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

Abstract

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.

Keywords

just planning planning in Israel Rawls’ principles of justice socio-spatial justice urban justice

Introduction

More than half of the world population lives in urban areas, where the majority of inhabitants face obstacles and difficulties related to issues of human rights and injustice. The international protest against social and economic inequality of 2011 provides a unique opportunity to examine these notions of justice and link them to urban planning and the performance of the built environment. The issue of urban planning, relating to both the structure of cities and the structure of decision making, played a central role in the Israeli Protest Movement. The protest, inspired by the Arab Spring¹ and the Spanish protests that burst out in early 2011, cried out against social and economic injustice, against the structure of power relations in the world economy, and for the constitution of “a real democracy” in the political sphere (Hardt and Negri, 2011). As vague and general as these demands are, at a tacit level they were clear and precise, as reflected by the wide identification with the protests around the globe. By October 2011, the international Protest Movement was taking place in 95 cities in more than 82 countries, in addition to at least 600 communities in the United States. Communication and discourse were the side effects of the civil movement, and talks about the nature of cities, the conduct of development, and the way they affect human rights occupied a central position.

The extensive discourses carried out in the public sphere, in assemblies, and demonstrations, and in the long nights and days of occupying the streets, provide an opportunity to study standpoints in a variety of issues addressed by the protestors. For the spatial subfields (planners, architects, and geographers), the protest sheds light on issues usually discussed by scholars and theoreticians and less as public discourse. Particularly, the impact of human rights and social justice ideas on urban planning that is rarely tackled by practitioners let alone by the public was deeply debated during the protest.

In the case of the Israeli Protest Movement, where planners from municipal and governmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and academia took part in public debates, several conflicts emerged as competing, sometimes opposing, attitudes and interpretations, regarding the meanings of justice in planning. This article focuses on the Israeli interpretations of just urban planning and shows how theoretical principles of justice, adapted to local experiences, are sometimes difficult to implement. Our aim is to point to complexities occurring between various understandings on what planning justice means once tested in concrete, local circumstances. In particular, we relate to two principles of justice defined by Rawls (1971) that became the fundamentals of human rights definitions: the principle of difference and the principle of fair equality of opportunities. For that purpose, we analyze the discourses included in Email correspondence between some 20 geographers, planners, and architects who took part in the Israeli Protest Movement² (see details in the next section). The two dominant discourses, the socio-spatial and the urban, were carried out for 3 months (August–October 2011) around the content of the professional report that had been formulated for the protesters.

The 2011 Israeli Protest Movement

The impact of the international Protest Movement began in Israel in June 2011; in the main thoroughfares of Israeli cities, spontaneous protests drove hundreds of thousands of people to join weekly demonstrations on Saturday evenings (Filk and Ram, 2012). Many of the protesters spent the summer in tents as an ongoing demonstration against the high cost of living. The group that initiated and led this national protest inhabited Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, an affluent area in the city’s center, where about 1000 tents were erected. Accusations about the high cost of living became a demand for basic human rights in housing, education, health care, and transport as a government responsibility, as part of the fight for a decent livelihood. Responding to the protest, the Israeli government formulated a special committee—the Trachtenberg committee, to review these claims and to propose policies for change. The skeptical protesters refused to settle with the government committee, and the leaders organized a specialists’ commission, the Spivak–Yonah Commission (SYC). All members of the eight branches of the SYC were volunteers who contributed their time, knowledge, and efforts to the protest. The eight groups were concerned, respectively, with general vision, economy, education, health, social welfare, employment, public services, and housing and transportation. The housing and transportation group comprised four subsections—housing, land, planning, and transport. Each group was asked to offer guidelines for making the state fulfill its responsibilities and for protecting human rights.

The specialists in most of the subgroups tended to agree on the definition of civil rights and the recommended form of state intervention for securing those rights. The exception was the housing and transportation group, in particular the planning team, where discussions among members, mainly via Email correspondence, revealed substantial differences of opinion. The planning team—the largest group in SYC, of about 20 specialists—included planners, geographers, architects, researchers from universities, NGO activists, and practitioners, both private and municipal. Disagreements between members of the planning group went beyond differences in jargon, language, and attitudes. It appears that opinions about basic as well as marginal issues regarding planning for human rights and the spatiality of the just city were heated.

The SYC worked for more than 2 months—from August 2011 until mid-October 2011. By the end of October, as soon as the Trachtenberg Committee had submitted its report to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the SYC publicized a detailed report on the Internet and in numerous public events. About a year later, the final report was published as a book (Yonah and Spivak, 2012). Reading the planning chapter, the deep debates between members of the group that were endemic to the process are barely noticeable. Basic differences still remain, however, awaiting public attention and the necessary discourse.

As team members—one of us co-heading the planning team and the other being an active participant—we found the fundamental discrepancies between the members of the planning team and among members of the larger group (the housing and transportation groups) of the SYC concerning this issue, surprising and challenging. We assumed that since the members were trained and experienced professionals in the spatial fields, and since all were engaged with the same urban reality and planning machineries, it would be easy to agree on existing flaws and setbacks and to come up with acceptable solutions. We did not foresee the ideological gaps between team members and, particularly, the different attitudes toward the implementation of social justice in planning. A year later we return to the Email correspondence from a different position. This time, we put our personal views as activists aside and look at the corpus of written debate as holding the key to the philosophical differences between members of the planning team.

