Planning policy? Between long-term planning and zoning amendments in the Israeli planning system

The Israeli planning system, like many other Western systems, is a regulatory system, meaning that statutory land-use plans are attempts at both setting long-term planning policy and defining planning rights. However, planning in Israel faces a growing gap between its official structure and what is actually implemented. Mainly, an inconsistency exists between the formal top-to-bottom approach of the system and the flexible dynamics that occur in practice. In this paper I focus on the prevalent local zoning amendment procedure and examine its background as well as its implications. Based on this, the paper claims that in Israel, the tension between certainty and flexibility in planning creates a spatially disturbed behavior, which actively tests the bans and limits of existing possibilities.

Operationalizing Community Placemaking: A Critical Relationship-Based Typology

Placemaking is a relatively new planning technique formulated as an alternative to formal, comprehensive, top-down land-use planning. Instead of the statutory process and product, placemaking offers an open-ended, unstructured framework for planning and implementing focused interventions. This study applies a critical look at how this relatively loose framework operates in practice. Based on an investigation of community placemaking projects in southern Israeli cities, we present four models of placemaking, organized around two main axes: the goal axis, which ranges from a broad community goal to a narrow, predetermined aim, and the motivation axis, which ranges from internal to external motivation. The four types of placemaking emerging from the combination of these considerations are (1) traditional, (2) governmental, (3) artistic-economic, and (4) segregative, based on the varied socio-spatial relations between the stakeholders. This typology serves as a warning sign for possible ways that processes with loose boundaries can be exploited, and the setbacks to which they can lead. It offers a helpful framework for further advancements in placemaking, making it an effective tool for socially and environmentally sustainable urbanism

The actual impact of comprehensive land-use plans: Insights from high resolution observations

Like most EU and US planning systems, planning in Israel aims to promote certainty regarding future development by employing statutory land-use plans for stabilizing and binding the development of land use. In Israel, district planning from the 1980s onwards took place in the form of long-term land-use plans. However, in practice, Israeli planning witnessed a movement toward discretionary-oriented decision-making, providing for revisions of the land-use plans and subsequently diminishing its efficacy. A pending reform suggests eliminating district land-use plans and absorbing them into national and local plans. Concerning the debate on the future of the Israeli planning system, this research aims to assess the gap between certainty-oriented regulation and actual development, often occurring on a case-by-case basis. Our aim is to evaluate the actual performance of a district land-use plan, focusing particularly on aspects of land-use. Remote Sensing and GIS-based Plan Implementation Evaluation (PIE) analysis was used to test the impact of a comprehensive outline plan for Israel's Central District on the actual development of the built environment. The results show fundamental gaps between the original land-use assignments of the district plan and actual development. The limited effectiveness of regulatory land-use planning for complex, densely populated districts is then discussed in line with the certainty–flexibility dilemma in land-use planning and the structure of planning decision-making in Israel

Assessing innovation: Dynamics of high-rise development in an Israeli city

Urban models serve as laboratories, providing researchers with the opportunity to assess the impact of a wide range of social and economic processes on the development of a built environment. Novelty and unexpected changes play an essential role in this development, but these are difficult to formalize and imitate. Typically, urban models simulate innovation by introducing stochastic fluctuations of the pre-established development rules. This research offers a methodology for assessing innovation in a developing city and examining its impact on urban development. The methodology is implemented in the Israeli city of Netanya, where urban development is analyzed at a resolution of single buildings over a period of three decades. We recognize two types of innovation: spatial innovation, manifested by leapfrogging residential clusters that establish new development areas; and contextual innovation, manifested by residential clusters that include buildings that are substantially higher than their surroundings. We demonstrate the impact of few innovative residential clusters on urban development in the following decades and highlight the diffusion of innovation in the city