Last week, the National Board of Planning and Construction council deferred its decision on the Jerusalem sprawl plan towards Tel Aviv. This planned is called the Safdie Plan, after the architect Moshe Safdie, who proposes building 20,000 housing units and buildings for accompanying services in the Jerusalem Hills west of the capital and quite some distance from it. Among the sites slated for construction are Mt. Herat, west of Beit Zayit, on which 7,400 apartments are planned; the Lavan Ridge, located beyond the Green Line, south of the villages of Ora and Aminadav, where 10,500 apartments and other buildings are slated to be built.
The Safdie Plan raises a number of questions. The question most discussed, although by no means the only one, is the question of the landscape. Although the plan’s supporters twist themselves into knots to demonstrate that the harm to the landscape will be minimal, this ignores the fact that the damage will be precisely to the most sensitive ridges. It also ignores the fact that the plan will require a network of roads, which will damage the hillsides, at the expense of the topography and the flora. Nor does it take into account the damage from building infrastructures, such as water and sewer lines, electricity lines, and so forth.
But let us assume that the Jerusalem Hills absorb 20,000 more families. What, precisely, will be the connection of these families to Jerusalem? True, they will pay local property taxes to the Jerusalem municipality, but we can assume that their lives will not be in the city for the most part. Many of them will work in the Dan Region, which is expanding eatward, and even in Tel Aviv itself. Most of the shopping and entertainment activity of these residents will be directed westward, away from the capital to the east.
What will happen to Jerusalem itself while all this is going on? The city already suffers from a clear trend of absentee residents who actually live in the US, UK, France, or Belgium. Market conditions in the inner city are weakening the collective purchasing power of the city’s true residents, and are restricting their ability to earn a living. At the same time, government ministries are no longer hiring, there are plenty of universities, colleges, and hospitals elsewhere in Israel, and high-tech industry is not interested in an atmosphere of oppressive sanctity.
As for the rate of increase in Jerusalem’s population, the numbers are unambiguous: 200,000 residents came to the city in the past 25 years, and 300,000 have left. The decline even includes the haredi (ultra-orthodox) community in recent years, which means a slowdown in the natural growth rate of the Jewish population, which until now has saved the city’s dimensions.
When discussing Jerusalem’s Jewish population, it is also necessary to remember its Arab residents. Much has already been said about the stupidity of Israeli governments which expanded the municipal boundaries to include over 100,000 dunam (25,000 acres) and 60,000 Arabs in 1967. The Arab population has subsequently grown to 250,000, over a third of the city’s total population, and counting. It would be enough to forego the some of the areas annexed, without dividing the city’s core, to alleviate the fears about an Arab majority in Israel’s capital.
The demographic question is also about the Jewish population, however, Why reside in Jerusalem? Haredim and the national-religious camp want to live in the city because it is sacred. Then why are haredim moving to Betar Illit? They are moving because there is a huge waste of space in the city, especially in its religious neighborhoods.
This brings us to the question of how many apartments can be built on Jerusalem’s built-up space. All agree that it is possible, in accordance with demand, to build at least another 40,000 housing units under plans that have already been approved. There is little dispute that an additional 25,000 housing units that have been mooted could be built.
Moreover, even without considering destroying neighborhoods whose preservation is important for historical or architectural reasons, present construction in Jerusalem, which is low-density, ugly, and wasteful of land, makes it is possible to build 60,000 housing units in addition to the ones mentioned above. In short, it is possible to increase Jerusalem’s population by another 500,000, provided they want to come.
It goes without saying that normal density of urban construction, neither too sparse nor too dense, will revive some of the important, but neglected, inner parts of the city. The neglect is both visual and economic: a stroll along Jaffa St., half built and one-third delapidated, shows that it has become a bazaar of cheap goods, and other main streets present similar stories.
Another question: why talk about Mt. Herat, miles from anywhere, when there are already plans for high-density residential construction for the haredi community in the northern neighborhoods along Yirmiyahu St.? There are also plans for high-density construction on the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs compound, not to mention dozens of other plans under serious consideration, all of which are dependant on foregoing the Western Jerusalem Plan, because there is no demand for both here and there.
In the end, demand by Jews who are not millionaires and don't live in London, Paris, or Antwerp, depends on jobs and on Jerusalem’s cultural and social character. Regrettably, neither the employment opportunities nor the city's character promise heavy demand.
Concentrating efforts on inner Jerusalem may not a sufficient condition for restoring the capital's strength, but it’s a necessary one. Dispersing efforts will make permanent the neglect of the city center, except for building sites for absent Jews, who keep their shutters closed and lights off most of the year.
As noted, the neglect of the inner city is also economic. Given that the residents of the proposed western suburbs will likely head westward to the Dan Region for jobs, commerce, and entertainment, construction in the Jerusalem Hills will ensure further economic decline with more people leaving the city, even as such ultra-orthodox dominated towns as Betar Illit, Modi’in Illit, and Ramat Beit Shemesh ensure a drop in Jerusalem’s natural growth.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on October 23, 2006
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006