From colonial to national landscape: producing Haifa`s cityscape

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From colonial to national landscape:
producing Haifa’s cityscape
a
Ziva Kolodney & Rachel Kallus
a
a
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel
E-mail: [email protected]@tx.technion.ac.il
Available online: 16 Jun 2008
To cite this article: Ziva Kolodney & Rachel Kallus (2008): From colonial to national landscape: producing
Haifa’s cityscape, Planning Perspectives, 23:3, 323-348
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Planning Perspectives, 23 (July 2008) 323–348
From colonial to national landscape: producing
Haifa’s cityscape
ZIVA KOLODNEY* and RACHEL KALLUS**
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel (e-mail: [email protected].
ac.il; [email protected])
Downloaded by [Technion - Israel Inst of Tech] at 11:29 14 December 2011
Planning
10.1080/02665430802102815
RPPE_A_310447.sgm
0266-5433
Original
Taylor
302008
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[email protected]
ZivaKolodney
00000July
and
&
Article
Perspectives
Francis
(print)/1466-4518
Francis
2008
(online)
The landscape’s continuity makes it a most efficient means for shaping the cityscape. Contrary to
architecture/planning periodical historical approach, it is argued that the urban landscape’s dynamic
requires a fresh outlook in order to portray its time–space linear structure. The paper examines the city
of Haifa in transition from colonial to the nation-building era through the landscape production mechanism that this article calls erascape. The investigation shows how this mechanism arises from political
agenda to become a powerful agent in constructing Haifa’s socio-cultural relations. Examining the
remaking of Haifa Old City enables one to understand landscape production strategies as interplay
between professionals (architects and planners), administrators and politicians operating in the transformative making of colonial and national cityscapes. Landscape production, as embedded through
design knowledge and planning procedures, is examined in maps, drawings, diagrams and sketches, in
official and private correspondence, in laws and regulations, and as it appears in historical photographs and exists in today’s spatial experience of the city.
Introduction
This paper examines the Haifa cityscape in transition from colonialism to nationalism.
Contrary to the common perception of landscape as a passive and aesthetic cultural product
‘to be seen’, the landscape explored here is a planned and premeditated production of a
professional practice. It plays a major role in the socio-cultural processes of the city, as a
constantly changing generative form and as explicit evidence of power and knowledge. It is
created and recreated by architects, planners and landscape architects, ideologically empowered by politicians and administrators. Hence, behind the tacit perception of the landscape
as a natural phenomenon, the mechanisms of landscape production are efficient tools with
which to inculcate official strategies, ideologies and values.
*Ziva Kolodney is a practising landscape architect and an adjunct lecturer at the Technion, Israel Institute of
Technology, where she teaches urban landscape design. Parallel to that she is completing her PhD studies at the
Technion. Her dissertation focuses on the politics of landscape.
**Rachel Kallus is an architect and town planner, associate professor of architecture, urban design and town
planning at the Technion. Her research focuses on policy measures and their physical outcomes, especially in
relation to equity, equality and social justice. She is the author of numerous publications in books and in architecture and planning journals on the socio-cultural aspects of the built environment and its production.
Planning Perspectives
ISSN 0266-5433 print/ISSN 1466-4518 online © 2008 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/02665430802102815
324
Kolodney and Kallus
The main assumption here is that landscape’s ongoing dynamic requires a different historical perspective to portray its temporal–spatial linear structure. This historiographic
approach is employed for examining the city of Haifa, which nestles on the slopes of Mount
Carmel, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean (Figs 1 and 2). Haifa’s pseudo-natural
appearance, and the role landscape has played and continues to play in its history, present a
unique opportunity to challenge the periodical historical approach prevailing to date in the
study of the city [1].
This study focuses on Haifa’s transition from colonialism to nation-building. Under the
British Mandate (1917–48), Haifa was an important port city, an economic and strategic
colonial asset. Its Jewish urban working class established in the late 1920s, despite the ruralorientated Zionist ethos [2], made Haifa a political, economic and social centre of the evolving
Figure 2.
1. View
Haifa from
and itsMount
environs.
Carmel towards downtown and Haifa Bay area (photograph: Guy Shachar, 2006).
Figure 1.
Haifa and its environs.
Producing Haifa’s cityscape
325
Figure 2. Current view from Mount Carmel towards downtown and Haifa Bay area. (Photograph:
Guy Shachar, 2006.)
nation-state, and a Labor Party stronghold during the 1950s and 1960s [3]. This paper
considers the transition from one period to the next via landscape production. The landscape’s inherent qualities are viewed as a political-social construct and a powerful medium for
advancing ideological goals. It is asserted that, behind its ‘natural’ appearance, landscape (and
hence landscape production) is used to promote official strategies, ideologies and values. This
reading of the landscape as a process-orientated phenomenon, rather than a product or a
cultural image, evokes its transformative qualities. This enables us to avoid the more common
periodical-historical approach and discuss the transition from colonial to national Haifa.
From a professional perspective, landscape design is rooted in hegemonic power. In this
aspect, landscape is a political space [4], and landscape production is thus a socio-cultural
action [5]. The understanding is that landscape is a powerful agent of the everyday that is in
need of taming and control. Attention is drawn to the ties between landscape materiality and
its producers; architects, landscape architects, city officials, politicians and private patrons [6].
As others, we also explore the socio-cultural and political dimensions of the landscape [7].
But rather than looking at discrete sites such as gardens or parks, the cityscape is considered
as a whole, particularly in regard to how it impinges on social relations and daily life. Thus,
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Kolodney and Kallus
the focal questions of this study are: What were the landscape mechanisms that evoked the
transition from Colonial to National Haifa? What were the political and socio-cultural forces
behind these mechanisms? How did they attempt to shape the urban image? How did
they establish the city’s spatial experience and how did this experience define the identity and
everyday life of its residents?
Context and background
LANDSCAPE AND URBAN PRODUCTION
What is landscape? More specifically, what is urban landscape? Landscape is considered
widely as a passive and aesthetic cultural product ‘to be seen’ [8]. Discussions, mainly
beyond the field of architecture – i.e. in geography, anthropology and cultural studies – tend
to depart from Carl Sauer’s traditional definition of landscape as ‘a land shape’ [9]. They
consider its visual and textual imagery and often focus on the way landscapes express power
relations, and their spatial attributes [10]. Conversely, current debate on visual culture views
landscape as a dynamic socio-cultural participant, an evidence of strategic action and a
cultural catalyst [11]. Instead of asking what landscapes mean, researchers have asked how
landscapes activate a specific socio-cultural reality. In this study of Haifa, the focus is on
landscape and, in particular, on landscape production, as embedded in design and planning
procedures, a premeditated process based on the spatial knowledge of the professional practice of landscape architecture.
Landscapes are perceived traditionally as ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘man-made’ phenomena,
or as a way to negotiate between organic and manufactured worlds. But beyond the binary
limitations of man-versus-nature stemming from a post-war criticism of denatured modernization, contemporary landscape architecture involves a wide range of landscape processes
while attempting to mediate between ‘natural’ conditions and ‘man-made’ constructions [12].
Landscape production in cities, particularly in the context of nineteenth and twentieth century
urbanization and modernization, has become a major issue for research and professional
endeavour. Maria Kaika suggested the need to integrate economic, political and social
processes in what she called ‘urban natures’ – urban landscapes that are products of nature,
technology and urban design [13]. These processes were central to the radical sanitation
projects of the nineteenth century, the production of urban growth and the technological
infrastructures of the twentieth century. Transformative production of dams and water urbanization, telecommunication and railway networks are examples of what Erik Swyngedouw
called ‘technonatural’ materiality and imagery landscapes [14]. Elizabeth Mossop argued that
landscape design focuses on urban built/un-built relationships, and the search for an urban
ecology that produces the city image [15]. Further to these notions, this article is interested in
the urban landscape and its production mechanisms. But, more so, it is interested in understanding how landscape production is related to ideologies or derived from political intentions; and how it constructs the city’s appearance and establishes socio-cultural relations.
