Asher Street is a quiet, tree-lined road in the residential Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem where families live in small apartment buildings and neighbors share a sense of community.
A proposal to build a massive 26-story tower on the street has jolted residents, who fear that plans to add 180 housing units, thousands of square meters (yards) of commercial space, a hotel, and an underground parking lot will change the neighborhood’s character for the worse. More than 500 neighbors signed a petition protesting the project and calling on the city to find a better solution.
“This plan sets a dangerous precedent for the destruction of historic neighborhoods in Jerusalem,” the petition claims.
It’s a battle that will be fought on many streets in the Holy City in the coming years as the city builds toward the sky.
While Jerusalem currently has only about 30 buildings of 18 stories or more, nearly 500 new skyscrapers are planned for construction, according to a municipal planning document leaked to the Hebrew press recently. That would add nearly 60,000 apartments to the city, increasing the housing supply by about 20%. Most of those will be high-end luxury apartments, although some of the tallest buildings may be required to include smaller apartments designed for young couples and students.
For Yoel Even, the city engineer in charge of Jerusalem’s urban planning and infrastructure, the need for this type of building is clear.
“Building upwards is a natural part of the process of Jerusalem’s urban renewal and continued development, which is the city’s highest and clearest priority,” Even said. “Jerusalem doesn’t have a lot of space to expand, so in order to avoid building on empty or preserved spaces, building at height is the most effective and economical way to add more housing.”
But a raft of construction approvals granted in recent weeks is starting to awaken Jerusalemites to the scope of an unprecedented building spree that threatens to significantly change the face of Israel’s capital city for years to come. And while the city’s urban planners are confident that they are leading Jerusalem on the path to modernity and prosperity, many residents fear that their city is being led to ruin.
Veering from history
Jerusalem is not alone in building towards the skies. Israel’s largest cities are all expanding vertically to add housing units in crowded areas. However, municipal planners have always seen this type of urbanization as contradictory to Jerusalem’s historical character.
In the early 20th century, the British mandated that Jerusalem homes be covered with Jerusalem stone and limited in height to maintain the air of an ancient Holy City. Even after Israel’s independence in 1948, City Hall resisted high-rise construction, and in the 1970s and 1980s, imposing projects like the Wolfson Towers in Rehavia and the Clal building in the city center were highly contentious.
In recent decades, pressures to add more housing units, along with skyrocketing housing prices, have changed the city’s thinking on the matter. (The controversial Holyland project, whose 32-floor Tower 1 is currently the tallest building in Jerusalem, likely played a part in this evolution as well.) The advent of Jerusalem’s light rail, first launched in 2011, also changed the equation, as the city adopted a policy allowing buildings of up to 18 stories along the rail’s tracks. In 2018, Mayor Moshe Lion was elected on a platform of aggressive building, and his approach can be seen in the building cranes and scaffolding that dot the city.
The city’s ambitious plan
Even, 51, is the urban planner charged with bringing Jerusalem’s growth plans to fruition. As he sees it, the building boom he is leading is going to revolutionize the city for the better.
“I’m very optimistic for the future,” Even said. “The idea of urban renewal is not just building additional housing units. It’s taking neighborhoods that were built in the 1950s and 1960s and modernizing them with new buildings, parking, public areas, green spaces, and more stores and workplaces within walkable distance. Life will look dramatically better for everyone here.”
Even’s idyllic vision is based on sophisticated planning efforts. His staff of 500 uses advanced techniques to map out the city’s population trends, traffic flows, employment centers, and topographic needs. They have state-of-the-art calculations for how many parking spaces, schools, parks, and open spaces every neighborhood will require for X number of new units. These calculations, he believes, show the way toward a sustainable future.
According to the city’s master plan, upgrades to the city’s transportation infrastructure will alleviate traffic problems and ease congestion. Jerusalem 10 years in the future will have a sophisticated light rail network with 75 kilometers (46 miles) of tracks connecting all parts of the city, Even said.
Many Jerusalem residents will get rid of their cars completely, or at least significantly downgrade their car ownership and usage. Bike trails planned around the city will make it easy to get around without cars. Railway stations near the center of town will allow everyone easy access to Tel Aviv and other population centers around the country. For those living in neighborhoods with large peaks and valleys, dozens of massive public elevators and escalators will be built into the lay of the land to make traversing the hills of Jerusalem less strenuous. (One such elevator is already under construction in the Old City to make it more accessible. Similar projects have helped transform life in hilly cities in Europe and South America.)
The city will always maintain strict building limits for areas considered essential to the city’s historic identity, including pre-1948 neighborhoods with protected status such as Nahlaot, Rehavia, and the city center, Even noted. “Preserving these is essential, and speaks directly to our hearts,” he said.
The fact that most of the projects Even described are years from fruition and far from the current reality doesn’t affect his conviction in the strength of his plan.
“We are creating a new reality in Jerusalem,” he said. “We are building, we are improving transportation, we are improving employment, all while preserving the city’s timeless character. We will have everything in this city.”
A slightly less rosy assessment
Not everyone shares Even’s optimism.
“This is going to ruin Jerusalem,” said Sara Ben Shaul Weiss, part of a forum of local activists protesting the construction.
“The city is enabling developers to enrich themselves by selling expensive properties primarily to foreign buyers while harming the locals,” she said. “This type of building isn’t helping to solve the housing crisis; it’s creating a situation in which the middle class will be unable to afford to live here, leaving only the poor and a bunch of empty apartments owned by wealthy people abroad.”
Ben Shaul Weiss charges that the city’s plans are unrealistic and that massive building projects are being approved without proper consideration of their effects on residents. “There is no planning for infrastructure,” she said, going through a litany of problems the skyscrapers will bring to communities.
Ben Shaul Weiss charged that such projects will overextend electricity and sewage infrastructure, destroy the sense of community in neighborhoods, increase property taxes and building maintenance costs, limit access to schools, overcrowd parks and synagogues, and generally pack people into buildings like sardines. Tall buildings will create “urban deserts” where sunlight is blocked, trees cannot grow, and wind tunnels form that make being outdoors difficult, she added.
“The city isn’t thinking about the damage it is causing or the needs of the residents,” Ben Shaul Weiss said. “The only planning tool it is using is profitability.”
City planner Even is undeterred by the charges. “We are investing a lot of time and money in getting this right,” he said. In cases where a need for additional bus lines or infrastructure becomes apparent, those can be added in the future when it becomes relevant, he added.
Back on Asher Street, where the tower plan was recently approved by the District Committee, residents accept that negotiating a solution with the municipality is no longer an option.
“At this point, all we can do is go to court to try to block it,” said one activist.
