The Ethno-class Trajectory of New Neighborhoods in Israel

The subject of this article falls within the debate on the development of new neighborhoods beyond the hub of the metropolis and how this relates to planning from below. It regards new neighborhoods as being increasingly shaped through deliberate action in the form of public policy at the state and local levels. However, it emphasizes the central role of the government establishment, national institutions and ideologies in walling out and exclusionary practices. Research into four representative new neighborhoods in Israel, which were planned under the new spatial regime of the 1990s, reveals patterns of discrimination and ethno-class stratification that enable the preservation of nationalism and ethnic logic as the main, yet concealed, axis organizing social and spatial life.