The urban landscape is seen currently as an ongoing process of production and reproduction, suggesting an ecological approach to contemporary cities [16]. James Corner emphasized
urban phenomena as resulting from a continuous urbanization process. He asked how things
327
work in space and time, rather than how the city is formed as a unified product [17]. Following
Ian McHarg’s influential study of the effect of ecological processes and natural systems on
human settlements, Corner remarked on the dynamic nature of the urban space as an ecological system: ‘cities and infrastructures are just as ecological as forests and rivers’, he said [18].
In line with time–space ecology, landscape urbanism emphasizes its continuity as an interrelated network. However, to date, little attention has been paid to socio-cultural processes of
landscapes and their political implications [19]. From a professional perspective, landscape
design is rooted in hegemonic power, in which spatial changes are part of programmatic
visions integrated in planned schema. Like Kenneth Olwig, the focus is on the politics of
landscape and an examination is made of landscape production mechanisms arising from
political agenda to become powerful cultural agents in everyday life. The urban landscape is
considered in its entirety, and how it determines the image of the city and its spatial sociocultural relations.
TIME–SPACE HISTORIOGRAPHY
The ongoing and constantly changing character of the landscape is inherently dynamic and
temporal. It is expressed in the cycle of nature, seasonal changes, growing plants and the
eternal bond between people and the land. Yet, not unlike architectural emphasis on a
specific site or situation, landscape studies also frequently focus on specific landscape formations (gardens, parks); personalities (such as Fredrick Law Olmsted and Garrett Eckbo), or
they investigate particular historical eras, events or narratives of site-specific settings. Recent
landscape-architecture historiographies are often informed by current critical approach, and
are more attuned to the transformative experiences [20].
As pointed out by Lefebvre, enduring landscape phenomena are rooted in power relations, enforced by hegemonic control, and immersed in socio-economic cycles [21]. Various
aspects of landscape production have been studied recently, both in general and specifically
about Palestine/Israel. Kenneth Olwig discussed the political nature of landscape as
managed by authoritarian power [22]. Diane Harris considered the politics of landscape
production and power relations in the context of eighteenth century Italian villas [23]. Alan
Balfour examined the connection of political figures with the production of landscape [24].
Robert Home emphasized the transformative character of planning policies as converted
into land laws and regulations that control the landscape. His examples include Palestine/
Israel during the transitions from Ottoman to Colonial to National rule [25]. He explored
the modifications of the Ottoman land code system, its integration into the British colonial
planning ordinance to later become a building block in the Israeli state’s social and territorial construct. Shafir and Peled, similarly, examined the ties between British colonialism and
the Zionist movement in terms of ideology and administrative practices, and the influence of
both on the State of Israel [26].
Recent post-colonial studies of cities have emphasized this pivotal phase of ‘progress and
development’ as manifested in planning and architectural modernism and modernization
[27]. The decentralization of the new towns and their barren mass-housing projects is often
used as a reason for the integration of landscape techniques into planning in transition from
colonialism to statehood [28]. Home claimed that transformative landscapes are central to
capital cities because of their power in the colonial system and, later, in creating a national
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Kolodney and Kallus
identity [29]. Gandhi’s and Nehru’s competing versions of Indian history are cited in
accounting the architecture of New Delhi, Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar and Gandhinagar, as
the battlegrounds on which the colonial legacy was transformed into nationhood in the
making of new state capitals [30]. Also Alona Nitzan-Shiftan has showed how the Mandate
plan for Jerusalem was re-enacted by the city’s powerful mayor as an architectural reunification strategic rationale following the 1967 war [31]. In terms of landscape, a transition
between periods that overcomes a periodic context has yet to be examined.
Studies of planning and architecture in Haifa have also taken a periodic context. The few
studies available focus mainly on the colonial period, presenting architecture/planning historiographies related to personalities, monumental buildings and architectural styles. Herbert
and Sosnovsky, for example, devoted their research to the international-style buildings in
the city, related to the attempt to bring a new urban style to Haifa during the colonial era
[32]. Fuchs dedicated his study to the British architect Austen St. Barbe Harrison and his
design for the Municipal Court House during the British Mandate [33]. The urban landscape of Haifa has not been studied yet, though a few works look at garden designs or tree
plantings during the British Mandate [34].
This paper’s premise is that the urban landscape is a continuous time–space phenomenon.
Haifa’s unique topographical situation, which enables one to see the city as if it ‘sits in the
palm of the hand’, is an opportunity to investigate landscape evidence of time–space historiography of the cityscape as a whole. Haifa’s urban environment is examined as a professional venture, formed in transition between colonialism and nation-building. Thus, the area
of interest lies in architectural material, but also in supporting official documents. The investigation is based on archival sources covering the period 1934–56 [35]. This primary material includes architectural drawings, plans, reports and memoranda, as well as official and
private correspondence of people of influence. It is based on research at various national
archives (State Archive, Jewish National Fund Archive, Abba Khoushy Archive, National
Maritime Museum Archive and I.D.F. Archive), municipal archives (Haifa Municipal
Archive and Haifa Engineer’s office Archive) and private archives. The archival materials are
supported by interviews with professionals, former officials and others, whose oral histories
shade light on the period and its controversies. Further to textual material, the research
relies also on substantial visual material, such as maps, aerial photographs, drawings and
various snapshots of the city at different times. All this primary material is supported by
secondary material of diverse sources, mainly various academic work on Haifa in different
related fields, but also literary works of writers working in and on the city.
Haifa between colonialism and nation-building
Founded in the eighteenth century, Haifa is a relatively new city [36]. Until that time it was
a small, walled village port, which later became Haifa Old City, with a population estimated
in 1895 at 9908 inhabitants (Fig. 3) [37]. By the end of the nineteenth century, new neighbourhoods were developing outside the city walls, to the west on the route to Jaffa, and to the
east towards Acre and Beirut. The new Damascus–Haifa railroad, built in 1905 under Ottoman
rule, brought economic prosperity, and new residential quarters, roads and public services
were built outside the Old City walls. Following the Ottoman system, these communities
329
Figure 3. View from the Bay towards Mt Carmel and Burj-el-Salaam citadel overlooking the walled
Old City (painting by Cooper Willyams). (Source: National Maritime Museum Archive, 1801.)
were divided according to their inhabitants’ religious affiliations, creating a demographic
pattern of Christian neighbourhoods to the west, Muslims to the east and the newly
established Jewish community at the foot of Mount Carmel to the south of the Old City [38].
In 1918 Haifa, along with the rest of Palestine, was occupied by the British army. A
British Mandate over Palestine had been granted by the League of Nations at the end of the
First World War. This was the beginning of 30 years of British government and the end of
four centuries of Ottoman rule. Haifa, with a population estimated at 15 000 inhabitants, of
whom 1406 were Jews, by 1917/8 [39], was targeted by the British from the outset as an
economic centre ‘likely to develop faster than any other town in Palestine’ [40]. As claimed
by Lionel Watson, the British City Engineer: ‘Haifa has a promising future. [It] is a natural
gateway for the exchange of goods and ideas between East and West’ [41].
As elsewhere in the world, town planning and urban design were recruited in Haifa to
legitimize political and financial measures, gain control over resources and achieve maximum
benefit for the imperial power based in London [42]. By 1935, grand-scale plans included
Figure 3. View from the Bay towards Mt Carmel and Burj-el-Salaam citadel overlooking the walled Old City (painting by Cooper Willyams; source: National Maritime Museum Archive, 1801).
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Kolodney and Kallus
projects such as a modern harbour, a terminus of the oil pipeline from Iraq with storage and
refineries, a railroad centre for trains from Syria and Lebanon, and new commercial centres.
All these projects were planned for a new downtown area, adjacent to the Old City and the
new port zone (Fig. 4).
The Jewish community was a major influence on Haifa’s development. Encouraged by the
Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised British support of the Zionist plan for a
Jewish national home in Palestine, the Jewish–Zionist organizations initiated a vast planning
scheme for Haifa [43]. Renowned planners, such as Patrick Geddes, Richard Kauffman and
Patrick Abercrombie, were invited to advise on Zionist-owned and prospected lands, and on
planning and architectural perspectives in Palestine in general and Haifa in particular [44].
