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This research introduces a pioneering methodology and user-friendly online dashboard for examining population shifts during urban redevelopment in Bat Yam, Israel, part of the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area. The simulation tool, operated through scripts, predicts how redevelopment scenarios will impact household demographics over time. Its output is a population track-change CSV file detailing demographic changes. The accompanying online dashboard visually presents these changes, making the data accessible to policymakers and planners. The tool's consideration of environmental factors enhances its applicability in identifying vulnerable populations and resilient communities amidst urban renewal. This userfriendly approach, compatible with existing planning tools, underscores the article's significance in advancing urban planning practice and addressing societal needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore two complementary mechanisms that are designed to work together to reduce spatial inequality—redrawing municipal borders and the redistribution of tax resources. This study's methodology is based on the empirical analysis of 376 decisions of boundary commissions and permanent geographic commissions that resulted in land transfers and redistributed tax resources in Israel. Our findings indicate that the impact on spatial inequality is mixed. Over time, the amount of land transferred to low socio-economic municipalities has increased, provided that these municipalities are located in the center of the country, or have a Jewish ethnic majority, are politically affiliated with the Minister of the Interior and the ultra-Orthodox right, are financially sound, and have a large population and a large area. In contrast, the redistribution of tax resources provides revenue increases for low socio-economic municipalities that are in the periphery, largely populated by Arabs, are unaffiliated with powerful politicians, are financially weak and small in size and population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research turns the spotlight to the deregulation of once publicly funded affordable housing. Through a microsimulation that follows the conversion from affordable to market-rate units on Roosevelt Island New York, we estimate the expected demographic changes each year between 1976 and 2070. The simulation combines information from the American Community Survey, the island's masterplan, the privatization agreements, and interviews with residents, to produce interactive graphs at three urban scales: the neighborhood, the project, and the building. We found that while the households of market-rate units are gradually becoming younger and more affluent, the households of affordable units are becoming older and more impoverished. Despite an individual agreement for each building, the demographic changes are similar, and that, those changes will affect low-income buildings first. Moreover, upon expiration, 30 percent of the existing protected tenants will be over 65 and at risk of being displaced. The simulation is available at http://ridigitaltwin.pythonanywhere.com/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have discussed urban regeneration from the perspective of the displacement of long-time residents in disadvantaged communities. However, under certain circumstances, urban regeneration occurring on the outskirts of high-demand areas can enable middle-class and lower-class apartment owners to leverage their apartments as financial assets using various strategies. Relying on a qualitative study (n = 50) conducted in Bat Yam, a suburban city in Israel's Tel Aviv metropolitan area, this article proposes conceiving of the social impact of urban regeneration as a new inequality in which the ownership structure and the approach to real estate constitute a major link. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban regeneration and its implications for issues such as housing, gentrification, and homeownership have been researched by numerous theorists, practitioners, and policy makers. However, this article challenges the perception that urban regeneration is primarily a policy driver that leads to the displacement of residents, and by proposing an investigation of how urban regeneration also constitutes an opportunity for homeowners to achieve 'In-Place Social Mobility' (IPSM) – that is, social mobility without leaving their homes and neighborhoods. At a time when the welfare and social service system is weakening, residential property values are increasing, and wages remain stagnant, individuals must turn their homes into investment assets in order to increase their social opportunities. Following the Planning Deal and the Regeneration Deal, the interpretative scheme of the 'Social Deal' incorporates two fields: the city as a growth machine, and the social mobility of the homeowners. Through the theoretical demonstration of the notion of IPSM through urban regeneration in Israel, we propose the Social Deal as a new way of understanding the rent gap discussion – i.e., not only as a result of the cultural preferences of consumers on the one hand, or of real estate developers and market supply on the other hand, but also as a means to the self-profit of the residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers exploration of one spatial aspect of crime in the divided city: the disproportionate concentration of crime events along Jerusalem's former socio-historical border (known