Planning, (social) justice, and human rights

The idea of justice is closely linked to that of human rights. A quick search using Google reveals tens of academic programs, NGOs, and other civil society organizations that investigate, teach, and promote principles of human rights and justice. It seems as if human rights are the official, administrative means created to advance (the usually abstract) principles of justice. However, human rights themselves are not so clearly defined and thus are subject to interpretations that do not necessarily promote principles of justice (Fenster, 1999). The 1948 United Nations (UN) Human Rights Declaration is made of 30 articles that “translate” the meanings of justice and equality into “practical” principles, including the right to freedom, to life, to liberty, to the security of a person, to recognition before the law, to nationality, to marriage, to have a family, to equality before the law without any discrimination, to equal protection of the law, to full equality, and fair and public hearings. However, three Articles seem to be more relevant to the discussion in this article. Article 22 declares that

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 25(1) mentions that

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Article 27(1) declares that “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”³ These rights provide the framework for the discourse that accompanied the 2011 Protest Movement. The expression of human rights in the discourse still requires further discussion, as their meaning to planning, to what planners do or are believed to be doing, is not self-explained.

Since the 1948 declaration, changes have occurred to the understanding of what human rights are nowadays. As Harvey (2012) notes, “We live in an era when ideals of human rights have moved center-stage both politically and ethically” (p. 3). However, many of those rights appear to be individualistic and property-based and as such support, rather than challenge, the hegemonic neoliberal market logics. The ideal of human rights rarely takes a “collective turn” as Harvey puts it, although when it does—as in the case of women, gays, and minorities rights—it yields important results.

How is justice defined as related to human rights? The idea of justice was first defined around the 3rd century AD as “a stable and constant will to provide each person what s/he deserves” (Dahan, 2007: 20). Since then many philosophers, historians, and legal, political, and social scientists have dealt with this contested concept. An immense contribution was offered by Rawls’ (1971) Theory of Justice that saw justice as the rational base for social conduct, one that would be chosen by reasonable people who are located “behind the veil of ignorance,” that is, when they do not know their own social attributes and standing. Under these terms, Rawls predicts that people would choose a system of fair equality of opportunity and one that would allocate primary social goods to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society. Even when the veil of ignorance is removed, Rawls concludes that when individuals’ pursuit of happiness is managed rationally, free individuals are likely to agree on safeguarding each other’s basic rights and distributing important social assets in a fair way, just because no single member would be willing to risk ending up in an intolerable position that they had created for others but had no intention of being in themselves. It is therefore not just fair, but also rational, to construct society as a “cooperative venture between free and equal persons for the purpose of mutual advantage” (Rawls, 1971: 4).

Rawls’ rationale of mutual justice offers two principles as a framework for constituting the just political, cultural, and social structure. The first suggests that “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others” (Rawls, 1971: 60). This is the principle of liberty. The second principle of justice is divided into two principles: one holds that social and economic goods be attached to offices and positions open to all members of society under conditions of fair equality of opportunities (the principle of fair equality of opportunity), whereas the other determines that goods should be allocated equally, and inequalities in wealth and social position be arranged so as to benefit society’s most disadvantaged group (the difference principle). Rawls emphasizes the complex relations between the principles of justice in different contexts of everyday life. Similarly, the analysis of the Email discussions prior to the formulation of the SYC professional report—which can be seen as an attempt to adapt these principles to the field of planning—shows the problematic relationship between the two sub-principles.

Before turning to the analysis, let us note that urban and regional planning, being a subset of public policy, is expected to both yield common goods (Campbell, 2006; Grant, 2005) and pursue justice (Fainstein, 2000, 2005; Klosterman, 2003). This expectation provides the basic justification of planning and explains the legitimation given by landowners and inhabitants to planners. The troubling fact is that translating the principles of justice to planning actions sometimes creates disagreements, and principles of justice appear to clash with each other, like those we are about to reveal.

Analytical framework

For analyzing the planning team’s discourse, we looked at two competing sets of discourses. The first discourse termed here socio-spatial justice derives from applying ideas of distributive and procedural justice to the field of planning. Planning deals with individuals as well as groups, and with defined identities as well as general publics. Socio-spatial justice is thus oriented toward creating an institutional and procedural base for delivering the highest level of planning goods for a variety of individuals and communities, whether defined in advance or not. According to Campbell (2006), two key dimensions should lead the formation of just planning machinery: fair relationship between the individual and the collective, and “reasonableness” in relation to planning policy. Socio-spatial justice refers to planning approaches such as advocacy planning, radical planning, equity planning, and communicative planning. However, these approaches are usually adapted by civil society organizations and NGOs and not by official planning administrations (Sandercock, 1998; Sandercock and Lyssiotis, 2003). The degree to which socio-spatial justice is actually achieved by planning would eventually be reflected through specific components such as minimizing social and economic gaps, fair distribution of opportunities, and sensitivity to cultural differences and special needs. We interpret this discourse as closely related to the principle of difference articulated by Rawls.