Figure 4. Aerial view of Old City and colonial downtown, port and industrial areas (source: I.D.F. Archive, 1947).
Figure 4. Aerial view of Old City and colonial downtown, port and industrial areas. (Source: I.D.F.
Archive, 1947.)
331
When visiting Palestine between 1919 and 1920, the noted biologist and urban planner
Patrick Geddes was commissioned by the English military governor to conduct an extensive
survey of Haifa and a ‘New City Plan’, in collaboration with Haifa city engineer Asaph
Ciffrin. At the request of the London-based Zionist office, he also compiled reports on
Jewish estates in the city. These assignments paralleled his efforts in Jerusalem (a general
plan, the Hebrew University scheme, and some garden suburbs) and were followed by his
reports on Tiberias (1920) and Tel Aviv (1925). The architect Richard Kauffman, who
came to Palestine from Germany at the invitation of the Zionist Organization in 1920,
followed Geddes’ example. While working for the Jewish ‘Palestine Land Development
Company’ (1921–32), Kauffman proposed a garden suburb model for the neighbourhoods
of Bat Galim (1921), Neve Sha’anan (1922) and Hadar Hacarmel (1923); a plan for the
Mount Carmel Zone (1923), and a layout of the Haifa Bay area (1926), suggesting a different location for the port than proposed by the British Government [45]. A comprehensive
plan for the Haifa Bay area was created ultimately by the British town-planner Patrick
Abercrombie (1930). Commissioned by the Bayside Land Corporation and the Jewish
National Fund, and in co-operation with Clifford Holiday, a British architect and town
planner based in Palestine between1922 and 1935, Abercrombie’s plan (H.P.222) was
approved in 1938, in collaboration with the British government, Haifa Municipality, the
Railway Company, the Oil Company and various landowners, mostly Jewish. The Haifa
Bay Plan incorporated urban-orientated land zoning with emphasis on capitalist interests –
a far cry from a Garden City or garden suburb model [46].
The British development plans for Haifa opened up grand economic opportunities for the
city. They boosted the labour market and attracted entrepreneurs interested in investing in
new industries and businesses. The city attracted Arab workers from the surrounding countryside as well as incoming Jewish immigrants, mainly from Eastern Europe. This changed
the demographic construct of the city dramatically. By 1938 Haifa’s population had risen to
100 000 inhabitants, a growth of almost 600% in two decades. This rapid population
increase was followed by the development of new residential quarters. Residential patterns
followed those of the Ottoman period. Arabs settled around the Old City, near the waterfront and the new harbour, adjacent to existing mosques and churches. Jews moved to the
new areas on the slopes of Mount Carmel and in the bay, near the new industrial zone.
The influx of Jews into the city shifted the Arab majority – 91% at the beginning of the
British Mandate – and equalized it by the end of the 1930s. With its large Jewish labour
force, Haifa soon became the Zionist workers’ city, nicknamed ‘Red Haifa’. Facing such a
massive shift in the demographic balance, and as a consequence of political and economic
power struggles, the city soon faced ethno-national tensions. Attempts to boycott Jewish
products by the Arab Executive Committee (1929) were followed by Arab revolts in
1936–9 that led to segregation of the two communities and eventually weakened the Arab
population [47]. The struggle included attempts by the Jewish labour organizations to
overwhelm Arab labour, mainly in the port. As a result, by 1938/9 the Jewish workers
numbered 1300 (56.5%), a growth of 500% from 1931/2 when they represented only
10% of the work force [48]. These stressful Arab–Jewish relations were influenced both
by the strong connection of the Jewish community with leadership abroad, and the slow
modernization processes of the Arab society and its failure to counteract the Jewish
nation-building incentives.
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Kolodney and Kallus
With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Haifa lost its geopolitical dominance
as a Middle East trade centre. The new Jewish State was cut off from its Arab neighbours,
and operation of the IPC pipeline bringing oil from Iraq to Haifa’s refineries ceased, as did
the operation of the Damascus–Haifa Railway. Haifa’s urban fabric changed dramatically
during and following the 1948 war. Hostilities before and during the war drove some
65 000 Arab residents out of the city, leaving downtown Haifa and the Old City area practically deserted. According to Goren, during the year before the fighting reached Haifa in
April 1948, between 35 000 and 40 000 Arab residents had already left the city. During the
fighting in April 1948, around 30 000 Arabs left the city, assisted by British ships waiting in
the port and headed north towards Acre and Lebanon [49]. The remaining 3566 Arab residents, Christians and Muslims alike, were confined by the Israeli authorities in the Wadi
Nisnas neighbourhood and its immediate surroundings, adjacent to the deserted Old City
[50]. In comparison to Haifa’s 1944 population, estimated at 128 000 inhabitants (52%
Jewish and 48% Arabs), by 1948, immediately after the war, the population was estimated
at 98 284, of which 96% was Jewish [51]. The circumstances encouraged the new State to
demolish the ostensibly deserted Old City, except for the churches and mosques. The demolition left a large portion of the downtown area abandoned and in ruins, and it remains
partially so even today (Fig. 5).
The British urban infrastructure, still evolving around the port and the petrochemical
industry, has been the major economic base of the city from the early years of the State until
the present. Many new immigrants arriving in the newborn State settled in Haifa, which
offered them housing and employment [52]. The Haifa Municipality, dominated by the
Labor Party, had quickly evolved into a centre of influence and power at the national level,
with strong ties between the centralist socialist government and local politicians. As under
colonial rule, national administrators relied on urban planning as an instrument of control
over land and population. The struggle for national independence often went hand in hand
with modernization and Westernization, through architectural efforts to legitimize modern
forms and nationalize them. Hence, the Municipal Council proposed rebuilding the old
town and the adjacent Arab neighbourhoods according to a modern planning scheme.
Figure 5. Aerial map of demolished area, Old City (circled) (source: Haifa City Archive, 1949).
Taming the city
Following the typologies of landscape mechanisms developed elsewhere [53], this article
focuses on the erascape mechanism as applied to Haifa’s Old City. Erascape serves as an
analytical framework for studying attempts to envision the city and the strategies used for
implementing particular planning schemes. It exposes the politico-professional bonding
efforts in city-making in transition from colonial to national Haifa. Through the lens of this
typology, landscape production is reviewed as it supports urban transformation from one
regime to the next. Based in landscape continuity, the entire urban framework is investigated.
Erascaping – a mechanism based on erasing an existing landscape to make way for
another, involving fundamental transformation over time and space – is a powerful method
of creating new spatial order by uprooting and displacing. Erascape undermines basic foundations and contradicts the ground definitions of landscape – its continuity and materiality.
The erasure of landscape (erascape) is a physical act causing absence that challenges the
Figure 5.
333
Aerial map of demolished area, Old City (circled). (Source: Haifa City Archive, 1949.)
conceptual presence of the landscape as a confiscated memory that refuses to unfold [54]. In
this sense, Kenneth Olwig’s landscape as a ‘historical document containing evidence of long
processes of interaction between society and its material environs’ poses the question
whether landscape could ever be erased. Could the erasure be just a temporary situation
awaiting new planning and design to transform its material absence into what is considered
a ‘landscape’ [55]?
As a landscape production typology, erascape usually derives from dramatic events such
as war or natural disasters. In regard to Haifa Old City during the 30 years of British
Mandate, the 1948 War and the establishment of the State of Israel, it underwent significant
territorial and social transformation, including considerable demolition and reconstruction.
Erascape is not, however, unique to Haifa. It prevailed throughout the British colonies and
was based on the necessity of providing legitimization for modern town planning and enforcing regulations for land-use zoning, public health and hygienic standards [56]. Erascape in
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Kolodney and Kallus
this sense, is what Don Mitchell calls the production of both ‘groundwork’ and ‘dreamwork’
of empire – a material and conceptual evidence of landscape changes made by the ruling
power [57].
