After over two years of study and deliberation – and rising rents – the city finally has a plan.

Good news this week for everyone who’s been feeling uneasy about the spiraling cost of housing in Tel Aviv – after over two years of study and deliberation, the Tel Aviv Municipality has approved a plan to create affordable housing units in the city.

While this does not necessarily mean that rents will fall any time soon, it does mean that a supply of below market value rental apartments will gradually come into existence within Tel Aviv’s municipal borders over the next several years. By approving the plan, Tel Aviv becomes the first Israeli city to come up with a coherent affordable housing strategy – although several other cities, notably Jerusalem, are working on plans of their own.

The plan was drawn up by a special commission, whose advisory team was led by Dr. Emily Silverman, an urban planner and a researcher at the Technion. Sounding less enthusiastic than one might expect, Dr. Silverman reacted to the decision this week on the Coalition for Affordable Housing in Israel’s Hebrew-language blog.

“It isn’t an excellent plan, and perhaps not even an especially good plan,” she writes. “And I say this as the person who headed the plan’s advisory team.”

She continues: “The mandate that was given to us was defined as the creation of a workable solution. Not perfect, not grandiose, not necessarily original or a breakthrough. Not a solution based on significant constitutional changes or one that would require financial support. Rather, a solution that could be put into place now, as a first step in Israel. With all of the limitations, shortcomings and opportunities that exist here today.”

Some details about the plan:

The program will benefit mainly young, working couples with children. According to the commission’s report, 70% of new affordable housing units will be allocated to young families making up to NIS 12,000/month (average wages in Israel, equivalent to around $3,200). Rents would be approximately NIS 2,800 per couple, or no more than 25% of a family’s monthly income.

The program will focus mainly on providing long-term rental apartments. On city-owned land zoned for housing, new buildings will be required to include up to 25% affordable rental units. The city will also offer scholarships to students who are willing to live in run-down southern neighborhoods, like Neve Sha’anan.

Regarding another of the commission’s recommendations – that developers be granted increased building rights in exchange for agreeing to build affordable rental units – the municipality will have to develop new legal tools before anything like this can be implemented.

Two pilot projects were also announced: one containing 100 apartments on a 4 dunam city-owned plot in the southern Shapira neighborhood, and another containing around 50 units near Kikar Hamedina in the northern part of the city.

Eligibility criteria for the program have not yet been determined, but will likely require at least 3 years previous residency in the city, and possibly also completion of compulsory army service.

The commission’s report also recommended setting up a forum to address the unique housing situation faced by the Arab community in Jaffa, as well as finding specific planning solutions for that community. That forum has already begun to meet, while a number of other organizations are working on a plan to set up a community development corporation (CDC) in Jaffa.

The plan offers no solutions for the city’s low-income residents, claiming they are the responsibility of the state’s housing agencies.

The commission which formulated the plan was set up in late 2007, after a sharp rise in rents across the city led to public pressure for the municipality to step in with some form of regulation. The issue featured prominently in the run-up to the November 2008 local elections. In May 2009, the city announced that the commission had officially finished its work.

The long delay between that announcement and the formal approval of the plan led many to suspect that the city was dragging its feet, or as Prof. Noah Efron of Ir Lekulanu (City for All), the largest municipal opposition party, told me last year: “Nobody within the municipality wants to advance it, so it’s simply not being advanced.”

The decision to approve the plan this week was made by a controversial municipal entity called va’adat hahanhala (“the executive committee”). One of the most powerful bodies in the municipality, the committee is staffed by the mayor and members of his coalition, along with senior municipality officials. City council members who are not part of the mayor’s coalition, as well as the press and the public, are not allowed access to the committee’s meetings.

Following its approval, the plan will be implemented by a municipal committee headed by city council member Arnon Giladi. The principles contained in the plan will also be integrated into Tel Aviv’s new Urban Master Plan, which is currently being formulated.

Coverage of the 2010 Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Conference.

Israel’s Solar Industry Trying to Regain its Edge TreeHugger.com, Feb. 17: Half a century ago, Israel was a world leader in renewable energy. Today, after years of dragging its feet, the industry is trying to regain its former glory.

Israel, Egypt Considering Joint Solar Energy Project in Sinai GreenProphet.com, Feb. 18: According to the plan, Israel would supply the technology, with Egypt supplying the land required for the project.

Spearheading an Energy Revolution TreeHugger.com, Feb. 21: How a remote and sparely populated region is positioning itself on the forefront of Israel’s resurgent green wave.

Solar-Powered Camels and More From Israel Renewable Energy Conference (slideshow) TreeHugger.com, Feb. 23

Will Solar Panels Cover Israel’s Last Open Spaces? GreenProphet.com, Feb. 23: A conflict may be brewing between an emerging renewable energy industry and environmentalists over land preservation in Israel. The heart of the controversy has to do with where to put the massive solar installations that are expected to be built in the arid Negev and Arava regions in the south of the country.

Can Israel’s Wind Power Sector Compete with Solar? GreenProphet.com, Feb. 28: In Israel, renewable energy has become almost synonymous with solar energy in its various forms. But what about that other renewable resource – the wind?

Matt Petersen of Global Green, and a handful of other organizations, are working to make sure it happens.

Photo credit: AP.

With over a million left homeless and its capital city all but destroyed, Haiti is about to become the focus of an enormous rebuilding effort. Internationally, many have been calling for a full-fledged “Marshall Plan” to rebuild the country, lasting at least a decade and costing billions of dollars. Moves this weekend to forgive Haiti’s debts, while funding rebuilding efforts with grants (instead of debt-creating loans) are a positive step in this direction.

But what of sustainability? How can the island nation, which has for so long existed on the edge of disaster, be put back together in a way that is at once socially, environmentally and economically sustainable?

Fortunately, several organizations are hard at work looking for answers to this very question. One of them is Global Green USA, an environmental nonprofit that has taken a leading role in the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. This week I asked Global Green President and CEO Matt Petersen about the chances for a sustainably rebuilt Haiti. Here’s what he told me…

JF: Can you give us a window into the thinking going on right now at Global Green regarding Haiti?