The second discourse, termed here urban justice, is relatively new in the planning literature, especially when compared to the known and developed discourse dealing with socio-spatial justice. The roots of this discourse relate to the development of the New Urbanism idea, mostly by American architects. Being “perhaps more ideology than theory” (Fainstein, 2000: 461), new urbanism started by practitioners applying design methods for creating vibrant urban spheres. Soon enough, though, the set of design principles—such as mixing land uses, creating safe and walkable streets, and providing a range of commercial and communal activities within walking distances—received a theoretical envelope, tying the urban realm with enhanced social life, fair accessibility to opportunities, minimizing spatial gaps, and being socially and environmentally sustainable. Seeing new urbanism as oriented toward safeguarding public interests and promoting social justice is, however, contested. Some scholars see new urbanism as dealing mainly with questions of urban design, which is a subset of planning and oriented toward practitioners rather than planning thought. As such, it is essentially remote from issues of social justice and ecological sustainability that form the core of urban planning (Gunder, 2011). Others argue that new urbanism seeks the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, which makes it closer to utilitarianism than to the pursuit of justice (Fainstein, 2005). In addition, scholars relate to ironic gaps occurring when the principles of new urbanism are used for planning suburban enclaves, using modernist tactics and insisting on the need for expert judgment in cases of conflict (Grant, 2006). On the other hand, there is a view claiming that the physical aspect of planning is inseparable from the social, hence theorizing the built environment inevitably reflects this unitary. Research has found enhanced social integration of people living in new urbanist communities (Podobnik, 2011). Moreover, researchers such as Talen (2002) claim that new urbanism is oriented toward social equity. Compact, mixed, and lively urban development, from this point of view, is the most just built environment, particularly because it is enabling equal accessibility to all—as opposed to suburban areas as well as to low-density vehicle-oriented cities and to remote or fortified living areas. In Talen’s (2002) words, “The ideal of equal access is toughly synonymous with the notion of spatial equity: that everyone should have to travel a similar distance to benefit from a public resource” (p. 180). Her work of analyzing the New Urbanism Charter reveals that 8 out of 27 principles deal directly with social equity, in addition to 19 explicitly relating to the promotion of common good. The urban justice approach is presented by its promoters as the only means for offering equal opportunities to marginal groups and as a way of integrating remote communities into political decision-making cores. The main claim is that people are discriminated against, in the sense that they are unable to integrate into the social core, acquire education, and obtain public positions and social influence, because of the unjust formation of the built environment. We therefore see it as a competing approach of planning justice, representing the application of the principle of fair equality of opportunity to the built environment. This association of urban justice with specific qualities of the built environment represents the second schema in the literature and among planners, applied by us for analyzing the Email discussions.

These discourses are well recognized and acknowledged by the “spatial professions” working in Israel. The debates analyzed below reflect the schemas appearing in the discourse as an adaptation of these approaches to the specific Israeli circumstances. Our analysis of the Email correspondence reflects these complexities between the principle of fair equality of opportunities and the difference principle. We claim that the conflicts are rooted in contradictions occurring between Rawls’ principles of social justice, once they are translated to specific planning dilemmas.

Discourse analysis: theoretical and methodological notes

For exploring the competing attitudes of participants in the planning team regarding planning and human rights, we look at the vast Email correspondence during the summer of 2011 (specifically, between 25 August and 9 September 2011) and at drafts of working papers generated by team members for preparing their chapter in the SYC report.

Referring to the ethics of this process, the Email correspondence, of which the authors took part, occurred in an open and unsupervised atmosphere. About 20 people were included in the initial mailing list and new correspondents kept joining in as the discourse continued. Interesting and controversial Emails were forwarded to other recipients who then contributed their views, and so on. Details from the correspondence appeared in a daily newspaper article, describing the dynamics and arguments in the planning team (see http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/environment-the-people-want-spatial-justice-1.383167). We kept correspondents’ names redacted. This method raises questions of “objectivity.” However, our standpoint is that no research in social sciences and humanities is completely “objective.” In addition, we positioned ourselves at the outset so that the readers were aware of our involvement.

The research applied critical discourse analysis (CDA) methods to reveal differences between team members’ worldviews and coming to the fundamentals of discrepancies. By accepting the starting point of CDA researchers, we see “discourse—language used in speech and writing—as a form of ‘social practice’” (Fairclough and Vodak, 1997). The term “critical” points at the fact that the analysis is not confined to the use of language, but takes a wider look to explore the way language is reflected in social attitude and behavior and affects it (Wodak and Meyer, 2009). Specifically, in this research we pay attention to the association between the discussants’ affiliations (planning, geography, or architecture) and their attitudes to issues of human rights and social justice, expressed in the use of words, attitude to specific sayings, and overall viewpoints.

The methodology applied in this research leans on Schema theory, emerging from the Gestalt psychology⁴ of the 1920s and 1930s. According to this view, a schema is a stereotypical image of something in the world, created from specific previous experience and guiding consequent experiences. The theory suggests that schemas are constructed and stored in one’s memory, and that every new experience is comprehended by way of comparison to these schemas (Bartlett, 1932/1961; Cook, 1994). Although the schemas are relatively dynamic and impacted by new experiences and interactions with the world, their initial formations can direct human observations and behaviors and are therefore highly significant. Schema theory explains the emergence of coherence, the way complete meaning is constructed from partial information, and it plays a central role in discourse analysis. It is by the meaningful, cohesive schema that details like building density and public participation become connected and understandable. Hence, in the current research we expect schemas of spatial justice to define discussants’ viewpoints on a variety of urban and environmental issues, on the conduct of the built environment, and on planning processes.