Recent studies of colonial planning/architecture, and of nation-building, indicate the
connection between professional practice and hegemonic power. They explain how architecture and planning have become central to establishing new spatial orders to control sociocultural definition [58]. As in Haifa, the modernization of Delhi, Calcutta and Singapore
necessitated drastic urban demolition. Patrick Abercrombie, in his article ‘Slum clearance
and planning’, implied that ‘cleaning’ slum quarters by demolition is an immediate and obvious outcome of national plans to emulate healthy English towns [59]. In Delhi, as in other
cities throughout the empire, the British campaigned for town planning and sanitation, and
legislated for public health standards which included ‘segregating’ ‘sanitary’ and ‘unsanitary’
areas [60]. A similar colonialist strategy was applied in the re-making of Singapore [61].
These developments of town-planning policies and strategies legitimized this campaign, linking sanitary systems such as sewage and drainage with modern advances in transportation,
communication and energy networks [62]. Together with this process there arose a demolition ‘vocabulary’ of urban planning, including clearance, re-construction, re-modelling,
removing, renewing and improving [63].
French-colonial urban works in Algiers were also concerned with public hygiene, to the
extent that the municipal authorities agreed to ‘raze whatever existed’ of the Old City (the
Casbah) in order to resolve its chaotic structure, meanwhile displacing half of the population residing in the area [64]. In Palestine, large sections of Jaffa’s Old City were demolished
by the British in 1936, following a local uprising. The idea was to control the mostly Arab
population, to prevent further uprisings, and to implement spatial improvements [65]. These
measures played a major role in making the urban landscape where sanitation discourse had
become an eloquent forum for modernization and for legitimizing the eradication of ‘dirty’
urban spaces.
Patrick Geddes was one of the few colonial planners who criticized this destructive
approach, which he called ‘death-dealing Haussmannizing’ [66]. However, in 1920, he
planned a through road in the heart of the Old City of Haifa that would involve severe
demolition. But, most British planners claimed that demolition was crucial to ‘modernizing’
and ‘civilizing’ the cities and ‘taming’ their ‘natural’ landscapes. Erascape thus signifies the
time required for creating a new spatial order of existing terrain as a means to reshape sociocultural identities through imported or invented landscapes. Haifa’s colonial cityscape was
also based on demolition and the implementation of a new ‘modern’ spatial order. The
national planning effort that followed colonial endeavours intended to adjust the landscape
to the vision of the new nation-state.
Colonial and national plans for Haifa’s Old City
Lionel Watson, the British City Engineer (1934–51) saw Haifa’s old town as a typical Middle
Eastern urban agglomeration, unsuitable for modern living. As seen in the Haifa survey plan
and a partial detail (Fig. 6), the irregular urban fabric was dotted with private courtyards in
dense residential clusters of one- or two-storey buildings and a dense system of alleyways and
335
Figure 6. Survey of Old City area (outlined) and view of a typical urban fabric (source: Haifa
Municipal Archive, 1939) and a detail of the Old City survey (source: Haifa City Archive, 1939).
steps connecting with other parts of the city. The area was mainly residential, with an array
of religious centres: churches in its western quarter (Maronite, Latin, Greek Catholic and
Greek Orthodox); mosques in the eastern quarter (the Jraineh, the Small Mosque and ElIstiklaal); and five synagogues in the south-eastern part, with public squares in front of public
buildings. Commercial facilities were scattered around the city gates, the market area, and
along the main road. As the detail of the plan shows, the walled courtyards and squares with
wells supplying water for the residents were planted with olive and palm trees.
This chaotic urban pattern, totally lacking in any consistent geometric order, was an obvious threat to a modern plan based on systematic control. Watson claimed that ‘although the
Old City [has] a romantic oriental heritage, it presents serious problems to modern city planning, as well as serious sanitary and transportation problems’ [67]. Furthermore, as evident
in the Haifa survey of 1936, the Old City separated the port from the industrial zones and
interfered with the transportation system. ‘I didn’t realize, until this survey was made, just
how bad the condition of the Old City was’, complained Watson to Kendall, the chief Palestine
Town Planning adviser [68]. As the city engineer reported, following an epidemic of plague,
the colonial authorities allocated resources for dealing with the epidemic by spraying D.D.T.
in the Old City and a concentrated rat-hunt [69].
The condition of the Old City could be clearly viewed from Mount Carmel (Fig. 7). While
Bailey, Haifa’s District Commissioner, was working on the design of Panorama Road, a
scenic route along Mount Carmel ridge overlooking the downtown area [70], he remarked:
‘We town planners must preserve the amenities of this unparalleled view …’ [71]. In an
Figure 6. Survey of Old City area (outlined) and view of a typical street (source: Haifa Municipal Archive, 1939) and a detail of the Old City survey. El-Khamra Square (upper left) indicates the western Old City gate and the location of the city walls destroyed in the early twentieth century (source: Haifa City Archive, 1939).
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Kolodney and Kallus
Figure 7. Panoramic view from Mt Carmel towards the Old City, downtown, port and the bay areas.
(Photograph: Zoltan Kluger, 1935; source: JNF Archive.)
attempt to ‘prevent blocking the open view from the roads located on the mountain slope
facing the harbor area’ [72], building height was restricted. This ensured good visibility of
the bay, the downtown area, the port and the industrial areas from any point on the ridge. It
secured the daily view of colonial ‘pride projects’, from every window and balcony –
another means of emphasizing the power of the British Empire, which required an ordered
and well-maintained downtown.
The demolition of the Old City, proposed in terminology analogous to that of a surgical
procedure, was seen as a necessary intervention in the ‘virtual heart of the town’ [73].
Demolition was undertaken in three strategic steps over a period of ten years. Based on a
detailed survey of the area (1936) and Geddes’ and Ciffrin’s ‘New City Plan’ in 1920, the
first step, initiated by the British military government, opened a broad thoroughfare –
George V Avenue – through the centre of the Old City, parallel to the coast, to allow
mobility and access to the port (Fig. 8) [74]. It was integrated in the ‘Skeleton Zoning
Scheme’ of 1934 [75], and included a demolition proposal of City Block no. 39 (detailed in
a sketch added to the plan) [76]. The road scheme (HP 519) would extend beyond the Old
City towards the German Colony in the west, allowing the establishment of commercial
frontage on both sides of George V Avenue, and making it the main artery of the city
centre [77].
Figure 7. Panoramic view from Mt Carmel towards the Old City, downtown, port and the bay areas (photograph: Zoltan Kluger, 1935; source: JNF Archive).
337
Figure 8. Survey of the Old City showing the proposed George V Avenue (source: Haifa Municipal
Archive, 1936) and a detailed sketch of the demolition proposal for City Block no. 39, due to the plan
for George V Avenue (source: Haifa City Archive, 1939).
Although the ‘Skeleton Zoning Scheme’ (HP 229) of 1934 did not specifically require
demolition, this was the implication of designating the Old City as a ‘reconstruction area’
(total 265 dunams [78]) and modern building designs were manifested in plot size, setbacks,
elevations and open spaces [79]. Planning instruction no. 4/4, for example, indicates that no
new building, alternations, additions, or annexes to the existing structures will be permitted,
unless ‘owners of land in any parts of the Reconstruction Area submit reconstruction or
parcellation schemes to the Local Commission … provided that all such lands lie together
and their aggregate area is not less than five standard dunams’ [80]. These restrictions were,
in fact, the death sentence for the Old City.
A detailed plan for the Old City and its environs was proposed in 1938, covering an
area of about 335 dunams. It included sections of the downtown area, adding a further 70
dunams (HP 428) [81]. Watson claimed that the plan was ‘in the interests of the town as a
whole’ [82]. The third step of the plan, from 1947, called for a complete demolition, in
order to clear the slums, along with rebuilding that would ‘enable property owners to
develop their properties on up-to-date lines’ [83]. The plan addressed the problems of the
1938 Plan (HP 428), considered ‘a serious handicap to the development of Haifa’, mainly
because it prohibited the construction of new buildings in the Old City. A new scheme, to
‘enable property to be developed in the area forming the virtual heart of town’ [84], was
drawn up. Surprisingly, the demolition plan encountered few objections from local residents and owners [85]. In June 1945, a ‘Reconnaissance Survey’ of the Old City was
supervised by Professor Adolph Rading, Haifa Municipality’s head architect [86]. The
detailed survey of land, buildings and demography was an additional justification for the
demolition, since it asserted that the Old City’s slum conditions were a potential hazard to
the rest of the city.
