abstract

The land narrative tells the unique story of Israel’s national land policy. Its historical and ideological roots are in the early 1900s, when the Zionist movement and the Jewish National Fund were founded, but it continues to influence spatial policy and land allocation in Israel today. The land narrative is based on the distinction between the urban sector and the rural-agricultural sector and on the clear preference—at least at the ideological level—for the rural-agricultural sector. However, despite the decision-makers’ clear preference for the members of the cooperative and communal rural sector, over time the urban residents’ have received more land rights de facto. This study provides an explanation of this dissonance by exploring the land narrative, examines its broad implications for Israeli society, and discusses its future implications.

New Article: Singer and Bickel, Women’s Walking Decisions and Ultra-Orthodox Enclaves in Jerusalem

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Aryeh

Singer, Rachel and Rachel Bickel. ” Which Way to Go? Women’s Walking Decisions and Ultra-Orthodox Enclaves in Jerusalem.” Gender, Place and Culture 22.7 (2015): 987-1006.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2014.939153

Abstract

This article explores how material and ideological forms of social exclusion manifest at the borders of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and play out in the walking patterns of surrounding (non-Ultra-Orthodox) populations. It is based on a pilot study that uses a mixed methods design consisting of mental maps and questionnaires to examine how (particularly female) residents living in close proximity to Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods perceive these spaces, experience themselves in relation to the gender norms reproduced there and make wayfinding choices accordingly. This study builds on previous ones that have explored both the contested terrain of Jerusalem’s city center and the dynamic relationship between the social and the spatial to include a discussion of how religiosity and cultural politics express themselves in the commonplace, embodied act of the female pedestrian.