The notion of schema is close to that of frames and framing, which has been applied to planning discourse (Faludi, 1996; Rein and Schön, 1986). Kaufman and Smith (1999) define framing as “deliberately crafting frames for strategic purposes” (p. 165) and reframing as “seeking to change the way in which parties have initially framed issues” in planning disputes (p. 165). The frames—schemas—are thus being used not just as means of comprehension but as a tool for constructing discussants’ understanding and changing it. This definition matches the one applied by the current research as well.

Debating just planning

The Email correspondence that took place in August–October 2011 between members of the planning team in SYC reveals a few stormy conflicts regarding key issues of just planning. It is through these debates that the competing perspectives of planning, justice, and human rights encapsulated in the competing schemas are reflected.

Planning for ethnic social groups

Defining just planning policy regarding ethnic and national minority groups, especially the Arab-Palestinians living in Israel, has been a significant issue debated in the Email correspondence. The debate centered on the fate of Arab settlements that pose a challenge of accepting other, not necessarily Western-oriented, ways of developing the built environment. About 200 Arab villages and towns are located at the lowest socioeconomic level and suffer from physical neglect and poor services. The spatiality of Arab villages and towns in Israel is affected by the traumatic events of the 1948 war, including the destruction of old Arab cities, the evacuation of Arab villages and the deportation of their residents, and the construction of the State of Israel, followed by massive confiscation of Arab lands (see Golan, 2003; Goren, 2006; Luz, 2007; Pappe, 1992, 2006; Paz, 1998; Yazbak, 2004). Spontaneous urbanization processes that were taking place in the early 1900s ceased almost entirely, and Arab settlements still preserve traditional, familial-based spatiality typical of Middle-Eastern urbanism. Throughout the years, Arab villages and towns were criticized by the Israel Planning Administration (IPA) for insisting on a low-density family-oriented urban structure, resulting from residents’ attachment to their private lands on which their villages and towns are built (Khamaisi, 2005, 2010; Nasser, 2012). In accordance with this, the inner pattern of Arab towns was labeled “besieged urbanization” (Meir-Brodnitz, 1986) or “selectively disturbed urbanism” (Khamaisi, 1995). In line with the massive population growth, the villages suffered from continuous land distress and many of them confront the state on issues of land ownership and allocation. Other difficulties include severe lack of infrastructure and local services, in addition to poor performance of the local governments, growing environmental distress, and mounting inner conflicts (Adib, 2005; El-Taji, 2008; Hasson and Abu-Asbah, 2004; Khamaisi, 2005, 2010; Sofer et al., 2012; Tal, 2010).

Discussing just planning for the Arab minority was therefore an inevitable part of the planning team’s Email correspondence. The Protest Movement attempted to leave the geopolitical conflict including Jewish–Arab relations outside the discourse, saying that the social justice issues discussed by protestors stretch beyond the political conflict tearing the Israeli society apart and relate to basic human rights issues (see Fenster and Misgav, 2013; Ophir, 2012). Nevertheless, the question of Arab towns and villages was raised at early stages of the Email correspondence. Soon after a first draft of the planning team was distributed, one of the planners working for Bimkom—planners for planning rights, an NGO that promotes human rights in planning—explained her objection to including general demands regarding environmental issues:

The draft says: “allocating agricultural lands for building should be stopped”—but it could work against us in the case of Zur Baher.⁵ “Building on agricultural land should not be permitted”—I can see it [the demand to refrain from building on agricultural land] repeating in El Isawia.⁶ (A, planner, Email correspondence, 1 September 2011)

All members of the planning team accepted the criteria of fairness and reasonableness (Berry and Steiker, 1974; Campbell, 2006) for bridging differences and unfair opportunity and bringing justice to unequal societies. Nevertheless, bitter disputes arose, centering on interpreting these principles to specific planning policies. Again, the planning team considered two poles created by the competing schemas. One approach, promoted mainly by activists working for Bimkom, planner A and architect B, claimed that the state should allocate necessary land, whether public or private, to Arab villages and provide them with the opportunity to develop according to their residents’ wishes, be it suburban or a more dense urban development, in what seems to be a sheer derivative of the difference principle of justice: “Since the construction of the state, about 1,000 new settlements were built. All of them were Jewish while none was Arab. This is a violation of The Arabs’ rights,” said B in an Email correspondence from 24 September 2011. He claimed that

Arab citizens are forced to live in a single settlement type, that of the hybrid urban-rural villages, and are practically denied from the option of having Arab settlements in other forms, like the Israeli suburbs, rural settlements and big cities.

This discussion followed an earlier debate on the same subject that took place on 3–6 September 2011. Then, B explained the basic argument of the socio-spatial justice schema, insisting on the Arab population’s right to maintain its culture and live in exclusively Arab settlements and still enjoy fair allocation of national resources:

The claims regarding Arab settlements stem from their civil rights, from the right to resources as land, space and recognition. Discussing other futures for Arab towns is possible only after these basic claims are fulfilled. (B, planner and architect, Email correspondence, 24 September 2011)

Thus, the socio-spatial justice approach claimed that the IPA’s formal demand for greater urban densities in Arab villages negated two basic rights relating to the principle of difference. It denied Arab citizens’ right to reasonable allocation of land and related resources such as water and services that compensates for their fundamentally disadvantaged state. And, it negated Arab citizens’ right to live in exclusively Arab settlements of various types, thus enabling them to preserve their culture and still enjoy modernization and development like the rest of the Israeli population.

