Re-Haluka

The project addresses one of the most complex issues in Israeli urban planning: land readjustment processes. This issue embodies social, legal, and economic tensions: how can land ownership be redistributed fairly and equitably, while safeguarding property rights, encouraging urban development, and preserving cultural and community values? In a world of a growing population, diminishing land resources, and legal obstacles that often prevent the implementation of plans, the question of land readjustment becomes a critical touchstone of the planning system.

The project’s position stems from the understanding that the existing method – centralized, lengthy, and often coercive – fails to adequately meet the complex needs of landowners and the community. Therefore, an alternative methodology is proposed that integrates parametric-digital tools to enable a flexible, transparent, and community-based process. Three main tools were developed: an interactive public participation platform, a generative planning tool for producing alternative scenarios, and a redistribution tool based on land appraisal combined with planning and social coefficients. Together, they form an integrative system that evaluates tailored redistribution alternatives and proposes an innovative process that brings landowners closer to a state of “partial agreement.”

The chosen case study – Kfar Qara – vividly illustrates the acute challenges of private ownership, increasing density, and a centralized planning system. Within this context, a central urban boulevard was defined as the axis of intervention: an act of mediation between the standardized planning of the National Preferred Housing Plan (Tama”al) 1116 and the proposed parametric planning. Along this boulevard, diverse building typologies, generative scenarios, and tailored redistribution solutions were introduced, which together create the vision of a “Vertical Village” – a settlement that combines the rural sense of place with intensive, walkable, and sustainable urbanity.

Through this integration, the project offers not only an architectural–planning intervention but also a call to action: to develop new models of land readjustment in Israel that are adapted to local complexities and aspire to create transparent, just, and community-based urbanism.