Tovi Fenster

Space for Gender: Cultural Roles of the Forbidden and the Permitted

In this paper I analyze gender as cultural construction and reconstruction of space amongst Bedouin society in the Negev Desert in Southern Israel I focus, in particular, on changing meanings and boundaries between ‘forbidden’ and ‘permitted’ spaces. These meanings and perceptions are critically analyzed in the light of the ‘modernity planning project’ which has gradually moved Bedouin from spontaneous settlements to government-built towns. My main aim is to analyze cultural construction of space as it relates to women, and to explore how lack of consideration of these perceptions serves to increase control over Bedouin women in modernized towns through the reformulation of boundaries of ‘forbidden’ and ‘permitted’ spaces.

Gender, Planning and Human Rights

Challenging the traditional treatment of human rights cast in purely legal frameworks, the authors argue that, in order to promote the notion of human rights, its geographies and spatialities must be investigated and be made explicit. A wealth of case studies examine the significance of these components in various countries with multi-cultured societies, and identify ways to integrate human rights issues in planning, development and policy making. The book uses case studies from UK, Israel, Canada, Singapore, USA, Peru, European Union, Australia and the Czech Republic.

Belonging, memory and the politics of planning in Israel

This paper focuses on contradictory expressions of memory and belonging of Jews and Palestinians in Israel. It examines the conflicts over planning procedures, which engage such contradictory memories, and belonging at the national and local scales of planning. It explores how the dynamics of power relations can operate differently at each level and can result in planning resolutions, which link in different ways to the constructions of memory and belonging of Jews and Palestinians. The paper begins with an overview of the expressions of belonging and commemoration at the national scale of planning; in the agenda of the Council for the Restoration and Preservation of Historic Sites (CRPHS) in Israel and the rhetoric of the government National Master Plan of Israel (TAMA/35). It challenges this rhetoric in two local planning events: ‘the road and the graveyard’ and the ‘new Jewish neighbourhood and the old Palestinian village’.

Ethnicity and citizen identity in planning and development for minority groups

Abstract The paper focuses on the problems of identifying ethnic and citizen needs among immigrants and indigenous societies that pass a rapid process of social change. The paper outlines the model of ethnicity versus citizenship with regard to two main approaches to social change: the assimilationist and the pluralist. This model is used to analyse two development experiences: those of the Ethiopian Jews and the Bedouin in the Negev. Another analytical tool presented in the paper is the definition of discrimination in development projects, also using the terms of ethnic and citizen needs. The paper concludes with suggested guidelines for formulating ‘ethnically sensitive planning’, an approach which, it is believed, can do much to ease the process of transition of ethnic groups and immigrants.

Whose City is it? On Urban Planning and Local Knowledge in Globalizing Tel Aviv-Jaffa

This article focuses on the variety of images, perceptions and social constructions about a city articulated by the different ‘actors’ which use and shape globalizing urban settings. The actors in focus are mainly the planners (representing the authoritative aspects of planning and city management) and the residents of the city (those who enjoy or are adversely affected by different planning visions and projects). Planners mainly use their professional knowledge, which they obtained from formal education. Residents built up their perceptions and images of the city in a more intuitive way, from their daily routine practices in the city. Following this, the article explores the intricate and sometimes complicated relations between the various types of knowledge involved in the planning process with the aim to find out whose perceptions of the city are incorporated in the planning processes. Focusing on knowledge as a base for formulating cityscapes stems from a personal position and experience as planners, as members of a planning team, nominated by the Tel Aviv Municipality to devise a ‘new strategic plan’ for the Central Bus Station (CBS) area in the city. The article begins with a short introductory background, describing the social and economic situation of Jewish residences and non-Jewish labour migrants of the CBS area in Tel Aviv. It then outlines some theoretical frameworks regarding the different perceptions of this area by the different ‘actors’ involved in its production. The article concludes with some insights regarding the ways that globalizing cities are planned and managed.