as 'Green Line') that is clearly reflected in a spatial analysis of crime. Offering insight into this phenomenon, an ethnographic investigation reveals the manner in which neighbourhood residents cope with crime by blocking entry to it from the east, thereby reinforcing and reproducing already existing urban divisions. This second, qualitative layer of research enables us to follow urban boundary work in action, which is important, as focusing on boundary work (as opposed to borders) offers insight not only into divided cities as fact but into the mechanisms, logic and culture that reproduce and reshape their urban divisions. In contrast to hegemonic analyses that highlight the importance of macro-politics in shaping the lines that divide the divided city, this article considers crime, and the way residents struggle against it from below, as a central mechanism that reinforces and reproduces the divisions of the divided city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the relationship between art and urban boundaries using the case study of a fringe theatre festival in the Israeli mixed-city of Acre. While mixed cities today are understood as agglomerations of enclaves, maintained and reinforced by boundaries, urban designers and artists have used art as a culture-led regeneration strategy through which these boundaries may be breached. This study undermines the shared assumption of both fields: that art has the power to breach boundaries, by juxtaposing a city's artistic activity with its segregation patterns and boundaries. Using super-positioning, the findings of two research methods have been integrated: urban research and ethnographic field work. The article shows that although the artistic activity in question is rooted in an avant-garde radical desire to subvert socioeconomic structures, it actually produces new versions and interpretations of the same segregations and boundaries in both space and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen the Israeli state investing considerable efforts in the alleviation of unprecedentedly high inter-regional inequalities. Improved transportation networks intended to better connect peripheral residents to centrally located opportunities have been at the heart of this policy known as 'periphery cancellation'. In this article, we study strategies deployed by young peripherals as they engage with the statist call for enhanced mobility between regions. Drawing on qualitative research conducted at 'A Center for the Young' in a small town in the predominantly rural Upper Galilee, we examine the extent to which young adults negotiate the recent state-led mobility turn. Taking a critical nobilities approach, we argue that statist aspirations of mobilizing peripherals to central hubs collide with socio-spatial constraints faced by many young residents. The official call for mobility is frequently met by a sense of spatial (im)mobility articulated by young agents who deploy instead alternative strategies to achieve socio-spatial mobility. Termed refusal, circulation, and refuge, these strategies draw on notions of peripheral stagnation, attributed to both state policies that have long marginalized the area as well as rooted conventions about the social and cultural inertia of peripheral residents. These strategies, we contend, widen existing inequalities between central haves and peripheral have nots while solidifying a sense of socio-spatial disenfranchisement among many of its young inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By employing Max Weber’s concept of objective possibility, this paper offers a theoretical conceptualization of a methodological approach to studying roads not taken in diversified cities. The paper incorporates Weber’s insight from the viewpoint of socio-historical analysis into an analysis of urban environments. In search of ‘other’ possibilities of planning, the paper presents a case study of the informal synagogues set up in Israel by members of Judeo-Arab communities. In this case, the possibility that was not actualized is ‘intimate publicness’, which encompasses new forms of organizing the relationship between private and public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes and analyzes the social construction of the urban space of an immigrant city, with a special focus on ethnic enclaves, by bringing together the languages of urban design and urban-social research. The case of Ashdod has brought me to question the existing theoretical toolbox of social research, with its discourse of segregation-integration and multicultural theory. Following the career of the ethnic category at the junction between city planning and urban history and the way people consume the city's structure, it is argued that the purpose of the narratives spoken in the center of a modern Israeli city is to pave a way into the heart of the imagined community. Having failed in their efforts to belong as equals, Israel's immigrants have adopted a strategy termed here 'distinct participation'. Analyzing their conduct and actions, it is concluded that in order to belong to the national community, they must first become different, and that nothing says 'different' better than ethnicity. This is the iron cage of ethnicity: ethnicity is not only distinctive and compartmentalizing; it is also a laissez-passer. These insights shed new light on the ongoing research into ethnic enclaves in immigrant cities and challenge the role of urban designers that act and involve in cities of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]