National Home/Personal Home: Public Housing and the Shaping of National Space in Israel

Abstract

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.

The political role of the everyday

“…However, we see that the function of public intervention in the housing market has assumed a role far beyond that of providing improved housing facilities and shelter for populations who are presumed to be unable to take care of their own housing needs in the free market. A closer look at the practices and routines of housing provision in Israel reveals the dual political and social role of housing: shaping the land, through the Zionist proclamation of a new (Jewish) territory, and shaping identity by establishing a new (Israeli) citizen (Kallus and Law Yone, 2000). Thus, in the process of building the state, it could be said that its residents are in fact the basic raw material.…”

“…The spatial configuration and organization of housing has played a crucial role in creating a sense of space and establishing the sovereign territory of the nation-state. Thus, Israel has always had a double agenda as concerns housing: for the outside world, it was intended to establish ownership and control over national territory; whereas internally it facilitated the creation of a living space from which residents were expected to derive their identities and life-styles, while bestowing symbolic meaning on the daily practices endemic to that space (Kallus and Law Yone, 2002). Here architecture, especially modern architecture has played a major role, as an effective means of interpreting, modifying, and contesting.…”

Effects of User-initiated Extensions in Government-built Housing on the Urban Space: The Case of the Rambam Neighbourhood in Tirat Carmel, Israel

“…This was a continuation of an earlier nation-state housing programme to improve the situation of the country's most disadvantaged citizens by hastily constructing densely populated housing estates (Kallus & Law Yone, 2002;Efrat, 2004). The neighbourhood's population has changed over the years and, as in other public housing estates, stronger households have moved to better locations, either in the same town or elsewhere.…”

“…This approach is deeply rooted in Israeli society (Shohat, 2001) and is expressed in ongoing discrimination against the Mizrahim, in segregated housing, education and inferior socio-economic opportunities (Svirsky, 1995). Mizrahi Jews were the main population of the public housing estates in the 1950s (Kallus & Law Yone, 2002), hence the environments of the Urban Renewal Project are often stigmatized as such (Yacobi, 2007).…”

Political Economy Comes Home: On the Moral Economies of Housing

“…Israel's early days, for example, public housing was a tool to 'mould new immigrants into loyal citizens of an imagined nation-state' (Kallus and Yone, 2002 housing but his notorious Sociological Department focused on disciplining his newly immigrated workers via home visits and courses on "'thrift and economy', 'domestic relations' and 'community relations'" (Lawrence, 2008:177). What was new about post-war housing construction was its scale and that it was largely masterminded by states through local municipalities and workplaces.…”