Theorizing State Dispossessive Planning vs. Community Self-Determinative Planning: The Case of the Al-Bostan Palestinian Community Struggle against the Israeli Planning in East Jerusalem
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Date
2024
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AESOP
Abstract
The Jerusalem Municipality recently launched the King’s Garden Plan to transform Al-Bustan, a Palestinian neighborhood in the heart of East Jerusalem. The Plan called for demolishing Al-Bustan’s buildings, displacing its residents, and constructing a park, named after the Biblical King David. The Al-Bustan community objected fiercely to the Plan, resisting it through a political campaign, preparing an alternative plan, and undertaking various measures to prevent their displacement and ensure their continued presence. This paper investigates what I call dispossessive planning, contrasting it with the self-determinative planning developed by communities in response. Dispossessive planning is a regime of practices that dispossesses and displaces relatively disadvantaged groups, weakening the material foundations of their affective and existential security, as it deliberately constructs a new reality. In response, self-determinative planning, as I conceptualize it, involves the development of forms of autonomy in their place, as dispossessed urban populations assert their right to produce and control their spaces of existence autonomously.
Keywords: Planning theory, Palestine, Israel, Jerusalem, Displacement
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Game changer? Planning for just and sustainable urban regions, Paris, 8-12th July 2024
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CC-BY