The second approach stemming from the urban justice schema was presented by another NGO entitled Merhav (space)—the Movement of Israeli Urbanism (MIU)—which advocates principles of new urbanism. It claimed that bringing justice to Arab citizens means supporting the development of their settlements into vital and functioning urban patterns and preventing them from turning into huge agglomerations of low-rise and infrastructure-less environments. From this viewpoint, people’s right to choose their preferable built environment may conflict with their rights to have access to proper services and economic, educational, and cultural opportunities. It appears that some speakers think that people’s right to choose is stronger, and thus prefer to persuade and provide knowledge to inhabitants and policy makers—yet insist on not cooperating with what they see as building an unjust and dysfunctional built environment. This path of reasoning accepted the fact that Arab settlements may develop differently than Jewish and Western-oriented cities and towns. However, it claimed that considering the difficulties of sprawled, low-density development, just planning should help Arab settlements to grow in a sustainable and functional way so that they will be able to function well and provide high levels of services and opportunities to their inhabitants. Again, we interpret these claims as leaning toward the principle of fair equality of opportunity.

C, an architect and member of MIU, opened his response to A and B from Bimkom by acknowledging past injustice caused to Arab settlement, saying that “The state has neglected the Arab settlements in a culpable way. This fact is beyond dispute.” According to this view, though, the path to just planning must refrain from repeating past mistakes:

The concept of cities is rooted in the nature of humanity. Since we do not hold racist approaches we do not believe that (Jewish) Israelis are different from (Arab) Israelis or from Italians, Scotts, Indians and Hottentots. They all should live in cities that obey the few yet essential criteria of urbanism. (C, architect, Email correspondence, 3 September 2011)

The Email arriving right afterward from architect D, also a member of MIU, supported this claim saying that “A city is a city, no matter who lives there. Urbanism is a clear and a universal concept.”

The ongoing discrimination of Arab citizens by the state was the source of the socio-spatial justice approach to support their right to enjoy generous allocations of lands. In addition, supporters of this approach claimed that Arab localities should be granted enhanced services and infrastructure so that their cultural way of life can be maintained. According to the urban justice schema, though, compensating past discrimination by allocating land was a mistake because it supports low-density development in accordance with cultural characteristics, a situation perceived by the supporters of this approach as wrong. To support this argument, E, also an architect and member of MIU, shared a vast comparison he conducted based on data from 2005 and 2009 showing that Arab settlements are the least dense settlements in Israel:⁷

We all know that calculated density is just part of the picture—it cannot represent conceptual density and other qualities. Nevertheless, if we wish to minimize local government’s dependency on the central government, to help develop local economy, especially in this low-income society, we need to reconsider our support in low-density development. (E, architect, Email correspondence, 21 September, 2011)

As a response to E’s work, F, an Arab planner, asked to be deleted from the correspondence. Leaving the conversation was perhaps her way to express the fundamental gap between the urban justice approach and that of the socio-spatial justice.

To sum, the two approaches, the socio-spatial and the urban, pose contradictory opinions regarding the meaning of justice in the planning of Arab villages. While the former advocates the principle of difference highlighting cultural and ethnic lifestyles, the latter puts emphasis on the ability to sustain nonurban ways of life and provide equal opportunities. As a result, two contradictory visions are portrayed of Arab citizens’ spatiality, one promoting the development of a variety of exclusive Arab settlements of various sizes and types and the other wishing Arab towns to become more compact while negating the emergence of new Arab towns and villages. It should be noted that these approaches related to an abstract preferred policy regardless of the needs of specific localities or the opinion of their inhabitants, and that speakers holding both schemas related to the importance of public participation in planning. We enlarge below on the subtext attached to the calls for public participation.

Core–periphery relations

With respect to Israel, doing justice with the periphery poses continuous dilemmas that stretch beyond the “regular” tensions between the urban core and the rural periphery discussed in urban and regional literature (Demanski, 2004; Dicken, 2004; Haggard, 1990) and planning discourse (McLoughlin, 1994). As described by Shachar (1998), “The occupation and settlement of the Land of Israel constituted the basic condition necessary to establish a new home-land and thereby fulfill national aspirations” (p. 210). In the early stages of state building, in the 1950s, about 30 new development towns were constructed throughout Israel in addition to numerous villages and agricultural settlements, mostly on previously Palestinian lands, most of which was occupied by Jewish immigrants from Muslim and oriental countries (Mizrahim). Today, 60 years later, many of those peripheral towns and villages mark a painful chasm in Israeli society and space, with high rates of unemployment, degraded housing, and disintegrated urban structure (Lipshitz and Massam, 1998; Yiftachel, 2000). As Arab villages and towns are located mainly in peripheral areas, national endeavors to develop the northern and southern periphery by attracting Jewish newcomers to new neighborhoods in development towns and new settlements nearby are accused of striving to Judaize the periphery, thereby deepening the socio-spatial gap and creating an antagonistic atmosphere between Jews and Arabs (Fenster, 2010; Hasson and Karayanni, 2006; Luz, 2007; Peled, 1992; Yiftachel, 1992).

Being aware of the international as well as local discourse of the two types of justice (socio-spatial and urban), members of the planning team agreed that core–periphery gaps are a source of injustice that must be addressed by corrective planning policy. Specifically relating to Israel, team members were unanimously critical about the state whose past actions and current neglect led to the obvious deterioration of the periphery and for inflaming ethno-national tensions. Fundamental disagreements arose, however, when the team was trying to articulate just, human rights–oriented principles for peripheral areas. Moreover, most of the discussions referred to the Jewish periphery ignoring any injustice to Arab peripheral settlements, in itself an act of injustice even among the team members.