MP: We are in an assessment mode, talking to fellow NGOs, offices of US Senators, UN staff, and others to determine our best course of action. The challenge is that temporary settlements – much like in any post-disaster – are likely to become permanent.

What kind of rebuilding plans are being drawn up right now for Haiti, and how does Global Green intend to integrate its perspective into these?

I think the consensus is that building codes and standards are critical. Officially, people are being told that if they rebuild now before standards are provided, their home will be torn down. A more likely scenario, sadly, is that the threat of bribes or graft will thwart efforts to rebuild disaster-resistant homes.

For Global Green, our goals, still formative, are fourfold at this point:

• To inform the codes and system for enforcing codes for rebuilding.
• Identifying school(s) and partner groups to help ensure disaster-resistant, energy efficient/sufficient, and healthy construction.
• Identifying partners to do the same with homes (we’re talking to Habitat about this).
• Working with others to identify and support re-forestation, ideally via a network that supports women to lead the charge and supports job creation.

From my reading of the situation, there are three groups forming around reconstruction: one composed of the Haitian government, various states and international institutions, one composed of non-Haitian NGOs, and one composed of Haitian building professionals. Is this an accurate reading of what’s going on? What sort of interaction is shaping up between these groups, which presumably have differing agendas and ideas?

We have conversations daily with different types of groups from different places, but I think this is an accurate read. In our experience, no group can come in and dictate how to rebuild – it needs to involve, if not be led by, the local professionals and practitioners in the building industry, informed by the best expertise from other places.

With so much money at stake, how can Haiti avoid a situation in which reconstruction is seen as a vacuum to be filled by corporate interests?

I think this is a real and serious concern. We just pulled out of an emerging dialogue around reconstructing facilities because it was not clear the roles – and remuneration – some of the partners, who are known to be government contractors, would play.

In New Orleans, we’ve seen billions spent via government contractors, but with little long-term job creation or value added provided to the job base. We suggested to the office of a US Senator that one of the things they could do is to ensure that the State Department and AID provide some of the funding to women-run groups to help with reforestation or other critical needs of Haiti, not just to big contractors.

It sounds risky to bureaucrats, but in the end those dollars will be spent more effectively than what we have seen in places like Iraq or New Orleans.

Speaking of New Orleans, what lessons has Global Green learned from its work there after Hurricane Katrina?

Well, Haiti is a very different place, of course, from New Orleans. There are some parallels of course, but the biggest difference we see is that New Orleans was sparsely populated for a long time after the hurricane – the diaspora was more extensive.

We will wait and see how many Haitians stay in rural areas. If many do, it may be better if they can return to an agrarian economy (and the US government stops perpetuating policies that provide unhealthy, subsidized foods for sale in Haiti on behalf of US corporations), which may be a better life for many if it can be combined with reforestation.

Our key lesson learned – there are several we can share – was not coming in and telling them how to build, but how building differently can improve their lives, their nation, and their economy.

In a place like Haiti, where urban settlements tend to happen spontaneously, can a long, centrally-planned reconstruction process really work – or will people simply rebuild their houses by themselves, without long-term planning and building codes?

I think we will see a bit of both – there will be lots of homes rebuilt ‘unofficially,’ while many developments – those funded by outside groups for example – will need to wait for long-term planning and codes. Again, the question of the “temporary” settlements remains a huge challenge, or opportunity, depending on how you look at it.

Originally published at TreeHugger.com on February 7, 2010.

China’s flagship zero-carbon city has thus far failed to materialize. But that doesn’t mean it never will, says its planner.

Above: Arup’s Peter Head.

One year ago, I wrote a post mourning the demise of one of the world’s most exciting construction projects: an ecologically sustainable city for half a million people off the coast of Shanghai called Dongtan.

The idea was ambitious: a city without a landfill or cars, producing its own renewable electricity and generating zero carbon emissions. Originally announced in 2005, the project was presented as a template for future urban design in China, and generated a significant buzz. Over time, however, it began to appear as if a shifting political landscape would sink the project, and the criticism began, some of it intimating that Dongtan was never really meant to become reality in the first place.

Not everyone, though, is convinced Dongtan is done for. This week, one of the key figures behind the idea, Arup’s Peter Head, discussed the fate of Dongtan with us, as well as his thoughts on COP15 and the future of green urbanism. Here’s what he had to say…

TreeHugger: Was it premature to eulogize Dongtan? Is there still a chance of the plan becoming a reality, or has the opportunity passed?

Peter Head: The original aim of our client, the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC), was to have the first phase of Dongtan’s development completed ahead of the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

However, implementation of the masterplan we produced has been postponed. As far as we are aware, this delay is indefinite and we don’t know the reasons behind this.

SIIC was committed to the ideals of the project and encouraged us to push the boundaries of sustainable design by setting a zero-carbon target. The project also had government support at the highest level. President Hu Jintao visited the site twice. So, after our masterplan for Dongtan was completed, we had every reason to believe the project would go ahead according to our design.

Naturally we are disappointed that Dongtan is not going ahead as anticipated. However, many projects of this size and scale are slow-moving. Urban design is a long-term activity – it requires commitment and the alignment of central and regional political and economic wills. It often takes decades to deliver new urban developments, in China and elsewhere in the world, and the development downturn in Shanghai affected the project.

More recently, the bridge and tunnel connections between Chongming Island and Shanghai have opened to the public, so it seems likely that development across the island (rather than just on the Dongtan site) will go ahead – in one form or another. We very much hope that the research developed in our work on the masterplan will be part of this.

TH: China is urbanizing perhaps faster than any other country in the world today. To what extent have the ideas embodied in the Dongtan plan permeated China’s development model?

PH: Across China, urban developments are being planned which make use of ideas, tools and techniques developed in our work on Dongtan. We personally have carried out planning commissions for Wanzhuang Huzhou, Zhu Jai Jao, Tangye, and and the Changxindian Community. Throughout these projects, we have held ‘technology transfer’ workshops with regional/city authorities and local design institutes – to pass on skills and ways of working.

