Imagining a New Regionalism of Israel: Methodology, Work Process, and Future Vision
Keywords:
Regionalism, Israel, Planning History, Regional Division, New Towns, Inequality, Ethnocracy
Abstract
This paper proposes a new regional division map for the State of Israel, as a response to the country’s ongoing social, political, and territorial crises. Against the backdrop of the October 7th massacre, the war in Gaza, and Israel's deepening internal divisions, the proposed regional framework is an act of spatial and political imagination, aimed at fostering equity, safety, and sustainable development for all citizens. Building on a critical reassessment of the 1951 Sharon Plan—Israel’s first national master plan—the study deconstructs its colonial and ethnocratic foundations while retaining its structural vision of interdependent regional planning. The new map outlines 33 regions anchored by strong urban cores, promoting collaboration between local authorities and bridging urban-rural divides. Drawing on contemporary theories of new regionalism and city-based democracy, the paper positions cities not only as engines of economic growth but as hubs for democratic engagement, social justice, and environmental resilience. It argues for the need to move beyond Israel’s fragmented municipal landscape of 259 local authorities toward a more integrated regional framework that enables equitable distribution of resources, strengthens local governance, and enhances civic participation. Mapping is thus employed as a transformative tool—both diagnostic and generative—capable of shaping more just spatial futures. The proposed regional vision invites a rethinking of national planning as a platform for pluralistic, inclusive, and resilient society-building.
References
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Barak, N. (2019). Ecological city-zenship. Environmental Politics, 29(3), 479–499. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2019.1660504
Barak, N., & de Shalit, A. (2021). Urbanizing political concepts for analyzing politics in the city. In Philipp A., H. (Ed.) Research Handbook on International Law and Cities Edited by (pp. 329-340). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
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Burger, J. M., & Meijers, J. E. (2010). Spatial structure and productivity in US metropolitan areas. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 42(6), 1383–1402. https://doi.org/10.1068/a42151
Coe, B., & Nash, K. (2023). Regionalized Governance in the Global South. Cambridge University Press.
Corner, J. (2011). The agency of mapping: Speculation, critique and invention. In M. Dodge, R. Kitchin, & C. Perkins (Eds.), The Map Reader: Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation (pp. 89-101). John Wiley & Sons.
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Pike, A., Rodríguez-Pose, A., & Tomaney, J. (2014). Local and regional development in the Global North and South. Progress in Development Studies, 14(1), 21-30.
Rachevsky, D. (2014). National Master Plan 31: A milestone in planning and its processes in Israel. Tichnun, 11(1).
Rogerson, C. M. (2009). The turn to ‘new regionalism’: South African reflections. Urban Forum, 20, 111-140.
Sassen, S. (2016). The global city: Enabling economic intermediation and bearing its costs. City & Community, 15(2), 97-108.
Shadar, H., & Maslovski, E. (2021). Pre-war design, post-war sovereignty: Four plans for one city in Israel/Palestine. The Journal of Architecture, 26(4), 516-540.
Sharon, A. (1951). Physical Planning in Israel. Government Printer. Retrieved from https://mavat.iplan.gov.il/SV4/4/99005082552/5 (in Hebrew)
Sharon, S. (2006). The planners, the state, and the design of the national space in the early 1950s. Theory and Criticism, 29, 31-57, Fall. (In Hebrew)
Shefer, D., & Antonio, M. (2013). Spatial inequality between and within urban areas: The case of Israeli cities. European Planning Studies, 21(3), 373-387.
Veneri, P. (2016). City size distribution across the OECD: Does the definition of cities matter? Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 59, 86-94.
World Cities Report, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2022,
https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2022/06/wcr_2022.pdfv., retrieved 20th October 2024.
Wilkof, S. (2023). The Sharon Plan reconsidered: How Eliezer Brutzkus’ pre-1948 separatism shaped Israel’s new towns. Planning Perspectives, 38(2), 281-304.
Yiftachel, O. (2001) Centralized power and divided space: ‘Fractured regions' in the Israeli ethnocracy'. GeoJournal, 53, 283-293.
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Yiftachel, O. (2022). Voluntary blindness: Reflections on the ‘Israel 2020’ plan. Tichnun, 19, 2, 1-7 (In Hebrew). https://www.aepi.org.il/loadedFiles/973.pdf
Yiftachel, O., & Kedar, S. (2000). On power and land: The Israeli land regime. Theory and Criticism, 16, 67-100. (in Hebrew)
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https://www.taulawreview.sites.tau.ac.il/post/yulis (Retrieved August 6, 2023), Hebrew
Zaidman, M., & Kark, R. (2016). Garden cities in the Jewish Yishuv of Palestine: Zionist ideology and practice 1905–1945. Planning Perspectives, 31(1), 55-82.
