Thesis

For the first part of the research we have seen that there is a phenomenon

of real massive housing projects as the “Mamilla” project and others.

From our understanding this phenomenon is a direct outcome of the change from socialism to capitalism – In the 60’s, when Israel was occupied with providing housing for all its immigrants, the socialism approach was the most comfortable for providing equal housing for everyone, but with the globalization and the new urbanization of the last two decades, global wealth determines it’s place in the city centers, while other layers of the society are being pushed to the outer skirts of the cities, this process is called ‘the free market’.

The Jerusalem municipality seems to encourage new luxury projects that are targeted at foreign buyers, in order to raise tax money for its initiative of rejuvenating the city centre. Since there is no local government mechanism active in Israel, that is redirecting the money towards affordable housing, the city becomes stratified from the center out.

Moreover, since Jerusalem is a pilgrimage destination for Jews from all over the world, many of them buy real estate in the central neighborhoods that are strategic in the Jerusalem geography (close to the old city, close to city center) but come to visit them only during the holiday season. This turns the city centre into an empty place that is not functioning as a centre as we can see in the part of “Mamilla” that is called “David's Village”.

Since we believe that “Mamilla” is one of the first projects of its kind in Israel, we have turned to other Western countries to see whether or not we find parallel phenomena in other places. Just like in Jerusalem, in many different cities there is a clear interest of the municipalities to encourage the “free market”, in order to raise money for city centre renewals. We intend to study parallel projects in other cities, to try and answer the following questions:

Is this phenomenon part of a global process or is it unique for Israel?

What are the potential outcomes and how do they influence the functioning of the city? What are the possible ways to deal/ react to this process?

In order to perform this research we intend to compare the diagrams (Body, Building, City, Environment, and Implementation) of different case studies, and see what the correct recipe for a successful project is, and what could be done differently for Mamilla.