Advocates of the urban justice schema claimed that peripheral towns are doomed to a structural inferiority in comparison to metropolitan areas in terms of public services, occupational opportunities, and standard of living. The general reasoning claimed that as global urbanization processes accelerate, metropolitan cities are inevitably more developed than small and isolated towns; hence, city dwellers are exposed to better opportunities in all fields of life. Just planning should therefore aim to equalize accessibility to resources and eventually opportunities by connecting remote places to the center and refraining from creating too small places. This view stems from applying the principle of equal opportunities, which contends that even if some of the structural deficiency of the periphery can be compensated for by developed infrastructure and services, periphery dwellers will never be able to integrate into the socioeconomic core of the Israeli society, to gain influence, and to receive fair opportunities. Specifically related to the urbanization of Israel, this approach was critical toward the state’s responsibility for the Jewish “establishment of a maximal presence in vacant and semi-vacant parts of the country” (Shachar, 1998: 210–211) that constituted Israel’s planning doctrine until the 1980s, not paying the same attention to the Arab peripheral areas. The critical role played by planners in the creation of these dwelling-oriented places was also criticized:

The problem is that we, in Israel, failed to plan these new cities and towns. It is impossible to maintain basic urban lives there, to allow towns’ citizens to be established and renewed there. Young people are therefore forced to flee to central places and are drawn—where else—to the only proper city in Israel, Tel Aviv. (C, architect, Email correspondence, 31 August 2011)

This approach was presented in a document titled “Towards a new spatial order in Israel” that was sent to the team on 25 August 2011 during the early days of the team’s activities. The document was formulated by a group of architects from the Faculty of Architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts, named “The 60 Salame Forum” after the address where they conducted their workshop in Tel Aviv. Referring to the general belief that building new low-rise neighborhoods on agricultural lands will attract Jewish newcomers who can “strengthen” the periphery, their first bold principle stated that “There is a need to change priorities. We must strengthen the core and distinguish the periphery as a real alternative for intensive city life.” According to this view, Israel is a small country, small enough to limit development to a single metropolitan area. Whereas investing in the periphery encourages urban sprawl, disperses and thus weakens the utility of economic investments, and brings injustice to old and new periphery inhabitants. Remote villages should therefore remain rural and refrain from suburbanization. This principle thus calls for taming the “settling reflex” (Yiftachel, 2001) still typifying the national planning conduct and turning to intensify the urban core between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Giving up on periphery towns is specifically mentioned, stating that

Despite huge efforts, the national project of thickening the periphery has failed. (…) Constructing the development towns, for the sake of population distribution, was a mistake. The recent attempt to turn those towns into affluent suburbs is adding insult to injury. (Source: The Salame paper, distributed 25 August 2010)

A different approach to core–periphery relations emerging from the stormy discourse raised by the Salame paper was presented by speakers holding the socio-spatial justice schema, mostly Bimkom members. In the beginning, the analysis presented in the article was unaccepted. In the Email conversation from 31 August, one of the team members related to the Salame paper said,

Which are the “efforts” you refer to? Is it the investments in education, health and infrastructure, which are at least 40%–60% lower in the periphery compared to the centre? Or the non-existent national expenditure on employment …? The truth is that the efforts put in the periphery were always pathetic, no more than lip service; never were there any “huge efforts” as you suggest. The negligence of Arab villages and development towns is particularly atrocious. (G, geographer and planner, Email correspondence, 31 August 2010)

According to this view, the structured barrier affecting core–periphery relations is that of neoliberal economy. Remote towns and villages are trapped in an economic vicious cycle: because of the weak starting point, they are unattractive to private money. Thus, while investment in services and infrastructure at the core is performed by public–private ventures, the periphery depends on public initiatives and will, which are forever deficient and slow. This socio-spatial justice schema to the core–periphery relations leaned on the principle of difference, according to which social and economic inequalities are just only if they maximize the benefit to the weak parts of society. Strengthening the core was thus an unacceptable injustice: “Why should we support this way of life [the urban way of life] and neglect other cultures?” asked H (geographer and planner, 31 August 2011), stressing that “The periphery in Israel inhabits about half of the country’s population. What about public and planning responsibility, regarding this vast crowd?” The message is that ways of life other than the urban are entitled to decent existence and that just planning means providing peripheral and remote villages with the means to thrive, by investing public funds in infrastructure and services in nonmetropolitan towns.

Two extremely opposite planning policies thus emerge from these conflicting approaches: the urban justice approach calls for concentrating efforts in the metropolitan city while turning periphery towns to a rural, marginal, and depopulated alternative to urban life, while the socio-spatial approach calls for investing efforts in services and infrastructures in the periphery, thus compensating for the structured remoteness from central markets. Both approaches display deep injustice as the discussions were solely concentrated on Jewish core–periphery relations neglecting any discussion on Arab periphery.

Between public participation and professional planning

Already at early stages all members of the planning team expressed their support for greater participation of the public in planning. Working papers published by the planning team throughout the working period criticized existing planning institutions and processes as not being democratic and attentive enough, and for often using participatory processes as lip service and placation. It appears as if team members agreed that just planning should be participatory, bestowing the public, whose identity is yet to be discovered, with decision-making powers. Meanwhile, a parallel debate was taking place in the Email correspondence regarding the role of planners, whether they are interpreters of public views or professional educators of the public. It was only at late stages that the link between the two issues was made and the question was more clearly posed to the planning team: would the public benefit the most if planners fought for more substantial participation of the people in planning, or would it be better that professional planning will take the lead and conduct responsible decision making? Which way would deliver greater justice?