Arefi, M., & Aelbrecht, P. (2024). Urban morphology: Urban design nexus revisited. Urban Design International, 29(3), 135-136.
Barak, N. (2019). Ecological city-zenship. Environmental Politics, 29(3), 479–499. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2019.1660504
Barak, N., & de Shalit, A. (2021). Urbanizing political concepts for analyzing politics in the city. In Philipp A., H. (Ed.) Research Handbook on International Law and Cities Edited by (pp. 329-340). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Barber, B. R. (2013). If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities. Yale University Press.
Barber, B. R. (2014). Can cities save democracy? The New York Times.
Barber, B. R. (2017). Cool cities: Urban Sovereignty and the Fix for Global Warming. Yale University Press.
Ben Zaken, A., Savin Ben Shoshan, L. Yossef Ravid, B., Evyatar, Y. (2025). The New Division Plan for Israel: From Polarity to Cohesion, Kfar Sava: Institute of Israeli Thought.
Breslin, S., et al. (Eds.). (2002). New Regionalism in the Global Political Economy: Theories and Cases. Routledge.
Brutzkus, E. (1964). Planning the distribution of population in Israel. The Economic Quarterly, XI, Iyar 5724, 39-40. https://about.jstor.org/terms (In Hebrew)
Burger, J. M., & Meijers, J. E. (2010). Spatial structure and productivity in US metropolitan areas. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 42(6), 1383–1402. https://doi.org/10.1068/a42151
Coe, B., & Nash, K. (2023). Regionalized Governance in the Global South. Cambridge University Press.
Corner, J. (2011). The agency of mapping: Speculation, critique and invention. In M. Dodge, R. Kitchin, & C. Perkins (Eds.), The Map Reader: Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation (pp. 89-101). John Wiley & Sons.
Christaller, W. (1933). Die Zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland. Gustav Fischer.
Dahan, M. (2021). Income inequality in Israel: A distinctive evolution. In Ben-Bassat, A. Gronau, R., Zussman, A. (Eds.) The Israeli Economy, 1995–2017 (pp. 61-89). Cambridge University Press.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/israeli-economy-19952017/income-inequality-in-israel-a-distinctive-evolution/61894D8AB65B963D85EF6986EC4A2E43
Dijkstra, L., Poelman, H., & Veneri, P. (2019). The EU-OECD definition of a Functional Urban Area, OECD Regional Development Working Papers,
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/the-eu-oecd-definition-of-a-functional-urban-area_d58cb34d-en.html, retrieved 22 April 2025.
Gradus, Yehuda. (1983) "The role of politics in regional inequality: The Israeli case." Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 73, 3: 388-403.
Gerby, I., Levi, G., & Gavison, R. (2000). The socioeconomic divide in Israel. Policy paper. Israel Democracy Institute. (In Hebrew)
Groth, N., Nielsen, T., & Grunfelder, J. (2015). Changes to urban form: Commuting patterns and trends in two Danish city regions. Geografisk Tidsskrift - Danish Journal of Geography, 115(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00167223.2015.1060864
Halás, M. (2024). Temporality in the delimitation of functional regions: The use of mobile phone location data. Regional Studies, 58(11), 2175-2187.
Halbert, L. (2008). Examining the mega-city region hypothesis: Evidence from the Paris region / Bassin Parisien. Regional Studies, 42, 1147–1160.
Hananel, R., & Nachmany, H. (2024). Housing policy in Israel: From centralized social democracy to centralized neoliberalism. In Edited by Kumaraswamy, P.R. The Palgrave International Handbook of Israel (pp. 1-20). Springer Nature Singapore.
Harvey, D. (2015). The right to the city. In R. T. LeGates & F. Stout (Eds.), The City Reader (6th ed., pp. 314-322). Routledge.
Ilan, O., Dekel, T., & others. (2024). Regional planning: A functional space-based concept and policy recommendations. Or Movement, Planning Unit, Gotsman Laboratory for the Future of Israel: Be'er Sheva. (In Hebrew)
Jabareen, Y. (2022). National planning failures: From the Sharon Plan, Israel 2020, NMP 35 to NMP 1. Tichnun, 19(2). (In Hebrew)
Kalman, O. D. (2020). From development towns to ‘Mizrahi enclaves’: Was it Mapai's intentional policy? Middle Eastern Studies, 57(2), 327-341.