Separately, in northern China, the Singaporean and Chinese governments are working on the ‘Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city‘ which has drawn on the Dongtan ideas and methodology. Other planned eco-cities include Huangbaiyu, Nanjing and Rizhao.

To further spread the learning and techniques developed on this project, representatives from Arup have presented at many conferences across China. We have made our presentation material available through the web and through books. Arup is involved with the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy training programmes for Mayors.

TH: How has Arup’s thinking on ecological city planning evolved since the Dongtan plan was initially formulated?

PH: Dongtan showed that it is possible to develop sustainable cities, which encourage the use of public transport, recycle their waste, use natural ventilation in buildings and use large proportions of renewable energy. These cities will be clean, quiet, unpolluted and exist in harmony with the natural environment.

Our model and tools for planning sustainable cities have been developing. For example, on Wanzhuang, we found that capturing and storing water in an urban development (in a climate where water is scarce) on the right scale could provide irrigation water for adjacent farmland. With nutrient recycling, a system like this could also lift the rural and urban economy. All of our ideas and concepts now inform our work on planning projects across the world – from the Netherlands, Finland and the US to Chile and Azerbaijan.

Above: A rendering of “Low2No Block,” a design for Helsinki’s first carbon neutral district by planners from Arup, Sauerbruch Hutton and Experientia.

These ideas have uses that go beyond new urban spaces; cities including London and the rest of the C40 network are planning projects to retrofit their cities. They have found that integrated planning methods and techniques are appropriate for this purpose too. For example, the East London Albert Basin project was inspired by Ken Livingston’s visit to Dongtan, and was designed to follow the same principles.

As part of our commitment to sharing what we have learned, Arup, HSBC, and Sustainable Development Capital proposed to establish a network of institutes promoting sustainability. The UK’s Thames Gateway Institute for Sustainability is now being run by commercial and academic partners, and I have recently been appointed Chairman of the charity. Its current focus is ‘retrofitting’ the UK – pushing the UK to the forefront of green technology.

A Shanghai counterpart, currently based at Tongji University, has been set up by China’s Vice Minister of Construction. An agreement is in place to set up a virtual institute in Melbourne, Australia, and discussions are underway to extend the network to Africa and North America.

TH: You were in Copenhagen in December. Can you share some of your impressions from that experience?

PH: I headed up the Arup team that attended COP15 and was there for two weeks. We attended 20 different formal and informal side events and had many discussions with business, government, city and regional leaders and NGOs.

Of course, we are all disappointed that a framework for a binding agreement has not yet been reached. Nevertheless, the fact that 192 countries came together to negotiate a common goal tackling climate change was a significant step forward for humanity.

The climate justice concept and movement is now firmly recognized; the mechanism for developed countries to help developing ones adapt to the effects of climate change has been established and quantified.

Businesses now recognise that cross-discipline partnerships (set up to achieve integrated, efficient and renewable systems for cities) are an important means of achieving aims.

Cities and regions are leading the charge for change. Ninety mayors and regional leaders outlined their commitment to take action to counteract climate change, without waiting for a negotiated agreement between national governments. They believe that by making cities and regions more resource efficient and reducing their carbon footprint they can benefit the economic success and resilience of communities. Programmes like those now being developed can create jobs quickly and improve quality of life.

TH: How do you see what happened in Copenhagen affecting Arup’s work in the foreseeable future?

PH: We expect an increase in opportunities to plan and implement shifts towards a efficient renewable future for cities and regions. We are, for example, advising the C40 cities network through a series of workshops. We also expect a growth in work delivering change, by working through multi-disciplinary partnerships.

TH: What kind of new projects can we expect to hear about from Arup in the future?

PH: Much of the work that we do is focused on helping the organisations we work with plan for an unpredictable future and to operate in a low carbon economy. Arup’s integrated development approach focuses on interrelated factors – land use, energy, waste, water, transport, agriculture, economics and sociology. These are central to our work with the C40 and the Clinton Climate Initiative. We are their strategic adviser to aid climate change policy development and design.

I expect that many of our projects will have a focus on the retrofitting of whole regions of cities. Another trend on the horizon is being involved in more demonstrator projects for urban settlements in developing countries. These demonstrate that it’s possible to achieve a high quality of life while maintaining a low ecological footprint in an urban area, and also allowing the ecosystem to recover. In particular these will show that access to rich renewable resources will be the driver of future urban development success.

Originally published at TreeHugger.com on 24.1.10. Images courtesy of Arup.

The freewheeling development model that it pioneered has effectively been rendered obsolete.

“The World” with Dubai’s skyline in the background. So far, only the project’s model island has been developed. (photo via Time)

It’s hard to believe that anyone was really that shocked last month when Dubai’s real estate bonanza finally collapsed. For those who could see beyond the glitz, the writing had been on the wall for quite some time. Even on a short visit to the emirate almost a year ago, it was already obvious that Dubai’s development model was built upon unstable and partially hollow foundations.

Don’t get me wrong – I really liked Dubai. Compared to its conservative neighbor Abu Dhabi, where beer is only sold in hotel bars, Dubai felt like one big party.

The place was overflowing with energy: a forest of cranes looming over hulking construction sites, swanky clubs and bars buzzing with well-dressed, well-paid expats letting loose. A cosmopolitan atmosphere in which people from all over the world interacted freely with one another, as if such a Babel of overlapping languages and cultures were the most natural thing in the world.

In a very short time, I managed to see many of Dubai’s icons: the indoor ski slope, the palm islands, the fancy hotels. Flying out of the emirate, I saw two more images that lodged themselves in my memory: “The World,” an unfinished, multi-billion dollar man-made archipelago, reportedly already sinking back into the sea, and the older, less glamorous other part of town, where Dubai’s imported (and exploited) underclass lives.