A planning competition for rebuilding the Old City was initiated in June 1947. The Town
Planning Committee proposed two development strategies to be integrated in the proposed
Figure 8. Survey of the Old City showing the proposed George V Avenue (source: Haifa Municipal Archive, 1936) and a detailed sketch of the demolition proposal for City Block no. 39, due to the plan for George V Avenue (source: Haifa City Archive, 1939).
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Kolodney and Kallus
plans: establishment of an ‘Improvement Trust’ (owners would give up their individual
holdings and become shareholders in the property of the Trust), or a ‘Re-parcellation
Scheme’ (the exchange of existing property for other plots of land elsewhere). On 4 June
1947, delegates from Arab and Jewish architects’ and engineers’ associations were invited to
attend a special town-planning meeting. Both organizations agreed to participate in the
competition. Ironically, their only reservation was that the competition should ‘be open to
entrants from the whole of Palestine and, if agreed by the Municipality, the Middle East’
[87]. Thus, less than one year before the region was completely transformed by the 1948
war, Arab and Jewish professionals participated in implementing the British vision of a new
Middle East [88].
None of the three demolition plans came to fruition during the Mandate, even though
they were officially approved and included in the schemes for Haifa’s Old City and downtown area. This was mainly due to the high cost of reimbursing property owners. Clearing
was initiated finally only after the area had been abandoned largely during and after the
1948 war. It was carried out by the Israeli defence authorities, according to an order issued
by David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense [89],
mainly between May and July of 1948. Apart from the Old City area, the demolition
included several buildings that were considered dangerous, buildings with rundown sanitary conditions, and structures impinging on officially declared roads in the approved city
plans [90].
An undated confidential memorandum concerning ‘urgent rehabilitation work’ in Haifa,
entitled ‘A time to destroy and a time to heal’ [91], stated that
the exodus of the Arab population from Haifa and the almost complete evacuation of the
downtown area and the neighborhoods between downtown and lower Hadar [neighborhood] offer an unprecedented opportunity for conducting preservation work linked to demolition … The designated buildings were damaged during the war and must be demolished
according to the dangerous building by-laws. This eases the situation and gives additional
reason for the required work [92].
The memorandum also indicates that the demolitions are recommended in order to prevent
occupancy (squatting) of the vacant houses by new Jewish immigrants and returning Arab
refugees [93].
Shabetai Levi, Haifa’s Mayor at the time, stressed that Haifa Municipality was not
responsible for the demolition or for the moral and financial implications thereof. Most
of the Old City area and its environs marked ‘reconstruction’ in the British plan of
1938 (HP 428), mainly Arab-owned vacant mixed-use residential and commercial properties, was partially or totally demolished, although unoccupied dwellings were also
utilized to house new Jewish immigrants who settled in Haifa directly after the war
[94].
As with other colonial town-planning systems, the plans for Haifa attempted to maintain control and reinforce order. A new reconstruction plan (HP 803) for the area
consisting largely of what was considered now ‘abandoned property’ [95] was drafted in
1949. It extended the boundaries, amenities and regulations of the 1938 Mandate plan.
Like the latter, the new plan called for drastic re-parcellation to unify singular plots,
and proposed a new, modern architectural image for the area. It also included plans for
339
reconstructing the Arab neighbourhoods adjacent to the Old City – Wadi Salib, Wadi
Nisnas, the German Colony and residual plots around the area, summing altogether the
total of 295 dunams (68 dunams of the demolished area and 227 dunams of built
areas) [96].
An open competition to ‘design downtown Haifa’ was initiated in 1951, calling for a
schematic plan. It attempted to rehabilitate the Old City and the adjacent area, seen as ‘a
central obstacle to the city’s progress and its architectural image’ [97]. In a press conference,
Uriel Shalon, Head of the Municipal Development unit, declared that the original plan was
created by the British, but could only now be implemented after the destruction of the area.
‘Only with the evacuation of Haifa’s Arabs after the city was conquered was a radical solution possible’, he declared [98]. Competitors were directed to take into account the views to
and from the area, and to create their plans according to modern urban-planning concepts.
The remaining churches, mosques and synagogues of the Old City were declared ‘of religious value’, regardless of their architectural interest.
Thirteen Israeli architects submitted plans to the competition. Among the jury were Arieh
Sharon, director and chief architect of the National Planning Agency, in charge of the
National Plan. He challenged the competitors with the plan for post-war Rotterdam, which
also derived from the connection between downtown and the harbour [99]. This factor was
also identified in Sharon’s plan (1952), perceiving Haifa as an ‘international city’, as
opposed to Tel Aviv, the ‘Israeli city’. No first prize was awarded, but the jury decided to
award two second prizes. Michael Shaviv’s functional and geometrically ordered design, a
total contrast to the original chaotic urban fabric, was received ‘cum laude’ and declared the
winner (Fig. 9).
Shaviv’s winning plan ‘united the practical and the poetic’ [100] and confirmed Israel’s
domination and sovereignty over Haifa’s cityscape. It echoed the architectural thinking of
the time, perceiving the city as a functional machine, with traffic flowing between freestanding buildings on a grid. The plan incorporated two building types: high-rise freestanding buildings in a vast open park on the north–south axis, connected with low
buildings aligned east–west, with a central promenade throughout its length. Shady plazas
are set in front of the main buildings, with autonomous pedestrian circulation separated
from traffic and generous planting throughout. This produced variation in the landscape
and, as Arieh Sharon indicated, the whole area reads as a ‘green system’ with open spaces
‘organically’ integrated with the buildings [101]. The plan included a dominant central
open space set against the northern Mount Carmel slope and integrated with the mountain vegetation. It connected the Town Hall and the nearby government offices with a
public garden which, as indicated by Sharon, extended green fingers that penetrate the
various buildings, public, commercial and residential.
The proposed tall buildings were the city’s new landmarks, shaping its modern skyline.
They are designated as contemporary headquarters of national and commercial enterprises,
including The National Bank, insurance offices, commercial centre, shipping offices, labour
exchange, tourist centre, industrial centre, as well as an entertainment centre and the City
Museum. Most importunately, the new city centre was planned to be clearly visible from
Mount Carmel’s ridge and from its slopes. As declared by Abba Khoushy, Haifa’s powerful
mayor, ‘due to its geophysical structure, Haifa, unlike other cities, must be planned architectonically from a bird’s-eye view, from the top of the Carmel’ [102]. Haifa’s unique
Figure 9. Michael Shaviv’s winning proposal for ‘Development of the City Center Competition’ (source: Haifa City Archive, 1953).
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Kolodney and Kallus
Figure 9. Michael Shaviv’s winning proposal for ‘Development of the City Center Competition’.
(Source: Haifa City Archive, 1953.)
topography was further referred to by Jawitz, the Municipality’s senior planner, requesting
that ‘[Shaviv’s proposal] … should adjust the level area to a 3-dimensional aspect, thereby
giving depth and relating to the specific topography of the city plan’ [103]. Accordingly, a
three-dimensional model of the winning proposal was prepared, to show the proposed new
skyline that would convey the image of a modern city.
In 1954, while reviewing the new City Master Plan, Mayor Khoushy declared that
the planners had a relatively easy task since nature did the planning for us. Our mission is not
to destroy what nature has created so wisely and in such good taste. We have mountain,
slopes and a bay. Thus, the city is naturally divided into industry in the bay, commerce
downtown, and residences climbing the mountain [104].
The Master Plan attempted, as Khoushy said, ‘to … provide a coherent and integrated city
center’ which would prevent Haifa from looking ‘provincial’. He aimed at doubling the city
341
population within ten years and reinforcing its status as the national workers’ city and the
regional centre of northern Israel. Shaviv’s plan was to incorporate the downtown area and
the Old City in a new city centre.
