Dr. Nir Mualam, together with Technion’s Prof. Pnina Plaut, lead an excursion to the city of Or Yehuda in Tel Aviv’s metropolitan area. The city was selected for a strategic planning assignment in the 2019 Strategic Planning Studio at the Technion. Following the excursion, interviews with City officials, and other professionals, a group of our MSc students compiled a strategic plan for the city.

The studio is a first-year exercise in which the students prepare a city-level strategic plan. At first, students collect data on a variety of issues including: the political and socio-economic conditions, the built fabric, the history, design features, and statutory conditions in the city. Then, they analyze and study key issues and problems which the city faces (SWOT and BAU analysis). Following, the students conduct a thorough field survey of inhabitants as well as interviews with a variety of stakeholders in the city. The final stages involve the creation of a shared vision and a strategic plan.

Dr. Nir Mualam was invited to participate in a moot court session organized by Israel’s Planners Association. Dr. Mualam took upon himself to play the devil’s advocate and to defend a large scale urban development in a green space, which was previously zoned as agricultural land. Dr. Mualam argued that environmentalists curb much needed development given the severe housing crisis and the inability of families to purchase a home.

(Photo credit: Israel’s Planners Association).

Dr. Nir Mualam was invited to present his study, on vertical allocations, before the Israeli Parliament. Together with Dr. Eyal Salinger, Dr. Mualam tried to convince government to adapt and improve the newly proposed bill which enables local governments to vertically expropriate floors in high-rise private development. Sky city is the future, Mualam argued, but it should be based on laws which do not delimit local governments’ powers. The Parliamentary Committee for Internal Affairs and the Environment also heard opinion from local government representatives, developers, the Ministry of Finance and Justice.

Lab members Ms. Gal Neuhaus & Dr. Nir Mualam, together with Dr. Eyal Salinger of the Technion presented their study on mixed use development in a conference organized by Gazit-Globe Real Estate Institute. In a joint project, the Planning Policy Lab, presented data on the mixing of public utilities in privately owned buildings. The findings from this study can also be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275118312770

Photo Credit: Planning Policy Lab.

Left to Right: Real Estate Appraiser Arie Kamil, Prof. Amnon Lehavi, Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur, Dr. Nir Mualam, Dr. Efrat Tulkovsky, Dr. Eyal Salinger and Planner Gal Neuhaus-Foyerstein.