Who designs Jerusalem?

The direct impact mayors can have on the appearance of their city is great, their indirect impact huge.

By GERARD HEUMANN
city hall jerusalem 224.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
city hall jerusalem 224.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Recent years have seen too many signs that the municipality of Jerusalem has no awareness of design - good or bad - while the rate of physical development is so rapid that we're seeing the nearby countryside destroyed. Politics has a great deal to do with this. Of all our political figures, the mayor can do the most good or the most harm in the matter of design. The direct impact mayors can have on the appearance of their city is great, the indirect impact in a city with serious planning and zoning programs enormous. Examples of mayoral support for destructive projects are hardly lacking. Haifa's former mayor Arye Gurel pushed through the catastrophic hotel built lengthwise opposite the Carmel Beach, thereby permanently blocking public access and sea views. During the Gulf War, Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo Lahat actually prayed that the first Scud missile fall on Kikar Atarim, having no better idea of how to rid himself of the beachfront slum he had approved. Needless to say, Jerusalem is no exception; its list of failures is too long to list here. Here's a small sampling: Ehud Olmert, from his first day in office, encouraged the building of towers - ignoring, among a great many other facts, that many would fall within the Old City's visual basin. Their placement on a site-by-site basis has had the expected destructive result. Yes men like former city engineer "I want to live in New York" Uri Ben-Asher made matters worse. The unholy Holyland Park, approved in spite of thousands of objections, and with far taller towers still to come, is another of Olmert's design contributions. At Malha, a shopping center, sports stadium, technology park and residential neighborhood were designed as if each existed on separate planets. Not a single building in the technology park bounds adjacent roads, not even opposite the shopping center, where a golden opportunity existed for the design of valuable commercial space at ground level. The City Hall complex, Safra Square, built at enormous public expense, features a monumental, shadeless and useless plaza bounded by dead arcades. Surrounding it with 200 painted lions only serves to emphasize its hopeless sterility. Plazas are successful when life goes on around them as well as within. In fact, practically all the city center's public squares (several having been rebuilt three to four times) remain lifeless. WOULD-BE MAYOR Menahem Porush takes great pride in having supported the plan for Har Homa, seemingly having learned nothing from the many previous planning errors made in Gilo and Ramot - two other overly dense bedroom communities, homogeneous and dull. Understandably, many of our mayoral candidates have exhibited a pronounced tendency to avoid the time-consuming and complex problems related to improving and expanding the existing built environment, preferring instead to consider the virgin land at the city's periphery. The Safdie Plan for a new town comprising more than 20,000 dwellings west of Jerusalem, fortunately put on hold by Lupolianski at the last moment, is one such case. Economists warn us not to dwell on "sunk" costs, so we can only pray that the stated goals of the light rail system's first line, designed to enhance public access to the city center, will be met. At the very least, an investigation into the costly and disturbing delays of the project, as well as a candid explanation to the public, are in order. The municipality's open-door policy toward superstar architects must be abandoned. Calatrava's suspension bridge, built at a cost of hundreds of millions of shekels, though beautiful in itself, bears little relation to its surroundings. Gehry's design for the Museum of Tolerance on land donated by the city is also totally unrelated to its physical context. And so far as the selection of local architects and other professionals for public work is concerned, there have been signs of favoritism. Transparent criteria should be established. Malha, Safra Square, Har Homa, West Jerusalem and the Museum of Tolerance are but a few of the dozens of projects sponsored by the Jerusalem Development Authority. They are all large-scale, self-contained and essentially single-use. As such, they are destructive of natural human dialogue with the community they are presumably a part of. Perhaps the time has come for a mayor to rethink the way the JDA is run. The vacuum that has resulted from so many years without a clear design policy has led to mediocrity. For social awareness to be again translated into design that encourages community values, a renewed respect for the opinions of one's neighbors is necessary. We must finalize the new Jerusalem Master Plan, and hope for a comprehensive and well-integrated concept that incorporates physical, historical, social and economic considerations - a Jerusalem having a strong unity and identity. The education of our next mayor is unlikely to have prepared him to make crucial design decisions. Surrounding himself with top-flight professionals while exhibiting a willingness to listen and learn is his only prerogative. The author is a Jerusalem architect and town planner.