According to Pearlstein, the Master Plan’s principal planner, Haifa’s reconstruction
zone had already been indicated in the British plans and most of the area was ‘abandoned
property in a state of ruin’. In an article published in a local professional journal,
Pearlstein claimed that these were ‘slum areas … consisting mainly of Arab neighborhoods … [where] the buildings are mostly old, with inferior or no sanitation, and unsafe
structures densely populated’ [105]. This view is clearly an extension of the colonial slum
clearance discourse, a planning vocabulary that was very useful for implementation of the
Erascape concept.
While Shaviv’s winning proposal shaped the new image of the downtown area, the master
plan defined its status as Haifa’s City Centre. The 620 dunam area was allocated for a
commercial, port storage, administration, cultural and entertainment centre, integrated with
a detailed transportation system of roads and parking lots. Regarding the abandoned Arab
buildings, which were populated after 1948 by Jewish immigrants, the plan referred to the
need to remove these approximately 55 000 inhabitants, demolish the buildings and rebuild
the area. Jawitz, the senior planning officer, stressed that the new circumstances evolved in
fact from the British Master Plan (1934) and its intention to reconstruct 265 dunams,
followed by the 1938 plan for an additional 70 dunams (overall 335 dunams) and the Israeli
reconstruction plan (1949) summing it up to 790 dunams.
The 1954 plan intended to provide better living conditions for the city’s residents along
a transformed urban image fit for the new state. Haifa new envisioned cityscape aimed at
a better spatial order, to portray a cultural definition that replaces the old urban image
with a city worthy of the new state. The erascape concept was a powerful rationale for
relocating the remaining Arab residents and razing any reminders of Haifa ‘before’. ‘These
[the Arab neighbourhoods] are mostly in the city center … the population will have to be
transferred to other areas’, argued Pearlstein. Clearing the area for a new city was one
way of replacing the hostile cityscape of the ‘Other’, i.e. of the Arab, with an appropriate
environment for ‘the new Jew’. This was clearly stated in Shaviv’s winning competition
entry and stated thereafter. As declared by Cohen, the city engineer, ‘Haifa is no longer a
mixed city of populations with different social and cultural standards and different
mentalities … The new plan expresses the aspirations and desires of a homogeneous
population, sharing a modern city planned as a single organic unit’ [106]. Identities were
to merge in the city’s new socio-cultural image, to include both the newly arrived Jewish
immigrants and the remaining Arab residents. The new city, like a leviathan, was to swallow them all up, wipe out their differences, and consolidate them into a new collective
urban society.
Modernizing the Old City was the goal of colonial and national powers in Haifa alike.
But, while colonial attempts to transform the landscape were made in the name of modern
urban planning, the national endeavour was based on a far-reaching political agenda. The
new national scheme did intend to provide better living conditions for the city’s residents,
but it was also envisioning an entirely transformed urban image. Its landscapes would create
a new spatial order, a cultural definition that would replace the old urban image with a city
worthy of the new State.
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Kolodney and Kallus
Concluding remarks
The paper perceives landscape as a time–space transitional process utilized in the making of
cityscape. It challenges the materiality of the landscape and its conceptual understanding by
introducing the erascape, an analytical framework that enable delineation of socio-political
strategies of landscape production mechanism based on erasing existing landscape to make
way for another. This mechanism is used to examine the Old City of Haifa in transition
from colonialism to nation-building. The investigation shows how this mechanism arises
from political agendas and becomes a powerful agent in constructing Haifa’s socio-cultural
relations. Landscape production strategies, enforced by professionals, administrators and
politicians, transform the colonial cityscape of Haifa and make place to national cityscape
that wipes out differences, and attempts to consolidate the citizens into a new collective
urban society.
Yet, today, 60 years after the establishment of the state, the erascape mechanism is still
shaping Haifa’s cityscape. Amid churches and mosques, between few remaining walls and
derelict sites – evidences of other times and lives of the Old City – Haifa’s newest government centre is gradually rising (Fig. 10). Despite major national and private investments in
the area, especially in the last decade, this part of Haifa still lacks a viable and coherent
urbanity. Design efforts are concentrated on overcoming the memory of the Old City,
mostly demolished by now and long gone. The anxiety of new millennium architecture, of
large-scale free-standing buildings, have little awareness of urban history and no interest in
past life reminiscences. Conscious of the city’s image it aims for the future and aspires to
convey a new urban identity. The desire for a fresh image is apparent not only at street-level,
where one faces sleek glass façades and empty pavements, but mainly when looking down
from Mount Carmel and its slopes. Overlooking downtown from the Carmel ridge, the new
buildings talk of a city ambitiously inventing its future.
The new development is expected to pull the city out of its current stagnation and make it
once again a major national and international urban centre. With the decline in port activity
and the increase in attractive developments in nearby vicinities, Haifa struggles to keep its
Figure 10. Old City area today. ‘The Sail Tower’ houses the offices of the Ministry of the Interior and Immigrant Absorption. The mosque and church juxtaposed with the modern buildings are remains of the Old City and are still used by the local community (photograph: Ziva Kolodney, 2006).
Figure 10. Old City area today. ‘The Sail Tower’ houses the offices of the Ministry of the Interior and
Immigrant Absorption. The mosque and church juxtaposed with the modern buildings are remains of
the Old City and are still used by the local community. (Photographs: Ziva Kolodney, 2006.)
343
strength as a metropolitan centre [107]. The new government centre is hoped to overcome
the decrease in business activity that Haifa has experienced in the last years, and the negative
migration rates due mostly to the young population moving to other locations [108].
However, in light of the landscape’s lesson of continuity, can any city endure an urban
future divorced of its past? Can a sustainable urban existence be envisioned for Haifa without acknowledging its history?
Notes and references
Archival sources:
Haifa city plans are officially marked HP with a serial number (e.g. HP 517, HP 518, etc.).
HCA Haifa City Archive
HEA Haifa Engineer’s Office Archive
AKA Abba Khoushy Archive
KKL Jewish National Fund Archive
1. About Ottoman Haifa, see M. Yazbak, Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864–1914: A Muslim
Town in Transition. Leiden: Brill, 1998. For a historical account of Haifa during the British
Mandate, see M. Seikaly, Haifa: Transformation of an Arab Society 1918–1939. London: L.B.
Publishers, 1995; T. Goren, Changes in the design of the urban space of the Arabs of Haifa during
the Israeli War of Independence. Middle Eastern Studies 35, 1 (1999) 115–33; Y. Ben-Artzi, The
Creation of the Carmel as a Segregated Jewish Residential Space in Haifa, 1918–1948. Jerusalem:
Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 2004 [in Hebrew]. On Haifa’s first Israeli years, see Y. Weiss,
Wadi Salib: A Confiscated Memory. Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz
Hameuchad Publishing House, 2007 [in Hebrew]. Writing about Haifa’s architectural history is
limited, devoted also to a single period or personae. See R. Fuchs, Austen St. Barbe Harrison – A
British Architect in the Holy Land. PhD Thesis, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa,
1992 [in Hebrew]; G. Herbert and S. Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel and the Crossroads of
Empire. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi/ Haifa: Architectural Heritage Center, 1993; B. Hyman,
British Planners in Palestine, 1918–1936. PhD Thesis, London School of Economics and Political
Science, London, 1994.
2. E. Cohen, The city in Zionist Ideology. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, Institute of Urban
and Regional Studies, 1970 [in Hebrew].
3. On Haifa working class historical and sociological aspects, see D. De Vries, Idealism and
Bureaucracy in 1920s Palestine, The Origins of ‘Red Haifa. Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad.
1999 [in Hebrew]; D. Bernstein, Constructing Boundaries: Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandate
Palestine. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.
4. K. Olwig, Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic: from Britain’s Renaissance to America’s New
World. University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, WI, 2002.
