Jerusalem: One planning system, two urban realities

Participation in the production of space and using it is one of the important aspects of the Right to the City to which a city's inhabitants are entitled. This article discusses how the Israeli urban planning system and law contribute to the production of space in the divided city of Jerusalem, how they are systematically institutionalized to realize ideological and geopolitical aims of the national level of the state, on the administrative bureaucratic level of the system, while ignoring the different spatial and urban realities of the city's two ethno-national groups; Israelis and Palestinians. This effectively produces different outcomes for the different ethno-national groups inhabiting the city; it facilitates the existence and growth of one group and limits that of the other ensuring the Right to the City of Israeli Jews, while depriving the Palestinians, to an extreme degree, from their Right to the City in Jerusalem.