INTRODUCTION

This volume is a result of the efforts of the Urban Commission at the IGU (International Geographical Union) regional conference held at Tel Aviv on July 2010. About 50 papers have been presented in the conference focusing on a wide range of urban issues. The commission brings together scholars from about 30 countries in four continents in order to exchange ideas and stimulate research from a comparative perspective. This volume brings together six articles, which focus on the ways in which cities are dealing with challenges set by the era of globalization. Each paper deals with one case study but by bringing them together some comparative perspective is highlighted

NEO-ZIONIST FRONTIER LANDSCAPES IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Immediately after the 1967 war and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza the national religious youngsters (Gush Emmunim settlers) reached out to settle the new frontier of the biblical places. By thus, they have developed a Messianic myth. The interpretation of Gush-Emmunim settlers’ experience of landscapes reveals a complex and contradictory structure of sense of space. Settlers’ mythical sense of space may be understood in two strata - imagined and material. The imagined stratum is conceived mainly in transcendental romantic terms while the material is reified according to classic conceptions. Two main contradictions are outstanding: first, between the romantic representation of Jewish landscapes and the classic representation of Palestinian landscapes in the imagined stratum; second, between the romantic representation of the Jewish home space in the imagined stratum and the classical representation of the suburban Jewish home landscape in the material stratum. The first contradiction is inherent in frontier societies as a means to pseudo-rationalize the colonisation of the land, although in general there may be a mixture of romantic and classic attitudes towards the natives. The settlers pioneering myth is highly subsidised by the government and aggressively backed by military force. This enables them to tolerate the surrounding fear, antagonism and hatred. Thus, the landscape they build represents power and domination with no regard to local nature and to the Palestinian landscapes that are perceived by the settlers as part of it

The 'Demographic Rogue' and Borders in the Land of Israel

Derrida's rogue model explains how the 'other' is characterized to form a threat on the existence of the 'self'. Demography plays a critical role in international conflicts, by creating these feelings of threat. As early as the 1930's, the demographic factor has become a central component in determining the borderline between national movements in Palestine, under the British mandate governments. The following research shows how the feelings of threat increased since Israel broke through the armistice lines and occupied Palestinian populated territories in June 1967. A rapid demographic growth of Palestinian population, the outburst of Palestinian rebellion against Israeli rule, and settlement of hundreds thousands of Jewish people amongst Palestinian villages and towns in the occupied territories, increased controversy within Israeli society, regarding the issue of separating the populations and the need to determine a clear closed border between them. The call of Arab leaders, citizens of Israel, to change the state's Zionist character, even further increased the trend of forming a demographic discourse which calls for separatio

Ethnic segregation in Tel-Aviv – Jaffa

In the article analysis of the segregation of 1000 representatives of eight important ethnicgroups in Tel-Aviv – Jaffa is represented. The comparison of results was made on the basisof index of dissimilation. Each ethnical group is analysed with regard to its spatial distribution,a sample of each group being analysed on the basis of the index of dissimilation aswell as spatial and interactive segregation

Socio-spatial lifestyles and segregation

The paper suggests an alternative index for socio-spatial segregation which emphasises agents’ segregation in everyday life. We argue that segregation should be studied for individual agents in respect to the spaces in which they perform their everyday life. The index refers both to the spatial and the social-interactive contexts of seven aspects (home, cluster of neighbouring homes, neighbourhood and city in the spatial context and friends, work and leisure activities in the social context) of agents’ everyday life actions as they are actually performed in their everyday time-spaces. The paper calculates the segregation of seven persons who represent seven typical lifestyles. Each lifestyle differs in its preferences for location in social spaces and in performing everyday life activity orbits.The index may receive negative values representing agents’ tendency toward exposure to members of alternative groups and positive values representing tendency toward segregation. In practice, the distribution of the segregation index changed between +- 4.0. In addition, no correlation between spatial and social segregation has been identified. Several agents were socially much more segregated than spatially, while others were spatially more segregated than socially

