Israeli Real-Estate Buzz – Planning Discourse and Media Coverage

Abstract

This paper analyzes the news coverage of a nationwide Israeli plan, TAMA38. Previous studies have shown that the media support market and state power. I ask whether they can democratize planning communications and improve the representation of ordinary people. Using critical discourse analysis, I compare the media coverage to the planning system’s discourses, demonstrating that the media represented more people but were less critical of the plan. I discuss the plan and the coverage as part of actually existing neoliberalism and argue that planners should challenge the media and include the people and matters that it tends to ignore.

Keywords:

• Planning communications
• newspapers
• discourse
• inclusion
• democracy
• power

Acknowledgements

I thank the Israeli Science Foundation for the generous support, and the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. A special thanks to Eyal Migdalovich, Rani Mandelbaum, Gal Gendler and Elya Milner for their assistance in the analysis.

Notes

1 The term is a transliteration of the Hebrew abbreviation for National Outline Plan 38.

2 Data were collected from two daily newspapers, Haaretz (including the economics section, The Marker) and Yediot Ahronot (including the economics section, Calcalist); one daily economics newspaper, Globes; and two popular internet portals, YNET/XNET and WALLA.

3 Other languages are spoken by Jewish immigrants from the former U.S.S.R and Ethiopia.

4 Eleven representatives of municipalities, including the mayors (or deputy mayors) of the four large cities, two from mid-size cities, three from small cities and two representing non-urban councils. http://www.iplan.gov.il/Pages/PlanningInstitutions/PlaningsInstitution/PlaningsInstitutionsub1/About.aspx,

5 http://www.iplan.gov.il/Pages/PlanningInstitutions/PlaningsInstitution/PlaningsInstitutionsub1/About.aspx, TAMA38: https://mavat.iplan.gov.il/SV1;

TAMA38-1: http://mavat.moin.gov.il/MavatPS/Forms/SV4.aspx?tid=4;

TAMA38-2: http://mavat.moin.gov.il/MavatPS/Forms/SV4.aspx?tid=4;

TAMA38-3: http://mavat.moin.gov.il/MavatPS/Forms/SV4.aspx?tid=4;

TAMA38-3a: http://mavat.moin.gov.il/MavatPS/Forms/SV4.aspx?tid=4 (Retrieved September 21, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

The research is supported by the Israel Science Foundation [grant No. 238/18]. Research title – “Israeli planning and the emerging marketization of public discourse.”

Notes on contributors

Talia Margalit

Talia Margalit Associate Professor and the head of the Master Degree Program at the David Azrieli School of Architecture in Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on urban planning, specifically on planning communications, urban citizenship struggles, and public-private projects. She completed a research on planning objections and justifications, and is now conducting a wide-angel research on Israeli planning in the media, both funded by the Israeli Science Foundation. She authored several book chapters and published in the journals Urban Studies, Environment and Planning A, Cities, Planning Theory and Practice, Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Land Use Policy, and Geoforum, among others. She and her students founded “Me'irim” – an Israeli on-line NGO for planning democracy and communication. Email: [email protected]