Memory and place in participatory planning

Abstract

This paper looks at the role of memory in exploring multiple meanings of place, and its active empowering role in participatory planning processes. A team of scholars from the Planning for the Environment with Communities Laboratory at Tel Aviv University's Department of Geography and Human Environment (PECLAB) was invited by the Bat Yam municipality to initiate a participatory process with residents of Meo'not Yam Neighbourhood to formulate a consensual renewal plan. During the project's three years (2010–2013) dozens of meetings and in-depth interviews with residents were held, as well as surveys conducted to understand the residents' sense of place and wishes for their neighbourhood. One of the main methods was to remember and discuss the neighbourhood's past, with reference to its future development. This discussion is the focus of the paper.

Keywords::

• memory
• participatory planning
• place
• empowerment
• community

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the residents of Meo'not Yam who participated in the project and shared with us their local knowledge and materials. We are also grateful to Efrat Eisenberg, Tal Kolka, Orit Resnitzki, Rinat Tal, Lian Idan Saga and Yoav Egozi, from the PECLAB who worked with us on this project, and to Guri Nadler, Sebastian Wallerstein and Ayelet Kestler from department of strategic planning in Bat-Yam municipality for their cooperation. Comments from participants of sessions on the Israeli geographical society conference, winter 2012 and Israeli planning association, winter 2014, also helped us to develop the argument of this paper.

Notes

^1. All meetings were held in a hall located near the neighbourhood with the participation of a municipality representative.

^2.http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader//?MIval = %2Fpop_in_locs%2Fpop_in_locs_h.html&Name_h = %E1%FA+%E9%ED (last accessed 3 February, 2013)

^3. Based on this information we wrote an initial planning history professional survey included in the project's Stage A Report (Planning for the Environment with Communities (PECLAB), 2011); see http://peclab.tau.ac.il/imagesPEC/overview.pdf

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tovi Fenster

Tovi Fenster is a professor of geography and the Head of PECLAB - Planning for the Environment with Communities at the Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel Aviv University. She is the former Head of the Institute of Diplomacy and Regional Cooperation (2011–2012). Former NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program Head (2007–2009). Former Chair of IGU Gender and Geography Commission (2004–2008). She has published books, articles and book chapters on participatory planning, justice and gender and the city. In 1999, she initiated the establishment and has been the first Chair (2000–2003) of Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights in Israel (NGO).

Chen Misgav

Chen Misgav has been engaged in, and writing about activism, planning and identities. Chen graduated with an MSc from the Town and Regional planning program at the Technion. At the moment he is a PhD candidate in the department of Geography and Human Environment and the PECLAB (Planning with Communities for the Environment) at Tel-Aviv University, Israel and his PhD research deals with “Spatial Activism: Perspectives of Body, Identity and Memory” under the supervision of Prof. Tovi Fenster. Chen has published some articles and book chapters on activism, identity, gender and sexuality in Hebrew and English, and co-edited a themed issue on gender and geography of HAGAR- Studies in Culture, Politics and Identities.