Perhaps the world needs places like this, I thought to myself as Dubai’s skyline receded from view, places with that “last frontier” feel about them, where people feel comfortable taking enormous risks in search of seemingly boundless opportunity.

Dubai was founded on a ‘live for today, to hell with tomorrow’ attitude. That was the idea all along: strive for maximum growth, reap its many benefits, and worry about the ill effects of the endless growth machine later. As long as it managed to thrive and prosper, Dubai’s success became a model that many sought to emulate, and Dubai became a successful brand.

However, last month when Dubai World announced that it would have to hold off on paying back almost $60 billion in debts, the whole Dubai mirage came to a screeching halt. In the end, it was Dubai World’s real estate investments, the very same sector that brought all the glitter and flash to the emirate’s image, that sank the ship.

The media, for its part, focused mainly on how Dubai’s “collapse” would affect the already battered world economy. The answer: apparently not significantly.

But there’s another important lesson to be learned from Dubai’s rapid rise and fall. Turns out, there really are no free lunches in this world – you can feast only for so long until you finally have to pay the bill.

Detail from Blue Crystal’s website.

In Dubai, no project was too ambitious, or too ridiculous. Like the plan for a luxury hotel with a refrigerated beach or the building with 57 private swimming pools. Or the“Blue Crystal,” a man-made floating iceberg containing a variety of entertainment facilities. Just how such a super-sized igloo would make it through the scorching Gulf summer was not clear.

Even as these projects were being promoted, luxury cars were turning up orphaned at the airport as expat owners fled onerous debts, buildings continued to go up although the global financial crisis made it unlikely that they would ever find buyers and raw sewage filled the sea – the very same sea that brought in all the tourists.

Like Enron, Bear Stearns and Lehman, Dubai chose an unsustainable path. Socially, ecologically and economically, Dubai was and is the very antithesis of a sustainable city, and thus its eventual collapse was inevitable.

Those elsewhere who sought to build their own little slice of Dubai (and there were many copycats) would be wise to reassess their plans. No rational businessman should expect to succeed where Dubai’s businessmen-rulers tried and failed.

Whether Dubai manages to land on its feet at the end of all this or not, the freewheeling development model that it pioneered has effectively been rendered obsolete. And that, perhaps more than anything else, may end up being the most significant lasting effect of the current crisis.

Originally published at TreeHugger.com.

An environmental justice organization and a Bedouin village are attempting to create a model of sustainability in the Negev desert.

Qasr Al-Sir: on the verge of momentus change.

After a volunteer accidentally burned down its office, Bustan, an environmental justice organization based in Israel’s Negev desert, decided it was time to make some changes. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Bustan Director Ra’ed Al-Mickawi. With the help of a strategic planning consultant, the organization embarked upon an intensive soul-searching process. “We had to figure out what our role was in the community,” says Al-Mickawi.

To that end, Ra’ed Al-Mickawi conducted a series of interviews with people connected to Bustan’s work, in order to get a sense of the organization’s impact. He concluded that, while Bustan had been making headway, it needed to better focus its efforts. “The choice was between concentrating on one specific field, like agriculture or Permaculture,” he says, “or choosing one model village and working on a variety of projects there.”

Bustan chose the second option, and began looking for a community that might be interested in building such a model. The search led the organization to the Bedouin village of Qasr Al-Sir, an informal settlement in the process of being formally recognized by the state. With participatory democratic structures already in place and a population eager for change, it seemed like a natural fit. And, as the village was no longer considered an informal settlement, building there did not carry the risk of demolition by the authorities.

Today, Bustan and Qasr Al-Sir are planning to create a new model for Bedouin settlement in Israel, one that sets a new standard for sustainability while empowering the community to shape its own future. Their first major project will be the construction of a large community center, built using a combination of traditional and modern green methods. Construction is scheduled to begin later this month.

Kids playing in Qasr Al-Sir.

Qasr Al-Sir today still looks like an informal settlement. Located in a windswept basin, the village lacks basic services such as electricity, sewage, paved roads and water. However, the first signs of new development are already beginning to appear. A new complex of schools was built a couple of years ago, and other public buildings are also going up.

Ra’ed sees great potential in the field of green building. The new community center, he says, will be built by a handful of young people from the village, who have already attended workshops on green building methods. In the future, he hopes the villagers, who will all be rebuilding their homes as part of the redevelopment project, will chose to do so using sustainable materials and methods.

In order to help make that happen, he plans to set up a committee, comprised of a green architect, a social worker and an engineer, to advise residents during the rebuilding process. Green building, he says, will also be an economic solution for the villagers, providing at once a more affordable option for their own homes, as well as new employment opportunities for local youth.

Bustan hopes to leverage the construction of the community center in order to develop a series of additional projects, including attracting solar energy companies to the village and setting up an indigenous tree nursery, run as a women’s cooperative.

The people I met in Qasr Al-Sir, whom seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the changes planned for their village, said they hoped the process would help revitalize their society by restoring the place of the village’s elders and women, bringing back lost values and traditions and providing a positive horizon for the village’s young people.

Asked about the dramatic changes in store, Atiya, who lives next to the future site of the green community center, grinned. “I would be happy living out in the desert, but my children can’t tell the difference between a horse and a donkey. I’m looking forward to the future here. I think everything that’s happening here is for the best.”

Bustan, which defines itself as a Bedouin-Jewish Israeli organization, will hold workshops, tours and conferences as the project progresses to share the lessons of their work and spread the word about ecological initiatives in the Negev. Construction of the community center is expected to last between 3-4 months.

Originally posted at TreeHugger.com. Photos by Daniel Cherrin.

After a difficult summer, intense public pressure convinced Israel’s government to partially suspend its anti-foreigner crackdown.

African asylum seekers participating in a “human chain” demonstration Saturday evening in Tel Aviv. Photo by Keren Manor, courtesy of Activestills.org.

July was not an easy month for African asylum seekers and migrant foreign workers living in Israel.

