Jerusalem’s urban morphology of hilltop settlements and valleys as green space, while typical of its region, has been pushed to extremes through the widespread vacation of the valley space. Many agricultural terraces, orchards and natural areas have been cleared and deserted and barriers constructed, reinforcing the polarization of communities through the erasure of the middle ground. Jerusalem’s valleys – currently a waste-land avoided by the general population where illegal dumping and burning of rubbish is rife, through slow and careful nurturing could be transformed from the city’s barriers to its middle ground. As they both define the boundaries between the city’s hilltop enclaves and are important environmental spaces, they offer the potential for the creation of physical connections between communities and a place to acknowledge the unavoidable co-dependence of all Jerusalem’s residents, regardless of the city’s political status.
The nurturing process would begin with the establishment of six community recovery centers in different parts of the city, and by 2050 would have grown to become a city-wide network of shared space and facilities. Each recovery centre is set within a specific community and its program is tailored to meet the needs within that community. My example scheme in the Shu’afat Refugee Camp focuses on the development of craft-based enterprise to facilitate social and economic exchange. Each center also nourishes the shared valley space, providing resources and activity within the valleys in order to normalize them as space rather than boundaries. The recovery centers create a framework for addressing residents’ needs throughout the city, while recognizing that those needs vary greatly between neighborhoods. The network allows communities to capture their own waste resources and apply them to their own needs, while also alleviating the health and environmental burden shared by Jerusalemites due to current haphazard waste collection and recovery services.
