Elizabeth King

Conflict Urbanism: Case Study of Israeli Infrastructure and the Jerusalem Light Rail

Urban design can be used to mediate conflict by providing a city with a spatial setting for the celebration of cultural and social differences, the promotion of economic exchange, and the creation of a shared urban identity. In the case of unmediated conflict, where competing cultural or social norms create tense environments and violence, urban design can be turned into a tool for one authoritative group to exercise power and control over another. Although infrastructure, and particularly mass transit, is a public good generally considered as a connecting tool to ease the movement of many populations within several neighborhoods, this paper argues that the light rail in Jerusalem can also re-assert boundaries of segregation and have socio-political motivations.

In a city with such a history of turmoil as Jerusalem, urban planning and infrastructure can be used to further politically divide the city. Since its inception, people of many religious and ethnic backgrounds competed for access to the city. At the end of British occupation and the 1948 war, the Armistice Agreement established the Green Line: a demarcation between Israeli and Jordanian territory. After the 1967 conflict, Israel occupied areas past the Green Line, a territory west of the Jordan River and illegally annexed East Jerusalem. This occupation is a war move that is still not recognized by the international community, however, stops of the Jerusalem Light Rail’s red line extend into this land. I argue that while the light rail accesses both Jewish and former Palestinian territories and appears to increase access to the Holy City, its existence promotes unequal accessibility, violence, Israeli state surveillance of Palestinians, normalization and appropriation of occupied spaces, Palestinian cultural assimilation and erasure, and violations of international law. This especially divisive form is an example of the phenomenon known as Conflict Urbanism.