Towards spaces of Trust: The power of integrative spaces in generating trustworthiness amongst groups in conflict cities
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Date
2016
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AESOP
Abstract
Contemporary cities are the main arenas for conflicts along cultural, social, religious, gender, political and ethnic lines. Yet, in this paper, we are looking for urban spaces where different groups, who live under an intense ethnic conflict, share practices and willingness to occupy the same place. This paper focuses on role particular spaces, their definition and contours in generating spatial practices that manifests collaboration and goodwill among different, for the most part conflicting groups. We understand these spaces as spaces of trust. We follow Sennett (2012) in the search for the “shared politics of place,” which signifies participants, of usually unequal power, as equal within the specific space. We focus on the city of Haifa, probably the only mixed city in Israel, were Palestinian minority and Jews share housing, and recreation spaces well. Within this city we examine two functionally different spaces, the popular bars and restaurants’ street of the German Village, were Jews and Palestinians visit. The second site is the campus of the Technion where 20% of the students are Palestinians, like their proportion in the general population of Israel. By studying the Palestinian and Jewish participants’ spatial practices and their perceptions of the spaces, we configure the spatial counterpart that affords the construction of shared politics of space and the evolvement of spaces of trust. Theoretically, this paper conceptualizes spaces of trust, and practically suggests some planning approaches to enhance it.
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Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
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