5. C. J. Scott, Seeing Like a State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998, 11–52; W. J. T.
Mitchell, Holy landscape: Israel, Palestine, and the American wilderness. Critical Inquiry 26, 2
(2000) 193–223.
6. D. Harris, The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape and Representation in 18th
Century Lombardy. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.
7. See various discussions of the socio-cultural and political dimensions of the landscape in Landscape
Journal 26, 1 (2007).
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8. See, for example, R. Muir, Approaches to Landscape. London: Macmillan, 1999, 1–48; J. S.
Duncan, N. C. Johnson and R. H. Schein (eds) A Companion to Cultural Geography. Malden,
MA: Blackwell Press, 2004, 329–446.
9. I. Robertson and P. Richards (eds), Introduction. Studying Cultural Landscapes. London:
Arnold, 2003, 1–18.
10. See, for example, D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (eds), Introduction. Iconography of Landscape:
Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988, 1–10; P. Groth and T. W. Bressi (eds), Understanding
Ordinary Landscapes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
11. See, for example, W. Raymond, The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press,
1973; W. J. T. Mitchell (ed), Landscape and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994;
B. Meyer, The expanded field of landscape architecture, in G. F. Thompson and F. R. Steiner
(eds) Ecological Design and Planning. New York: John Wiley, 1997, 45–79; C. Brace, Finding
England everywhere: regional identity and the construction of national identity, 1890–1940.
Ecumene 6, 1 (1999) 90–109. See also James Corner (ed), Recovering Landscape: Essays in
Contemporary Landscape Architecture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
12. See Cultural Geographies 13, 4 (October 2006) dealing with the paradoxical relationships
between ‘natural’ and ‘social’ landscape in the modern city.
13. M. Kaika, City of Flow: Modernity, Nature and the City. London: Routledge, 2005, 11–26.
14. E. Swyngedouw, Technonatural revolutions: the scalar politics of Franco’s hydro-social dream
for Spain, 1939–1975. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32 (2007) 9–28.
15. E. Mossop, Infrastructure, in C. Waldheim (ed) Landscape Urbanism. N.Y.: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2006, 163–78.
16. C. Waldheim (ed), The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York, N.Y.: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2006.
17. J. Corner, Introduction: Recovering landscape as a critical cultural practice, in Corner (ed)
Recovering Landscape, 1–26.
18. The quotation is from J. Corner, Terra Fluxus, in Waldheim (ed) The Landscape Urbanism
Reader, 29. Ian McHarg’s ‘Design with nature’ has shaped landscape architecture and planning
thinking: I. L. McHarg, Design with Nature. N.Y.: John Wiley and Sons, 1991.
19. For geographical studies of economic, political, cultural and process effects on urban landscapes,
see, for example, E. Swyngedouw, M. Kaika and N. Heynen, In the Nature of Cities: Urban
Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism (Questioning Cities). London, New
York: Routledge, 2006.
20. M. Treib (ed), The Architecture of Landscape, 1940–1960. Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2002; M. Benes and D. Harris (eds), Villas and Gardens in Early Modern
Italy and France. London: Cambridge University Press, 2001; B. Meyer, Site citations: the
grounds of modern landscape architecture, in A. Kahn and C. Burn (eds) Site Matters. London:
Routledge, 2005, 93–129.
21. H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Donald Nicholson-Smith (transl). Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
22. Olwig, Landscape, Nature.
23. Harris, The Nature of Authority.
24. A. Balfour, Octagon: the persistence of the ideal, in Corner (ed) Recovering Landscape, 87–100.
25. R. K. Home, An ‘irreversible conquest’? Colonial and postcolonial land law in Israel/Palestine.
Social & Legal Studies 12, 3 (2003) 291–310.
26. G. Shafir and Y. Peled (eds), The New Israel: Peacemaking and Liberalization. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 2000.
27. For the modernist project and its implementation in the colonial and/or the post-colonial phases,
see, for example, R. Kalia, Modernism, modernization and post-colonial India: a reflective essay.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
345
Planning Perspectives 21, 2 (2006) 133–56; R. W. Liscombe, Independence: Otto Koenigsberger
and modernist urban settlement in India. Planning Perspectives 21, 2 (2006) 157–78. See also
S. Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early
Republic. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001; A. Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial
Architecture, Urban Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia. London: Routledge, 2000;
L. Kong and B. S. A. Yeoh, The Politics of Landscapes in Singapore’s Construction of ‘Nation’.
New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003.
R. K. Home, Transformation of the urban landscape in British Malaya and Hong Kong. Journal
of Southeast Asian Architecture 2, 1 (1997) 63–72.
Ibid. See also L. J. Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992.
See Kalia, Planning Perspectives 21; H. Campbell and R. Marshall, Professionalism and planning
in Britain. Town Planning Review 76, 2 (2005) 191–214.
A. Nitzan-Shiftan, Israelizing Jerusalem: the Encounter Between Architecture and National
Ideologies 1967–1977. PhD Thesis, M.I.T Cambridge, Massachusetts., 2002.
Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel.
Fuchs, Austen St. Barbe Harrison.
About colonial landscape in Palestine in general, see M. El-Eini, Mandated Landscape, British
Imperial Rule in Palestine 1929–1948. London: Routledge, 2006; on Hebrew gardening
culture during pre-state Israel, see T. Alon-Mozes and S. Amir, Landscape and ideology: the
emergence of vernacular gardening culture in pre-state Israel. Landscape Journal, 21, 2 (2002)
40–53. On Israeli landscape, including Haifa in brief, see K. Helphand, Dreaming Gardens:
Landscape Architecture and the Making of Modern Israel. Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press, 2002.
This refers to the planning period between ‘Skeleton Zoning Scheme’ of the British Mandate and
‘Haifa Master Plan’ of national Haifa.
In 1761, Daher El Omar, the Bedouin ruler of Galilee and Acre, destroyed and rebuilt Haifa in its
new location, surrounding it with walls. This event marked the beginning of the town’s modern
era (A. Carmel, The History of Haifa under Turkish Rule. Haifa: University of Haifa, Pardes
Publishers, 2002, 54–66 [in Hebrew]).
Seikaly, Haifa: Transformation.
Ibid.
Palestine official census, 1918.
The Palestine Post, 14 February, 1943, 3.
The Palestine Post, 12 November, 1948, 6.
On the British colonial plans in Haifa, see Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel;
Hyman, British Planners. On gardens and tree planting patterns in Haifa during the beginning
of the 1920s, see: S. Burmil and R. Enis, Landmarks in the urban landscape of Haifa. Die
Gartenkunst 16, 1 (2004) 318–38; N. Goldschlagar, I. Amit and M. Shoshani, Green ideas at the
beginning of the twentieth century: Planning the Ahuza neighborhood in Haifa. Catedra 109
(2003) 87–100 [in Hebrew].
As far as we know, no organized Arab-orientated planning was initiated in Haifa during the
Mandate period. Arab architects were professionally active, designing buildings mostly for Arab
clientele.
See G. Herbert and S. Sosnovsky, The Garden City as Paradigm: Planning on the Carmel, 1919–
1923. Technion Haifa: Document 10, 1986; Hyman, British Planners.
Frederick Palmer of the London-based company Randall–Palmer–Triton, suggested in the early
1920s the location of Haifa future port and also carried out its construction plans (Hyman,
British Planners).
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46. This contradicts the claim by Herbert and Sosnovesky (The Garden City) that Abercrombie
followed Geddes’ idea.
47. Seikaly, Haifa: Transformation.
48. Bernstein, Constructing Boundaries.
49. There are different counts of the exact number of Arab inhabitants that left the city between
1947 and 1948. Morris claimed that 20 000–30 000 left before April 1948 (B. Morris, The Birth
of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
while Goren estimated a higher number (T. Goren, From Dependence to Integration: Israeli Rule
and the Arabs of Haifa, 1948–1950, A Historical and Geographical Analysis. Haifa: University
of Haifa Press, 1996 [in Hebrew]).
50. T. Goren, The Fall of Arab Haifa in 1948. Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press,
2006 [in Hebrew]; T. Segev, 1949 - The First Israelis. Jerusalem: The Domino Press 1984 [in
Hebrew].