During the peak of the hot, humid Tel Aviv summer, foreigners living here were forced to hide from an aggressive manhunt conducted in broad daylight on the city streets. However, in response to an intense public backlash, the government has decided to back down on some of its anti-foreigner policies.

As I wrote here last week, July saw the inauguration of a new Interior Ministry unit, called “Oz,” with a mandate to arrest and imprison “illegals” – meaning migrant workers without a valid visa, the children of these workers, Palestinians living illegally inside the Green Line and African asylum seekers living in the center of the country.

The latter are refugees from disaster zones such as Darfur, South Sudan and Eritrea who seek temporary asylum in Israel. An Interior Ministry policy dating back to early 2008 (which until July was only loosely enforced) prohibits them from living in Greater Tel Aviv.

Beginning July 1^st, Oz’s inspectors, accompanied by police, began descending daily on neighborhoods known to be populated by foreigners, arresting people wholesale. Refugees from Africa were also arrested, and ordered to leave Tel Aviv for the country’s periphery. Many of them did, leaving behind jobs, apartments and community.

The move, however, provoked a huge public outcry. Protests were organized, a media campaign was launched, and a handful of dedicated activists even took it upon themselves to conduct anti-expulsion patrols, keeping an eye on Oz’s movements and warning potential detainees and other activists ahead of raids.

(Barely a day went by last month when I didn’t receive a text message from these volunteers saying something along the lines of: “Arrests at the corner of X and Y Streets, please come help if you are in the area.”)

Adding to the public pressure against the expulsion from Tel Aviv, mayors and residents of the outlying towns that were forced to absorb the refugees often reacted to them with undisguised hostility. Meanwhile, the Tel Aviv Municipality, perhaps embarrassed by reports that it had pressured the government to expel the refugees, softened its stance on the issue.

The Jerusalem Municipality, for its part, publicly stated that Oz inspectors were not welcome in the Holy City.

Then, to the surprise and relief of many, Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced late last week that his ministry was suspending restrictions on refugees’ freedom of movement, and that they would be allowed to return to Tel Aviv. At the same time, he announced, the next phase of the operation, in which migrant worker families with young children would also become candidates for immediate expulsion, would be put off for at least three months.

In the meantime, the government will finally sit down and hammer out a coherent policy regarding non-citizen populations living in the country. And a new idea is now making the rounds: the construction of another wall, this time along Israel’s desert border with Egypt.

Yishai made the announcement on Tisha B’av, a somber Jewish fast day which commemorates a series of historical disasters (including more than a few expulsions) that befell the Jewish people. Yishai, a religious Jew, must have been aware of the irony.

The activist community, emboldened by the victory, vowed to keep up the pressure. Following the announcement, a demonstration was held demanding the release of several hundred African refugees still being held in prison for violating the new-defunct policy. On Saturday evening, thousands of Israelis, Africans and migrant workers formed a human chain around a south Tel Aviv park, calling for a law against expelling children from the country.

That same night, Oz hit the streets with a vengeance. Once again, activists reported violent arrests and inspectors breaking down doors in neighborhoods populated by foreign workers. While African refugees and families with children had won a reprieve, for now anyway, “illegal” migrant workers continued to be forcefully deported.

Meanwhile, for Africans seeking asylum in Israel, the daily struggle continues. Thus far, at least, there hasn’t been a mass return to Tel Aviv, and thousands now find themselves living outside of the center, with new landlords and new neighbors – but not necessarily with new jobs to pay the bills.

Originally published at Mondoweiss on August 3, 2009.

Defying drought, limited resources and occupation, Bustan Qaraaqa is building an ecological oasis in a wadi outside Bethlehem.

The farmhouse. All photos by Jesse Fox.

For a group of British ecologists working in development organizations in the West Bank, researching the sorry state of the Palestinian environment became, at some point, rather unsatisfying.

“We wanted to move from writing reports on environmental destruction and stagnating development to actually doing something about it,” says Alice Gray. Over two years later, the group, along with a handful of volunteers, is creating an ecological oasis in almost impossible conditions.

Doing More with Less

“When we first started building this place, a little over a year ago, everyone around here told us we were crazy,” says Tom, another resident ecologist. “How are you going to grow anything here without water, they asked us. But for us that’s exactly the point – using what we have to show other people what can be done here.”

Founded in April 2008, Bustan Qaraaqa sits in a quiet valley on the outskirts of Beit Sahour, a town near Bethlehem. Alice, Tom and a handful of foreign and local volunteers live here in a century-old stone house (the oldest house in the valley, according to their landlord, whose father built it), surrounded by 14 dunams of land.

Greywater system: water from the sinks and shower is filtered, then used to irrigate a vegetable garden.

It may sound idyllic, but the challenges are immense. Sparse rainfall, creeping desertification, lousy soils and rocky, sloping land, just to name a few. Making matters worse, the region is in the middle of a prolonged drought, and the past couple of years have seen record low rainfall here (although, to my astonishment, I woke up one morning to a light drizzle falling on the farm – quite an unusual experience during the dry Middle Eastern summer).

After just over a year of work on the farm, the place is beginning to take shape. A water cistern, meant to collect the winter rains for use irrigating trees in the summer, sits half-full at the bottom of the valley. Soon it will host a school of tilapia. Swales have been dug in preparation for trees and vegetable gardens on the slopes. A composting toilet, greywater system, and a compost heap are all functional. There was even a chicken coop for a while, until a pack of dogs managed to break into it and eat all the fowl.

Trees for the Community

In the dry heat of the late afternoon, I find Tom, a tall, lanky Brit, lovingly tending to his pet project. The farm’s tree nursery, nestled under a burlap overhang, contains some 120 species of native trees, as well as a few exotic species. Tom collected all of the seeds himself, during his travels through seven different countries.

The tree nursery.

Kneeling down to pick out a weed, Tom lists the benefits that the trees will eventually provide: improved soils, a home for wildlife, a source of animal feed, reduced erosion, medicinal uses, and the list goes on. The trees, among them oaks, carob, acacia, pecan and pistachio, are destined to be planted on the farm’s terraces, and on neighboring farms.