A fraction of the complicated relations between planners and the public is reflected by C, the architect of MIU’s reaction to the Salame paper, at early stages of the teamwork. On 31 August 2011, he wrote to the team members,

This is an opportunity to change the discourse, not just among planners and decision-makers but with respect to public opinions. Changing the clients’ point of view, understanding that living in Modi’in⁸ is not really a quality of life and that the shopping mall is not an ideal—this is our goal, on this occasion of public resurgence.

Changing the ideal quality of life, from a suburban model to an urban one, was presented as a goal that just planners should try to achieve. In accordance with the way they related to the cases of core–periphery and the Arab-Palestinian settlements, members holding the urban justice schema linked the principle of equal opportunities—their ideal of justice—with professional knowledge and action. Several days later, on 3 September 2011, architect I, member of MIU, noted,

We should strive to include this [the idea of urban justice] in academic institutions, in planning and architecture schools where it is still missing. (…) It should become part of the educational concept of these institutions. (…) Making architects and planners aware of the socio-political aspects of space will lead them to produce better and more just places.

The controversy emerged 2 weeks later, right after the final report was distributed among members of the team in order to collect final notes. C, an MIU member, related to the unfortunate role played by planners in the past that created current unjust and malfunctioning places: the fact that in the 1960s, Israel had built a huge amount of affordable housing in the new development towns and in neighborhoods throughout the country, and the fact that these places are now deteriorating and being abandoned by the young. The fundamental role attributed to planners in the misfortunate arrangement of space was now presented in a more extreme way:

Whose fault is it? To my opinion, it is firstly ours, planners and professionals! We marketed unviable theories to the public that led to the creation of Brasilia and Arad.⁹ And today, we plan Rishon West and Netanya South and East.¹⁰ We abandoned planning’s Hippocratic Oath, the duty to serve humanity according to its needs and not subjected to our private egos. (C, architect, MIU, 19 September 2011)

This point of view sees social discrimination as resulting from deficient accessibility to opportunities due to a badly planned space, and hence professionalism as the source of justice and injustice embedded in the built environment. Arguing against planners’ hubris and the huge mistakes caused by their blind self-confidence, though, encapsulates an image of the public as a quiet herd that follows the leader, be it a planner or an architect:

I am sorry to say that I have no faith in us, professionals. And I’m afraid that I no longer have faith in the public—not because people are stupid but because we have poisoned them for many years, we stupefied and educated them and now all they want is low rise farmhouses and cars in the private parking lots. People do not know what quality of life means. They believe that wide and empty lawns are “green.” They believe that the more open spaces, the better. They see the shopping mall as a human achievement and believe that a settlement cannot survive without it. And this rubbish was marketed by us. (C, architect, Email correspondence, 19 September 2011)

Two points expressed in this view were criticized by other members of the team: the claim that social relations are shaped by the built environment in a one-sided manner and seeing the public as a passive, clueless cloud that planners can easily shape. These visions, supported mainly by MIU architects, faced an opposition expressed by planners, members of Bimkom, and others:

Professionals do not shape our cities or our minds. Professionals can (rarely) create places like Brasilia and Arad, but most of the cities and metropolitan areas are not shaped according to any professional image. (…) With all due respect, New Urbanism was not born in the academia or by professionals. It was created by people: inhabitants, merchants, public delegates, tourists, land owners, homeless people and also … planners. At most, we can translate public atmosphere to professional tolls, offer interpretations. We do not invent it. (J, geographer and planner, Email correspondence, 19 September 2013)

Fainstein (2000) had already warned of the determinism and simplicity embedded in the New Urbanist message and reminded that “Participation in decision making by relatively powerless groups and equity of outcomes” (p. 468) are central features of just cities’ values. Another member from the social justice side of the team related to that as well:

I reject the saying that the public do not know what quality of life really means. As long as I recall, following architectural knowledge and disrespecting public knowledge are the source of modernist mistakes, which we do not wish to repeat. (K, geographer and planner, Email correspondence, 19 September 2013)

Below the mantra of public participation murmured by all members of the planning team, professionals holding the social justice approach differ from those speaking on behalf of the urban justice schema. The first understand just planning as delivering powers to publics in search of various standpoints and needs, the latter are concerned that common knowledge may divert planning decision making and lead to the emergence of irrational, and hence unjust space. They place their faith in brave and honest professionals whose leadership will produce greater justice and fair accessibility to opportunities.

Indeed, the urban justice schema was dominantly presented by the proponents of the New Urbanism approach—MIU members—which in a way prevented a real and deep discussion on how to bridge the gap to the socio-spatial. As each discourse highlighted a different principle, the former the equal opportunities and the latter the difference principle, the challenge of combining these viewpoints was not really explored. We dedicate the concluding section to elaborating on this combination.

Discussion and conclusion

Long-term commitment to civil activity and critical research taught members of the planning team to suspect central and municipal governments, a standpoint that was shared by most of them. However, they did not expect to find such deep disagreements among colleagues and companions. Unaware of the different schemas organizing their claims, and acting upon sincere concern regarding planning justice, team members were engaged in continuous disputes.

