Through the Just Jerusalem Competition, the Jerusalem 2050 project sought to inspire and enable the production of visionary ideas for the city, in the form of competition entries submitted from around the world. With the participation of Palestinian and Israeli scholars, activists, business leaders, youth, and others, the competition sought to generate new ideas and discussions about Jerusalem as it might be in the future—a just city shared in peace by all residents, whether they be Muslims, Christians or Jews, Palestinians or Israelis. It called for visions of Jerusalem that might transcend nationalist discourses and instead focus on questions of daily life and the “right to the city.”
The participation of a broad range of actors and institutions here and abroad was essential to enabling the plurality of ideas and design visions that have made the competition a starting point for future deliberations over the city, including in this website. While the competition is couched in physical terms, all entrants to the competition were expected to describe in words (in terms of institutions, practices, meanings of place, renderings of space, interpretations of history, etc.) their visions for Jerusalem. Currently, the winning entries have been assembled and disseminated on this website, in print and through a series of exhibitions in order to promote policy discussion and public debate. For more, please see the “Envisioning Cities of Peace,” “Prize Winning Visions,” and “News + Events” menu tabs.
The Jerusalem 2050 initiative and the Just Jerusalem Competition are interdisciplinary activities sponsored by MIT’s Center for International Studies (CIS) and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). They are not grounded in any national political project or diplomatic proposal. The project’s Steering Committee represents various academic disciplines as well as a diversity of national, religious, and political perspectives. In its role as a premier research institution, MIT is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s most pressing issues. The project’s goal is simply to allow for the envisioning of Jerusalem, real and symbolic, as a just, peaceful, and sustainable urban locale.