51. Census estimate: statistical abstract 1944/1945; Israeli Census 8 November 1948.
52. Of the 190 000 newcomers arriving in Israel between May 1948 and March 1949, 24 000
resided in Haifa (Weiss, Wadi Salib). Haifa’s population in 1951 was estimated at 149 917
inhabitants, 95% Jewish (Israel Bureau of Statistics, 1951).
53. Z. Kolodney and R. Kallus, The politics of landscape re(production): Haifa between colonialism
and nation-building. Landscape Journal 27, 2 (2008) (forthcoming).
54. On the cultural idea of landscape and vacancy, see C. I. Corbin, Vacancy and the landscape:
Cultural context and design response. Landscape Journal 22, 1 (2003) 12–24.
55. K. Olwig, Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic, from Britain’s Renaissance to America’s
New World. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002, 226.
56. On landscape as a groundwork and dreamwork of empire, see D. Mitchell, Cultural landscapes:
Just landscapes or landscapes of justice? Progress in Human Geography 27, 6 (2003) 787–96;
Mitchell (ed), Landscape and Power; Olwig, Landscape, Nature.
57. D. Mitchell, ibid.
58. On colonial planning/architecture, see G. Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial
Urbanism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991; B. S. A. Yeoh, Contesting Space: Power
Relations and the Built Environment in Colonial Cities. New York: Oxford University Press,
1996; R. K. Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities. London:
Spon, 1997; El-Eini, Mandated Landscape. On planning/architecture and nation building, see
L. J. Vale, Designing national identity: post-colonial capitols as intercultural dilemmas, in
Nezar AlSayyad (ed) Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial
Enterprise. Aldershot: Avebury, 1992, 315–38; J. C. Scott, The high-modernist city: an experiment and a critique, in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, 103–31; Bozdogan, Modernism and
Nation Building.
59. P. Abercrombie, Slum clearance and planning: the re-modeling of towns and their external
growth. Town Planning Review 16, 3 (1935) 195–208.
60. M. Mann, Delhi’s belly. Studies in History 23, 1 (2007) 1–31.
61. Yeoh, Contesting Space.
62. P. Tomic, R. Trumper and R. H. Dattwyler, Manufacturing modernity: cleaning, dirt and neoliberalism in Chile. Antipode 38 (2006) 508–29.
63. See, for example, Abercrombie: in ‘Slum clearance and planning’, he wrote of ‘urban improvement or internal remodeling, which will be rendered physically possible by the actual clearance of
whole areas’ (Abercrombie, Town Planning Review 16, 196).
64. Ç. Zeynep, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997.
347
65. D. Gavish, Repressing the Arab revolts in Jaffa, 1936. Kardom 51 (1981) 60–2 [in Hebrew];
T. Hatuka and R. Kallus, Loose ends: the role of architecture in constructing urban borders in
Tel Aviv-Jaffa since the 1920s. Planning Perspectives 21, 1 (2006) 23–44.
66. Home, Of Planting.
67. City Engineer’s Annual Report 1941–1942, 26 (HCA).
68. Watson, in a letter to Kendall (26 May 1937), HP 229 files (HEA).
69. City Engineer’s Annual Report 1947–1948 (HCA).
70. Panorama Road Plan (HP 125) approved in 1933 (HEA).
71. Minutes of the 27th meeting, Local Town Planning Commission (30 March 1933), HP 125, (HEA).
72. J. L. A. Watson, The past four years in Haifa. Building in the Near East 4 (1938) 57–61 [in
Hebrew].
73. Shabetay Levy, Chairman of the City Planning Committee. Minutes of the second special meeting of the town planning sub-committee, 6 May 1947 (HCA).
74. The ‘New City Plan’ of 1920, by Geddes and Ciffrin, suggested a central avenue, cutting through
the Old City, in order to connect it to its new developments. This approach meets the attempt of
‘Cleaning and brightening’ the Old City, mentioned in his report entitled ‘Town Planning in
Haifa’ (Hyman, British Planners).
75. The ‘Skeleton Zoning Scheme’(HP 229, HEA), based on the town planning ordinances 1921–9,
was approved in 1934.
76. This meant interference with 13 private lots.
77. ‘George V Avenue: section Hamra Square-Carmel Avenue’ (HP 519, approved 1938, HEA).
78. A dunam is a unit of area (a metric dunam is 1000 m2) used in the Ottoman Empire and still
used, in various standardized versions, in many countries formerly part of the Ottoman Empire.
79. Other reconstruction areas were Wadi Salib; Wadi Nisnas; Old Haifa, Ard-el-Yahoud, the
Carmelites’ Gate and Wadi Rushmiah (HP 229, approved 1934, HEA).
80. Haifa Town Planning Regulations (HP 229, approved 1934, HEA), prepared in 1931–3, based
on the town planning ordinance of 1921–9.
81. Old City Plan (HP 428, approved 1938, HEA).
82. Annual Report, City Engineer’s Department (12) 1939–40 (HCA).
83. Shabetay Levy, Chairman of the City Planning Committee. Minutes of the 2nd meeting of the
town planning sub-committee, 6 May 1947 (HCA).
84. Ibid.
85. The Old City area covered 130 dunams, comprising 989 privately owned parcels: 466 Moslem,
314 Christian, 74 Jewish and 43 ‘others’(HP 428, approved 1938, HEA).
86. Haifa Municipal Archive, 01943/13 (HA), see also in T. Goren: Initiatives and actions for
renewal of the Old City of Haifa during the Mandate, in Y. Bar-Gal, N. Kliot and A. Peled (eds)
Eretz Israel Studies – Aviel Ron. Haifa: Haifa University Press, 2004, 99–124 [in Hebrew].
87. Minutes of the second special meeting of the town planning sub-committee, 4 June 1947
(HCA). For other reconstruction areas, see note 79. According to the Arabic newspaper El
Wahda, residents of the Old City opposed the demolition plans as being in the Zionist interest
(Goren, Initiatives and actions).
88. Forty years later the vision of a New Middle East was revived following the Oslo Accords.
89. Goren, Initiatives and actions.
90. Memorandum (undated), File A1/51:3, AKA.
91. Title refers to Ecclesiastes 3(3).
92. Memorandum (undated), File A1/51:3, AKA.
93. Ibid.
94. This influx changed the city’s demography from 94 718 in 1948 to 145 000 in 1952 (Haifa
Master Plan, 1954).
348
Kolodney and Kallus
95. By Israeli law, any building or land left unoccupied after 29 November 1947 became ‘abandoned property’. The Government Custodian was authorized to develop this property through
the Development Authority, a legal body established in 1951 and used by the Israel Land
Administration to govern the property of Mandate-Palestine Arab residents who left the country
during the 1948 war.
96. Haifa Master Plan, 1954 (HCA).
97. Quoted from the competition rules, 21 June 1951, (HP 87, HEA).
98. Press conference memorandum, 26 November 1951, (HP 87, HEA).
99. Meeting of the competition committee, 6 May 1952 (HP 87, HEA).
102. A. Khoushy, Thirty months of work, in Haifa. Haifa: Haifa Municipality, 1954, 19 [in Hebrew].
103. I. Yawitz, Molding the future shape of Haifa. Journal of Engineers and Architects Society 14
(1956) 10 [in Hebrew].
104. Minutes, 122nd meeting of the local planning commission (17 May 1954) (HCA).
105. I. Pearlstein, Molding the future shape of Haifa. Journal of Engineers and Architects Society 14
(1956) 29 [in Hebrew].
106. J. Cohen, The implementation of the master plan for Haifa. Journal of Engineers and Architects
Society 14 (1956) 10 [in Hebrew].
107. In Haifa Regional Master Plan (HRMP 6, HEA), completed recently, Haifa is still considered a
metropolitan urban centre.
108. General migration rate for 1000 inhabitants in 2000–5 was -8.5 (-19.7 for the age group of 30–4
and -22.1 for the age group of 25–9) (Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics).

From colonial to national landscape: producing Haifa`s cityscape

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