Between socio-spatial and urban justice: Rawls’ principles of justice in the 2011 Israeli Protest Movement

The occupy movement of summer 2011 provides an opportunity to examine practical and theoretical implications of the notion of planning justice and human rights. Analyzing the discourse by activists in a planning team associated with the Israeli Protest Movement reveals inner conflicts and debates regarding the meanings of justice and human rights in planning. The discourse exposes an ongoing rift between spatial professionals (mainly geographers, planners, and architects) and subfields (municipal and governmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations, and academia) related to applying ideas of just planning in the Israeli context. Specifically, two opposing schemas of planning justice appear—that of socio-spatial justice and urban justice. A further investigation links each schema with a different principle of justice, as defined in Rawls’ Theory of Justice: The first schema is associated with the principle of difference and the second with the principle of fair equality of opportunity. Together, the unsettled conflicts hint at an inconsistency occurring when the theory is interpreted in practice.

Between the "Global" and the "Local": On Global Locality and Local Globality

This study offers new perspectives on the impact of global and local interactions on cities today. We look at two opposing ways of integrating global processes with the local functioning of cities. The first mode relates to a city representing unique local significance that is recognized and valued on the global scale. This globality is not economic but it affects the global interactions of individuals, institutions, and businesses in these cities. We term this type of city a global locality. The second mode is a city that serves as a local cultural and economic gateway to its region. Whether located higher or lower on the World Cities roster, at the local and regional scale it serves as both business center and cultural hub. We term this type of city a local globality. In this article, we discuss both city types using Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Jerusalem as examples.

Cognitive Temporal Mapping: The Three Steps Method in Urban Planning

The aim of this paper is to present the three steps method of using cognitive temporal (CT) maps as a support to an individuals participation in the planning process. The term cognitive temporal maps refers to the process of drawing and comparing maps of past, present and future desired environments as an approach to assist the planning process. The three steps method which includes in-depth interviews, drawing CT maps, and a dialogue between the researcher/planner and the interviewee/resident is presented as a method which helps to expose the local spatial knowledge necessary for effective planning.

Do Palestinians live across the road? Address and the micropolitics of home in Israeli contested urban spaces

This paper develops a substantive argument of the ‘home exchange as contact zone’ for addressing the ‘other’, focusing on Israeli–Palestinian mixed urban spaces. By analyzing original archival research of a specific address, along with personal narratives of Palestinian and Jewish inhabitants of this address, the paper aims to understand politics of nations through the microgeographies of home. Thus, the analysis of asymmetric power in the politics of Israeli urban planning becomes the context of analyzing the archaeology of the address—more specifically, 218 Yefet Street, Jaffa, originally the home of my mother and grandparents. The ‘home exchange as contact zone’ argument facilitates the examination of the language, conversation, and text derived from meetings with the Palestinian owners and with my mother, and exposes the complexities of the binary divisions of coloniality.

Gender and feminist geographies in the Middle East

This article aimed to review the research carried out in the Middle East primarily on gender and feminist geography and also on place formation, urban space, movement and mobility in the social and political sciences. This aim turned out to be challenging primarily because of the colonial and post-colonial history of the region that continues to have a profound effect on the development of academic knowledge among Middle Eastern scholars as well as a restricted accessibility to material published inside the Middle East. Despite this, the article primarily focuses on feminist research on Middle Eastern women done by Middle Eastern scholars and published in Middle Eastern journals and books primarily in Arabic (and Hebrew in Israel). However, during the process of reviewing a large variety of articles, book chapters and books that exist on Middle Eastern women, we realized that it is sometimes difficult and rather artificial to review the material with only this division in mind. In the end, we reviewed the literature on gender and feminism in the Middle East mainly highlighting local published research and also briefly referring to research published in the West by both Westerners and local researchers. The article begins with presenting its research methodology. It then analyzes the website and literature review that we carried out on the contexts, frameworks and themes of gender and feminist geography and spatial research in the Middle East with particular attention on the research carried out in Israel/Palestine. We focus on the private–public spheres; migration and diaspora and the veil as key concepts in analyzing the literature in this section. In the last section, we explain the reasons for the limitations on gender and feminist research in geography inside the Middle East and mention some general conclusions.