In this paper we use the tension between ideals and reality as a key to comprehend the ever-changing concept of neighbourhood in architecture and planning theory. We analyze the theoretical, that is abstract, meaning of the concept of neighbourhood by using a deconstructive approach in the examination of particular texts. A shift in the sense and meaning of neighbourhood in architecture and planning theory over the years is discerned. A stratified process of transformation in the meaning attached to the neighbourhood is identified in the arguments used to construct this idea in theory and in professional practice. This process proceeds from a humanistic approach, to an instrumental and then to a phenomenological approach. The humanistic approach sees the neighbourhood as a manifestation of human activity and thus the planning of the neighbourhood as a moral requirement which is a proper response to basic human needs. The instrumental approach views the neighbourhood as a planning device, an integral building block in the development of urban structure. As such it conceives of the neighbourhood as a subsystem in a larger assemblage. The phenomenological approach emphasizes the neighbourhood as a unique urban phenomenon. Its significance is seen to stem from its conventional everyday function (residential) which involves continuity and permanence and which fixes the neighbourhood sense of place in the urban collective memory. In our paper these three approaches are related to present architectural and planning attempts to come to terms with both overall general societal developments as well as with specific demands and needs situated in the profession.

The massive investment in public housing for immigrants in the early years of the State of Israel has usually been presented in terms of the achievements in modernization and absorption of immigrants. A closer look at the State agenda reveals the dual role of public housing-the shaping of territory and the shaping of identity. This article provides a critical view of the hegemonic practice of the State in its formative years, in which the location, planning, design, population and administration of these housing estates were carried out. The aim of the article is not to challenge the achievements of housing in the nation-building process, but to provide some new dimensions for consideration in the analytic discourse of housing in general. A critical de nition of public housing that goes beyond the usual portrayal as public good is presented. This is seen in the context of the physical shaping of national space, or the spatialization of territory, whereby the State via the ideologically conscripted professionals used public housing as a tool to mould new immigrants into loyal citizens of an imagined nation-state. The resulting peculiar physical/cultural landscape, which persists to this day, is associated with a large marginalized and excluded social group: the Mizrachi population. Several crucial questions concerning the future of these public housing estates are raised and the prospects of their transformation into meaningful living places within the dialectics of spatial production by the State are questioned.

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