One of Bustan Qaraaqa’s primary goals is to engage and empower the surrounding community. The farm conducts tree-planting workshops, help local farmers during the olive harvest is always looking for new projects. One potential project would involve setting up roof gardens and greywater systems in refugee camps, where food security is a serious issue.

“Individuals and communities have more power than they believe,” says Alice. “The idea here is to turn our lives into an experiment, to explore what people can achieve using simple methods and the basic resources at hand.”

Another big plan involves building constructed wetlands for sewage treatment. As in most of the West Bank, sewage in Bethlehem is not treated in any way. Instead, raw sewage flows into valleys, eventually making its way to the Dead Sea – contaminating the land and water, and destroying the ecosystem along the way.

Bethlehem’s sewage happens to be dumped into two valleys not far from the farm. Using little more than a clever combination of purifying plants and graded terraces, Tom envisions a method of treating the city’s sewage without the need for treatment plants.

While Alice hopes a local farmer will eventually take over the farm, she adds that this is not essential. “The project is much bigger than this site,” she says. “Bustan Qaraaqa’s role is to serve as a demonstration site and to pass on knowledge.”

From the look of things, they are off to a very promising start.

**********

The other side of the story: This story was originally published at TreeHugger.com, where I am not supposed to delve into the morass of Middle Eastern politics. Understandably so, I guess, as even some of my distinctly non-political posts on that site can provoke an avalanche of politically-inflamed comments that often have little to do with the content of the posts themselves.

In any case, since this is my blog and I can write here about whatever I want, I will tell the other side of this story here.

The frame story here, which I could not mention in the original article, is the occupation. As of course we all know, things are exceedingly difficult in the Occupied Territories. This is now new – development has been actively stifled there for quite some time. Life in Beit Sahour, where 1,000 Shekels/month (around $250) is considered a good salary, is apparently made possible by the money sent back to their families by Palestinians living abroad.

(I was surprised to wake up one morning to the sound of a tractor working nearby. I rushed outside, certain I was about to witness a house demolition. Instead, someone was actually building a house. My hosts explained to me that the farm, located in Beit Sahour, is just inside the borders of Area A, where building is allowed.)

The way Alice explained it to me, the Olso framewok set up all sorts of obstacles to development in the West Bank. Sixty percent of the land there remains under full Israeli control, which means everything needs permits from the Israeli authorities. From my experience with the planning system in Israel (which I would say doesn’t exactly guarantee equal rights and adequate protection of the public interest), I can only imagine what it’s like to try to request a permit for something in the Occupied Territories, where the authorities are not accountable to the population in any way.  Thus $270 million, meant for investment in Palestinian sewage projects, is floating around looking for projects, while in practice all the projects are stuck.

Reminders of the occupation are everywhere: in the separation wall which cuts through Bethlehem, in the Bedouin village on the hill whose houses are demolished from time to time, in the raw sewage that flows through the wadis. Tom explained to me that the water system was designed such that the main lines run from Israel to the settlements, with secondary lines providing water to Palestinian locales. Thus, when the water pressure drops in the system, the Palestinians are automatically cut off. It often happens that people in Beit Sahour are forced to go for weeks without any running water. And some 200,000 Palestinians, mostly those who live outside the cities, are not even connected to the water delivery system.

However, as Tom argues in an interview in the Guardian, impossible circumstances make people more receptive to unorthodox solutions. Palestinians live in what is still largely a traditional, agricultural society. With the occupation making water and land scarcer every year, solutions like Permaculture are an essential part of helping Palestinians reduce their dependance on the occupation authorities and become as self-sustaining as possible. “The Cuban model,” they call it on the farm.

Of course, many would argue that you can also fight the occupation, and I don’t think the folks at Bustan Qaraaqa would disagree. Alice, acknowledging the dilemma, told me that every development issue raisies the same question: Do we deal with things as they are, or as they should be? Do we fight for better top-down water service, or collect rainwater and reuse greywater? For the return of land cut off by the separation barrier, or for more intensive agricultural models that make better use of the land at hand?

With the proper distribution of labor, society could probably manage to fight for both. But Bustan Qaraaqa’s ecologists are convinced that, without the clever solutions offered by Permaculture design methods, the West Bank will in short order come to resemble Gaza: a water supply made unusable by contamination, runaway urbanization, overpopulation, collapsed infrastructures and a shortage of agricultural land and open space.

For all their focus on sustainability, these foreign ecologists cannot even be sure that they will still be here in a few months. All are here on 3 month tourist visas, and they are entirely dependant on the goodwill of the Israeli Interior Ministry for their visa renewals. One member of the founding group has already been deported.

Still, their message seems to be slowly catching on. They are forming partnerships with Israeli organizations, such as Bustan, that are working toward similar aims. And ideas like constructed wetlands (which, by the way, may be Greater Bethlehem’s only choice as, requiring no heavy construction, it does not technically require a permit) seem to be catching on. Last month the Jerusalem Post reported on an initiative to build constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment in Palestinian villages.

One can only hope that the folks at Bustan Qaraaqa will succeed in spreading their message of concern for the land, wise use of resources, living modestly and making the best of what we have.

Follow their progress and adventures on Bustan Qaraaqa’s blog, Green Intifada.

Her latest book just released in Hebrew, the author discussed disaster capitalism, Israel and the growing boycott movement.

Naomi Klein, a Canadian journalist and activist and the author of No Logo, was in Israel-Palestine last week to promote the publication of the Hebrew and Arabic translations of her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Accompanied by her husband, journalist Avi Lewis, Klein spoke in Haifa, Ramallah and Jaffa, visited Jerusalem and Gaza and participated in the weekly protest against the separation wall in Bil’in.

Her appearance early on a Saturday morning at the Arabic-Hebrew Theater in Old Jaffa was somewhat low-key, apparently publicized only on a few leftist websites and blogs, as well as on Facebook.