Kalman, O. D. (2024). The first decade of jurisdictional delineation between development towns and regional councils in the State of Israel. Israel Studies, 29(2) ,188-214.
Kark, R. (1995). Planning, housing, and land policy 1948-1952: The formation of concepts and governmental frameworks. In Troen, S. I. and Lucas, N. (Eds.),Israel: The First Decade of Independence (pp. 461-494), SUNY Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1967). Le Droit à la Ville. L'Homme et la Société, 6(1), 29-35.
Mazor, A. (Ed.). (n.d.). Israel 2020: Master plan for Israel in the Second Millenium, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. (In Hebrew)
https://surveys.sni.technion.ac.il/files/events/israel2020/heb_takzir.pdf (Retrieved March 5, 2024),
McWilson, W. K., Kodwo, & Sun, Y. (2025). City regionalism in the global south: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 115(1), 1-18.
New Discourse, (2003, July 10). Lands – HCJ New Discourse – HCJ 244/00, petition submission: Press release. (In Hebrew) http://www.ha-keshet.org.il/bagatz (Retrieved August 6, 2024)
Noy-Hindi, T. (2018). Regionalism in Israel and around the world, Volume 1. Ministry of the Interior and the ALKA Institute for Policy and Governance. (In Hebrew) https://www.eyosh.org.il/uploads/n/1640074563.3537.pdf
Porat, I. (2023). The interaction between regional councils and cities. The James J. Shasha Center for Strategic Studies. (In Hebrew)
Pike, A., Rodríguez-Pose, A., & Tomaney, J. (2014). Local and regional development in the Global North and South. Progress in Development Studies, 14(1), 21-30.
Rachevsky, D. (2014). National Master Plan 31: A milestone in planning and its processes in Israel. Tichnun, 11(1).
Rogerson, C. M. (2009). The turn to ‘new regionalism’: South African reflections. Urban Forum, 20, 111-140.
Sassen, S. (2016). The global city: Enabling economic intermediation and bearing its costs. City & Community, 15(2), 97-108.
Shadar, H., & Maslovski, E. (2021). Pre-war design, post-war sovereignty: Four plans for one city in Israel/Palestine. The Journal of Architecture, 26(4), 516-540.
Sharon, A. (1951). Physical Planning in Israel. Government Printer. Retrieved from https://mavat.iplan.gov.il/SV4/4/99005082552/5 (in Hebrew)
Sharon, S. (2006). The planners, the state, and the design of the national space in the early 1950s. Theory and Criticism, 29, 31-57, Fall. (In Hebrew)
Shefer, D., & Antonio, M. (2013). Spatial inequality between and within urban areas: The case of Israeli cities. European Planning Studies, 21(3), 373-387.
Veneri, P. (2016). City size distribution across the OECD: Does the definition of cities matter? Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 59, 86-94.
World Cities Report, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2022,
https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2022/06/wcr_2022.pdfv., retrieved 20th October 2024.
Wilkof, S. (2023). The Sharon Plan reconsidered: How Eliezer Brutzkus’ pre-1948 separatism shaped Israel’s new towns. Planning Perspectives, 38(2), 281-304.
Yiftachel, O. (2001) Centralized power and divided space: ‘Fractured regions' in the Israeli ethnocracy'. GeoJournal, 53, 283-293.
Yiftachel, O. (2021). Power and Land: From Ethnocracy to Creeping Apartheid in Israel/Palestine. Resling. (In Hebrew)
Yiftachel, O. (2022). Voluntary blindness: Reflections on the ‘Israel 2020’ plan. Tichnun, 19, 2, 1-7 (In Hebrew). https://www.aepi.org.il/loadedFiles/973.pdf
Yiftachel, O., & Kedar, S. (2000). On power and land: The Israeli land regime. Theory and Criticism, 16, 67-100. (in Hebrew)
Yulis, C. (2023, June 28). The issue of the Asi Stream: The public's right of access to designated lands. Tel Aviv University Law Review.
https://www.taulawreview.sites.tau.ac.il/post/yulis (Retrieved August 6, 2023), Hebrew
Zaidman, M., & Kark, R. (2016). Garden cities in the Jewish Yishuv of Palestine: Zionist ideology and practice 1905–1945. Planning Perspectives, 31(1), 55-82.
Published
2025-05-08
Section
Articles
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