The Planning Policy Lab at the Technion, jointly with Israel’s Planning Association, has hosted an event focused on the Israeli National Outline Plan No. 38 (also known as TAMA 38). The plan is a top-down initiative to renew urban environments by granting landowners and developers extra building rights, to be sold in the free market in order to finance certain works (reinforcement of the building against earthquakes, as well as facelift of the entire structure). As a value capture mechanism, the Plan is innovative yet it brings to the fore many questions about fairness, distributional justice, and the possible regressive outcomes of policies that ignore local conditions.
The Lab screened a doco film (“Naftali Street Operation”) which tells the story of apartment owners seeking to renew and refurbish their crumbling building with the help of the TAMA. Following screening, we opened the floor for the directors – Vered Yeruham and Oren Reich – to discuss the motivations behind the documentary and the lessons gleaned from it. We then discussed the very same project described in the film, with the help of its developer, city and government officials.
Photo credit: S. Sussman.
