Enclosed Residential Neighborhoods in Israel: From Landscapes of Heritage and Frontier Enclaves to New Gated Communities

Abstract

The study of gated communities and private neighborhoods is of growing importance to the understanding of new residential space production (Low, 2003;McKenzie, 1994;Webster, 2002). However, gates, walls, and enclaves have existed for decades and centuries, being key attributes of segregated societies and fragmented space (Boal, 2002;Marcuse, 1997a;Wu, 2005). In addition to factors of self-defense, particular social groups have enclosed themselves within gates on the basis of tradition and culture. More recently, issues of political ideology, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status have been examined and captured the imagination of the media, and political and academic circles, representing distinct identities, interests, motives, values, and lifestyles.Recent studies of gated communities have challenged the overemphasis of global factorsösuch as surveillance, transnational elites, and the diffusion of an American ready-made prototypeöand of factors held in common as globalösuch as crime, fear of violence, and insecurityöin the analysis of contemporary gating processes. Such factors, although crucial for explanation, are only partial; a complementary perspective that emphasizes historical conditions, sociospatial contexts, local mechanisms, and symbolic meanings is, therefore, crucial for the analysis of gated communities (Blandy, 2006;Crot, 2006;Glasze et al, 2006). However, the local perspective as it has been used so far has been mostly limited either to an evolutionary argument, indicating that contemporary forms of gated communities are extensions of long-established residential trends, or to a discontinuous argument, highlighting early forms of enclosed residential neighborhoods that have been replaced by contemporary fortified consumer spaces. The Israeli case is different. We suggest that multiple factors operate simultaneously to produce various forms of enclosed communities characterized by parallel evolutionary routes. Hence, older forms of gated residential spaces, such as traditional and frontier enclaves, coexist and evolve alongside newer forms of postwelfare market-driven enclaves also referred to as neoliberal enclaves.

The Rise of Gated Communities in Israel: Reflections on Changing Urban Governance in a Neo-liberal Era

“…Two landmark struggles challenging exclusion and enclosure of residential areas concerned the attempt of an Arab family (the Kaadan family) to purchase a lot for the construction of a single-family house in the Jewish community settlement of Katzir (Rosen and Razin, 2008) and the illegal gating of Andromeda Hill in Jaffa. The High Court ruled in the case of the Kaadan family that the state cannot discriminate, directly or indirectly, between Jews and Arabs in the allocation of state-owned land.…”

Conjoint Community Resiliency Assessment Measure‐28/10 Items (CCRAM28 and CCRAM10): A Self‐report Tool for Assessing Community Resilience

“…These settlements are different from each other by type of governance, size of community and form of organization (e.g. co-operative, communal organization) and other characteristics (see further, Rosen and Razin 2008). Response rates varied between settlement types with the minimum of 40 % in the small urban communities and up to 95 % (in one of collective cummunities).…”

Suburbia, Settler Colonialism and the World Turned Inside Out

“…2. The contemporary Israeli experience also confirms that "frontier" settlement and gated developments, the ultimate suburban form, can be coeval (see Rosen & Razin 2008, 2009). 3.…”