Disaster Capitalism

Klein began by briefly discussing the idea behind the book. The Shock Doctrine, she said, is a book about “disaster capitalism,” a term which can be loosely defined as a neoliberal political-economic strategy that exploits a society’s sense of shock in the aftermath of traumatic events to push through a radical agenda of free-market capitalism, privatization and deregulation.

The book traces the origins of the strategy from Latin America’s military coups through Thatcherism and the post-Cold War era in the West to the aftermaths of more contemporary shocks, such as 9/11, Iraq and the Asian tsunami.

The idea for the book, Klein said, came to her during the invasion of Iraq. Seeing how the invasion paved the way for an avalanche of “blank slate” economic policies, hastily imposed by an unelected leadership, Latin American friends of hers were struck by the similarity to their own national histories. “They did this to us,” they told Klein, who was in Argentina shooting a documentary at the time.

“Our elites exist in a state of acute disaster preparedness,” Klein told the Jaffa audience. Not, however, the kind of emergency preparedness that would have been useful in the aftermath of, say, Hurricane Katrina. Instead, governments, corporations and power brokers worldwide, said Klein, lie in wait for crisis situations – situations in which they believe they can get away with things that they couldn’t under normal circumstances.

Take the “War on Terror,” for example. A lousy political strategy, says Klein, but an excellent business plan, the War on Terror leveraged the shock of 9/11 to create a new framework for tech companies, devastated by the dot.com bubble, to recast themselves as security firms. Often, this was possible with only minor changes to the technologies or services being offered. Indeed, the “homeland security” industry, which barely existed a decade ago, is today a significant and growing market, with ongoing wars in places like Iraq providing a host of business opportunities for the well-connected.

Israel as a Warning?

Israel, for better or for worse, plays a starring role in The Shock Doctrine. The final chapter of the book, ominously titled “Losing the Peace Incentive,” describes Israel as the prototype of a disaster capitalist state.

Not so long ago, said Klein, in the early 1990′s, Israel’s business and industrial leadership were still actively lobbing the government to negotiate some sort of peace with the country’s neighbors. The violence and chaos of the First Intifada were considered bad for business, so supporting peace was the natural alternative.

By the early 2000′s, however, Israel’s economy was in the dumps, reeling from the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the uncontrollable violence of the Second Intifada. The Israeli government responded by pouring money into the military, which then served as a kind of business incubator for Israeli communication, security and surveillance firms.

Once out of the military, many Israelis took the knowledge they had gained to create new start-ups, which were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the homeland security boom after the attacks of 9/11 made counterterrorism a top priority in the US. The Israeli leadership, seeing the opportunity, was quick to point out Israel’s long experience with such things, rebranding the Israeli security sector as the industry leader.

While this may seem like simply a clever business strategy, Klein sees it as a dangerous threat to the prospect of peace.

In every country where the population has eventually risen up against oppression, she said, it was because of two factors: the loss of a feeling of normalcy and prolonged economic hardship.

In Israel’s case, “bubbles of normalcy like Tel Aviv” substitute for genuine normalcy, and the hardships resulting from ongoing conflict are born by one side only, while the other side actually profits from it. In this situation, the worst case scenario for economic interests is for peace to break out (what will happen to our comparative advantage?). Or as a former businessman told Klein in Gaza: “For Israel, peace is a luxury.”

This extends to the production of culture, which according to Klein has been co-opted by the State for its own purposes. Israel has a new branding strategy that asks the world to get “beyond the conflict” and see the other side of Israel. As part of the strategy, the country has tried to create a different image for itself. Israeli models in bikinis posing for men’s magazines, for example, or the construction of a Tel Aviv-esque beach in New York’s Central Park.

The Boycott Movement

This is where the talk turned to the boycott (officially: Boycott, Divestment, Sactions), which Klein described as a non-violent Palestinian resistance strategy meant to isolate Israel in the international arena, similar to the boycott of apartheid-era South Africa. Klein supports the boycott, and tried to convince her Israeli audience to support it as well.

As she explained it, the boycott strategy does not mean ostracizing Israelis. The idea is to avoid contact with official Israeli institutions. Thus instead of publishing the Hebrew version of her book with a large, commercial publishing house, Klein found a small, activist publisher called Andalus, which translates works of Arabic literature into Hebrew as an “act of resistance.” Klein donated the rights to her book in Hebrew to Andalus, thus supporting a cultural project that she believes in while “boycotting the Israeli economy, but not Israelis.”

By supporting BDS, Klein wants to send the message that Israel is not a normal place, and should not be treated as one. In an interview with Haaretz ahead of her visit, Klein said:

“The State of Israel is trying to show that everything is fine in its territory, that it’s possible to spend a nice vacation here or to be part of Western culture, very Western culture. I don’t want to be a part of that. I am waiting impatiently for the time when I will be able to come for a vacation or a normal book launch in Tel Aviv. But this is a privilege that should be reserved for all the inhabitants.”

Klein, who presented the boycott as external pressure meant to help the Israeli Left bring about change from within, has found it to be a tough sell among Israelis. Israeli Jews are the “missing piece,” she said, yet they “are not accepting this in the spirit of cooperation and movement-building.”

The audience, some 100+ people, mostly Ashkenazi, very leftist-looking, and squashed into a domed, ancient Arab structure converted into a theater, showed no overt enthusiasm for Klein’s call to support the boycott. In Israel, a country where many feel that the entire world is against them in any case, convincing people to boycott themselves will probably take a bit more convincing.

Still, Klein’s books sold like hotcakes, and not just because they were being offered at a discount. The Shock Doctrine is a milestone in the intellectual effort to understand the neoliberal age, and its translation into Hebrew will make it accessible to an audience in a country where neoliberalism is still very much alive and kicking.

By putting Israel’s own sophisticated disaster capitalism complex in the international context, the book will hopefully lead Israeli readers to new insights about the political and economic policy choices made by their leaders. And if the concepts explored in the book manage to penetrate Israel’s cacophonous political discourse, Klein will have made a huge contribution toward bringing about internal change in Israeli society.