The 'Demographic Rogue' and Borders in the Land of Israel

Derrida's rogue model explains how the 'other' is characterized to form a threat on the existence of the 'self'. Demography plays a critical role in international conflicts, by creating these feelings of threat. As early as the 1930's, the demographic factor has become a central component in determining the borderline between national movements in Palestine, under the British mandate governments. The following research shows how the feelings of threat increased since Israel broke through the armistice lines and occupied Palestinian populated territories in June 1967. A rapid demographic growth of Palestinian population, the outburst of Palestinian rebellion against Israeli rule, and settlement of hundreds thousands of Jewish people amongst Palestinian villages and towns in the occupied territories, increased controversy within Israeli society, regarding the issue of separating the populations and the need to determine a clear closed border between them. The call of Arab leaders, citizens of Israel, to change the state's Zionist character, even further increased the trend of forming a demographic discourse which calls for separationLe modèle de Derrida explique comment « l'autre » est caractérisé en tant que menace à l'existence du « soi ». L'article propose une extension de ce modèle à la démographie, celle-ci jouant un rôle important dans les conflits internationaux quand elle est mobilisée comme une menace. Dès les années 1930, le facteur démographique a joué un rôle majeur dans les conflits de délimitation entre les mouvements nationaux juif et arabe dans la Palestine sous mandat britannique et a alimenté les craintes, haines et hostilités entre ces deux mouvements. L'instrumentalisation de la démographie au service des objectifs politiques s'est renforcée avec la création de l'État d'Israël et le sentiment de menace s'est encore accru lorsque Israël a franchi les lignes d'armistice et a occupé les territoires palestiniens en juin 1967. La forte croissance de la population palestinienne, sa rébellion contre l'occupant israélien et l'implantation de centaines de milliers de Juifs autour des villes et des villages palestiniens dans les territoires occupés ont entraîné le renforcement des controverses à l'intérieur de la société israélienne elle-même quant à la question de la nécessité ou non de séparer les populations arabes et juives et éventuellement d'établir une frontière fermée entre elles. L'appel des leaders des citoyens arabes israéliens à abandonner la caractère sioniste de l'État d'Israël a encore accentué la tendance à développer un discours démographique appelant à cette séparation

Industrial zones and Arab industrialization in Israel

Since the 1970s there has been increased integration of the Arab sector into the Israeli economy. This integration has been characterized by the increase in industrial entrepreneurship in the Arab settlements. Critical to the industrialization process are factors related to the availability of industrial zones and the infrastructure which supports industrial production. The main factors are: limited reserves of land for industry; lack of a land market; the structure and pattern of land ownership; entrepreneurial culture which does not encourage neither using bank loans nor the commercialization of land; the absence of allocation of industrial zones in the settlements master plans; low level of infrastructure and absence of public support for the development of industrial infrastructure; and the fact that the legislation for the encouragement of capital investments has not been applied in Arab settlements. These factors may be divided between external factors partly affected by government discriminative policy which does not support Arab industrial development, and internal factors related to the specific features of the Arab economy. Together, these factors reduce the attractiveness of the Israeli Arab periphery for the arrival of core located major industrial plants, and have a negative impact on Arab internally initiated industrial entrepreneurship

Hofman, Amos, Braca Alpert, and Izhak Schnell, Education and Social Change: The Case of Israel\u27s State Curriculum, Curriculum Inquiry, 37(December, 2007), 303-328.

Describes the changes over the last few decades in Israel\u27s curriculum policies and content

Women Emotional, Cognitive and Physiological Modes of Coping with Daily Urban Environments: A Pilot Study

Studies on the effect of urban environments on human risk to health and well-being tend to focus on either physiological or cognitive and emotional effects. For each of these effects, several indicators have been proposed. They are determined either by a physiological-emotional theory or by a cognitive theory of direct attention. However, the interrelationships between these indices have not been thoroughly investigated in environmental contexts. Recently, a neuro-visceral model that incorporates all three aspects has been proposed. The present article focuses on understanding the mechanism of coping with urban environments. More specifically, we analyze the interrelations among nine of the more commonly used indices that represent the physiological, emotional and cognitive aspects of coping with urban environments. The data were collected in the following four environments: home, park, city center and residential area. The participants were 72 healthy, middle-class mothers with either high school or postgraduate education. They wherein their fertile age (20–35) with average Body Mass Index (BMI) of 22.2 and S.D. of 0.8 (48 Arab Muslims and 24 Jewish). They were recruited in a snowball method. Path analysis and principal component analysis are used in order to identify the interrelations among the physiological, cognitive and emotional indices and the directions of these interrelations. According to the findings, the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), as measured by Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and primarily the parasympathetic tone (High frequency-HF) is the pivotal mechanism that modulates emotional and cognitive responses to environmental nuisances. The ANS response precedes and may trigger the emotional and the cognitive responses, which are only partially interrelated. It appears that the autonomic balance measured by Standard Deviation of NN interval (SDNN) and HF, the cognitive index of restoration and the emotional indices of discomfort and relaxation are closely interrelated. These seemingly disparate operands work together to form a comprehensive underlying network that apparently causes stress and risk to health in urban environments while restoring health in green environments