At some point, it appeared as if disagreements were mainly disciplinary, reflecting differences between architects and planners associated with MIU, and those associated with Bimkom, as expressed by L, planner, and a member of the Tel Aviv Municipality Council:

Social science people and geographers tend to explore the allocation of resources, while planners and architects are interested in utilizing allocated resources, thus focus on methods of planning. This does not mean, of course, that planners are not interested in justice or that geographers do not evaluate good planning. (L, Email correspondence, 1 September 2011)

This expression hints that different education and professional attitudes held by architects, planners, and geographers lead to the different perceptions of just planning. Thus, the architects participating in SYC tended to focus on the design of the built environment as generating terms of justice, while the planners and geographers took into account the provision of social services and the allocation of resources. The degree to which this tendency represents architects, planners, and geographers beyond this specific group necessitates a much more elaborated analysis in another study.

The Israeli case revealed in this research may well have international relevance. The structured contradiction in the perception of planning justice can be linked to similar issues and raise comparable dilemmas in any contested urban spaces around the world. The conflicting schemas appearing in the Email correspondence are relevant to many Anglo-American countries where justice for ethnic groups and core–periphery relations take place in public debates on planning matters. Similarly, the tension between professional and community standpoints signifies a principal dilemma in current planning practice. The point is that once put in a practical scope, the idea of just planning could be heavily contested. As shown here, there is no one single solution to these dilemmas. Specifically, the principles of difference and fair equality of opportunity can develop and branch out to substantially conflicting visions. In the case above, members of the team identifying with MIU and with New Urbanist ideas resorted to the principle of fair equality of opportunity as a main tenet of bringing planning justice. Dense and accessible urban fabrics are portrayed not just as the simplest and most direct mechanism to link—at least spatially—the least advantaged people with the social services and opportunities offered to central groups, but also as the only sustainable way to do so. Much more than providing means for benefiting the greatest number of people, it is about linking between the various traditions and social statuses and finding a common denominator in a sectorial society. Indeed, people need to overcome cultural preferences directing them to live in relatively small congregations or in low-density villages, and the state needs to withdraw from policies and actions leading to population dispersal, but unless these prices are paid, real justice is denied. The complementary aspect is that of professionalism: according to this schema, for urban justice to be implemented, it is essential that common fashions be replaced with professional leadership and that the right vision is marketed to public delegates, decision-makers, and planners-to-be.

Drawing on the principle of difference, a conflicting vision of just planning is presented. According to the socio-spatial schema, presented here by planners from Bimkom and other group members, since the least advantaged members of society are constantly denied their sociocultural needs, just planning is basically about granting powers and resources to marginal groups and providing them with means and goods usually allocated to central classes. Thus, on the procedural side, just planning is about delivering maximal decision-making powers to unorganized publics, while on the spatial-substantive side, it is expected that state investments support the chosen spatial structure and help them overcome social and economic gaps.

The disturbing facts emerging from this analysis are first, that the opposing visions of planning justice cannot be combined. There is no simple way to merge these genuinely different schemas and the resulting planning policies advanced by them. Thus, it is almost impossible to have an outer, objective scale of planning justice for evaluating the level of justice delivered by competing planning policies. Just planning policy is a promoter of specific values—for example, the principle of difference or the principle of fair equality of opportunities—and will therefore always remain a contested issue. Second, and even more disconcerting, is the understanding that just planning is never complete. Since it is impossible to merge all values of justice into a single planning policy, some aspects of justice will have to remain unsolved. Thus, if a specific planning policy promotes the principle of fair equality of opportunities, it will have to compromise on the principle of difference, and vice versa.

The final report of the SYC managed to blur the fundamental gaps, mainly by circumventing the main issues at odds and including phrases that pacified both sides of the argument. The conflicts between the team members regarding just planning thus remained unsolved, and stay as relevant as ever. Each group holds to its interpretation of planning justice, but as the protest is calmed no real discourse is conducted that can bridge the differences. It appears that deep and continuous discourse is still needed, as suggested in the optimistic words of G, a geographer and planner from academia, who on 19 September 2011 wrote the following words to the planning team:

What strikes me is the lack of real, structural and critical conversation between the various groups regarding Israel’s current and future spatiality. Each group is fortified in an inner, almost religious discourse. The need to meet with others and explain our views is blessed. It helps us untangle internal knot and meet with other ideas and actions. Sometimes a war is flamed, but very often good things happen. After we work on our papers and integrate different views, I hope that we will be able to find a room for a new discourse, between architects, geographers, planners and philosophers; between the ivory tower and the activists, and between those who feel they are at the center and those who see the world from the periphery. (G, Email correspondence, 19 September 2011)

Perhaps our analysis of the complexities of integrating equal opportunities and the difference principle into a just planning framework could become a challenging starting point for those who can find ways to combine these opposing viewpoints. Undoubtedly, further discussion is needed, in Israel and on a worldwide scale, about just planning and human rights in the 21st century.

Footnotes

Notes

Author biographies

Nurit Alfasi is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geography and Environmental Development in Ben Gurion University of the Negev and since 2011 the head of the planning graduate program. Her research interests include planning theory, planning law, and urban dynamics.

Tovi Fenster is the Head of the Planning for the Environment with Communities PECLAB at the Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel Aviv University. She has published books, articles and book chapters on urban politics on ethnic, national and citizenship issues and on gender identities in planning frameworks.

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