Planning as a Principle of Vision and Division: A Bourdieusian View of Tel Aviv's Urban Development, 1920s—1950s

Abstract

This paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of 'principles of vision and division' to conceptualize the role of urban planning in processes of sociospatial differentiation and distinction. Planning, through its classification schemes and specific methodologies (such as zoning), mediates the long-term processes by which the divisions and hierarchies of social space are inscribed and reproduced in urban space. The paper develops this conceptual framework within a historically specific urban setting, analyzing Tel Aviv's planning and development across several periods, from the 1920s to the 1950s. It examines Tel Aviv's constitutive plans in a wider political, social, and cultural context, including colonial development, modernism, the Jewish-Arab ethnonational conflict and consecutive migrations to Palestine and Israel. The analysis highlights how urban planning in each period applied and mediated different visions and divisions to shape the sociospatial distinction between Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and the city's 'slums' and 'periphery'. In conclusion, the paper suggests some general contours of planning as vision and division to inform planning theory and urban research more widely, in historical and contemporary contexts.

Evaluating Crash Risk in Urban Areas Based on Vehicle and Pedestrian Modeling

“…The selected areas, however, are different in the density of the street network (see Fig. ) and in their socio‐economic character, where Ibn Gabirol is located in the affluent center of the city while Florentine is in its poorer south (Marom ).…”

“…The newer part is characterized by lower density of street network and wider roads as well as substantially more vehicle traffic relative to pedestrian movement. Florentine area was built from the 1920s to the 1940s, and is characterized by a dense network of narrow streets, more commercial activities, and lower vehicle movement volume (Marom 2014;Lerman and Omer 2016). Such urban design characteristics and relative amount of pedestrians and vehicles throughout the street network may have potential implications on the crash risk (Marshall and Garrick 2010;Dumbaugh, Li, and Joh 2013;Moeinaddini, Asadi-Shekari, and Shah 2014).…”

Urban visions and divisions in the global south: Comparing strategies for Mumbai and Cape Town

“…Bourdieu's perspective on the relations between symbolic, social, and physical spaces has been explicitly explored in different cities, mostly in advanced economies (Pereira, ; Rosenlund, ), while Marom () specifically connected principles of vision and division to planning concepts that shaped historical urban development in Tel Aviv. Several researchers of global South urbanism, although not explicitly Bourdieusian, have also analysed the role of planning and its classifications in reproducing socio‐spatial divisions.…”

Housing rites: young people’s experience of conditional pathways out of homelessness

“…The vision that categorises social space (elite / non-elite, ready / not ready) actively contributes to the act of structuring it through practices such as rites of institutions. 'Vision and division' has rarely been treated as a concept in itself (see Marom, 2014 for an example) but serves as a fundamental motif in how Bourdieu constructs and puts the rest of his concepts to work. Of note, is that Bourdieu (2005) does not see mandated agents as simple executioners of policy.…”