In this presentation, Professor Yacobi aims to discuss settler colonial urbanism(s) in Palestine/Israel, while exploring the different spatial and political typologies developed during the last few decades.
He will discuss how colonial planning has been used as a tool of social, demographic, and spatial control and how Palestinian claims for the right to the city are meaningful political forms of protest. The presentation will refer to Palestinian cities (such as Lydda) that were transformed into ‘Jewish-Arab mixed cities’, to new ‘Jewish cities’ that are going through a process of ‘Arabisation’, to Jerusalem as a neo-apartheid city, and to the current spatiocide of Gaza. The argument to be articulated in this talk is that moving from the paradigm of separation into a shared homeland is the only sustainable approach which will lead to a shared future.
Haim Yacobi is a Professor of Development Planning at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit. With a background in architecture he specialised in critical urban studies and urban health. Between 2006-2007 he was a Fulbright Post-doctorate fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and then joined the Department of Politics and Government at BGU. For the years 2010-2012 he received a Marie Curie Grant which has enabled him to work at Cambridge University, where he conducted a research project that dealt with contested cities. The main issues that stand in the center of his research interest in relation to the urban space are social justice, the politics of identity, urban health, and colonial planning. In 1999 he formulated the idea of establishing ‘Bimkom – Planning in Human Rights’ an NGO that deals with human rights and planning in Israel/Palestine and was its co-founder. Currently he holds (together with Prof Omar Dajani) a UKRI ESRC grant: ‘The Shared Homeland Paradigm: Reimagining Space, Rights and Partnership in Palestine-Israel’.