A few thoughts on moving toward greater urban sustainability in Tel Aviv, published on The Jerusalem Post’s op-ed page.

At the ripe old age of 100, the city of Tel Aviv has earned the right to a bit of introspection. From its origins as a dusty “garden suburb” of the ancient port city of Jaffa to its lofty position today as the thriving heart of the country, the city has come a long way. Despite the many mistakes that have been made over the years, Tel Aviv has developed as an exceedingly pleasant place to live, with a dynamic energy that attracts admiring visitors from around the world.

Sometimes it seems, however, that the city’s leadership might not possess the wisdom to nurture the very things that make the city great. Thus it was a welcome surprise to hear that City Hall had chosen to kick off the city’s 100^th birthday celebrations with a conference on urban sustainability.

The Centennial Conference on Urban Sustainability, held earlier this month, could have provided an opportunity for a serious discussion of the city’s past and future development. The city invited a series of excellent speakers from abroad, who brought fresh ideas to the table. Despite this, many of the discussions felt stale and lacking in substantive debate.

Below are a few thoughts on moving toward greater urban sustainability in Tel Aviv, based on what was (and wasn’t) said at the event.

1.       Be modest.

This month’s conference was anything but modest. The mayor, city engineer and a host of other official personalities waxed poetic about their own accomplishments. It was clear that the city’s leadership thinks very highly of itself and its own abilities, but not very highly of other people’s ideas – especially when they raise doubts about the way the city is used to doing things.

Way back in the 1960′s, American theorist Jane Jacobs argued that large-scale urban development schemes often do more damage to cities than good – and leave behind scars that persist in the urban fabric for generations.

To those who shape the city: be modest. Tread lightly today, for tomorrow the theories and ideologies that guide you will likely be discredited and discarded in favor of new ways of thinking.

2.       Choose: cars or people.

“Better cars do not make a better city, they make a city worse,” said Richard Register in his presentation at the conference. In many cities around the world, the car is now seen as the greatest enemy of the livable city. In Israel, the car is still king.

In Tel Aviv, there are plans for new highways all over the city (these, for some reason, did not feature prominently in presentations by city officials). In both Haifa and Jerusalem, expensive mass transit projects have not stopped city planners from attempting to widen streets in the city center, often necessitating large-scale demolition of historic buildings.

Cars take space away from people, fill the streets with noise, pollute the air and even hit people, sometimes maiming and killing them. Cars multiply: more and more cars hit the streets every year, and this means we must provide them with new roads. Even if, as Tel Aviv’s planners hope, the city’s streets fill up with non-polluting electric cars, our problems will not be solved.

And with the aggressive disregard that Israeli drivers show for the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers every day on the city’s streets, why should we keep building our cities as if drivers’ rights are sacred – especially considering that traffic problems could be easily solved with better public transportation?

City planners must choose: a city for cars, or a city for people. They can’t have both.

3.       Make decision-making more inclusive.

Urban decision-making is by its very nature a complex process – a balancing act between many and diverse interests, which requires endless patience and an open mind. Our mayor, a former Air Force commander and high school principal, tends to view decision-making as a hierarchical affair: one man gives the orders and everyone else must fall into line.

Perhaps the real test of a city’s openness is how it is perceived by neighborhood activists. But ask some of the people in south Tel Aviv struggling for progress in their communities what they think of the city’s decision makers, and they will likely paint an unflattering picture. In Jaffa, as noted during one of the conference panels, an entire community is living under constant threat of eviction.

No city can be sustainable unless its communities feel that their needs matter.

4.       The grass aint greener.

Israel is in the midst of a very serious water crisis. Despite reaching a compromise with the Water Authority which will allow them to continue watering parks, Israel’s local authorities must consider how to adapt their landscaped open spaces to the country’s semi-arid climate.

Somehow, grassy lawns have become the default choice for yards and urban parks, despite the fact that grass is not native to this part of the world and requires huge amounts of water to survive. In Tel Aviv’s new seaside parks, especially around Jaffa, entire stretches of land have become vast lawns: sod rugs stitched together over the sand, sustained by extensive sprinkler systems.

Native plants and grasses, the kind that grow naturally up and down Israel’s coastline, consume little water and can often survive without any special irrigation systems.

Landscape architects, take note.

5.       Think outside the glass box.

Land is scarce, argues City Hall, and therefore Israeli cities must densify. In practice, this translates into a disjointed skyline, with new skyscrapers popping up haphazardly wherever developers can find enough empty land. Despite stubborn opposition to high-rise buildings from residents, City Hall often sides with the developers.

However, there is already plenty of evidence that the tall buildings we are building today are more compatible with short-term profits than long-term sustainability, and add little to the functioning of the city. In his presentation, urban creativity guru Charles Landry described Tel Aviv’s tall buildings as “isolated blobs” lacking any real interaction with the street.

Still, for economic as well as cultural reasons, skyscrapers are promoted. A plan for one of the last new neighborhoods in the north of the city called “Manhattan on the Sea” proposes a new “downtown” of 30-35 story buildings.

Walkable, mixed-use, human-scale neighborhoods can be just as dense (or denser, if they allocate less space to roads and parking lots) as high-rise areas, while providing a more humanizing environment. City Hall knows this – a study that it commissioned revealed no clear correlation between building heights and population density in Tel Aviv’s neighborhoods.

6.       Define sustainable.

“Sustainability” is one of those words for which everyone has their own definition. With enough convincing, almost anything, no matter how ordinary, can be presented as “green” or “sustainable.”

Perhaps the time has come to formulate (with the full and equal participation, of course, of all stakeholders) a clear picture of what a truly sustainable Tel Aviv would look like.

A serious dialogue with the many green organizations and community groups that fight every day for a more sustainable and human city (and which, by the way, were not invited to take part in the conference) would be a good place to start.

Article and photos by Jesse Fox. Originally published on The Jerusalem Post’s “Comment & Features” page on April 26 2009 (pdf, online version).