The Bourgeoisification of the Green-Line

the new Israeli middle-class and the Suburban Settlement

Journal article (2020)

Authors

G. Schwake History, Form & Aesthetics - Architecture and the Built Environment
Research Group
History, Form & Aesthetics (Architecture and the Built Environment) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2020 G. Schwake
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102223
Settlements Israel/Palestine Borders Privatisation Suburbanisation
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Published Date

2020

Language

English

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Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Department

Architecture

Research Group

History, Form & Aesthetics

Abstract

This paper focuses on Kochav-Yair and Oranit, two localities that exemplify the Israeli Suburban Settlement phenomenon. With the first being developed by a selective group of families and the latter by a single private entrepreneur, yet both with the full support of the state, they represent the selective privatisation of the national settlement project during the 1980s. Examining the geopolitical, social and economic interests that accompanied their development, this paper illustrates how both projects incorporated the upper-middle-class bourgeoisie in the national territorial effort along the border with the occupied West-Bank (the Green-Line). Analysing the planning and construction process of both case studies, as well as their spatial characteristics, this paper explains how the upwardly middle-class and its contractors were granted substantial planning rights. Consequently, enabling them to influence the production of space while promoting a new local suburban typology that is based on better living standards, private family life and a distinctive isolated community. Therefore, this paper illustrates the Suburban Settlement typology as an outcome of the bourgeoisification of the Green-Line, which domesticated the former frontier area and enabled its inclusion in the greater national consensus.