Living in the lanes: Eilat as a Sustainable Desert City, Based on Its Resources, Scenic Values, and Local Identity

Climate change significantly impacts the environment and quality of life, especially in desert regions characterized by dry climates, intense radiation, low precipitation, and powerful flash flood events. The challenges for a desert city include a lack of shade-providing vegetation, limited resources, and conditions that make urban life difficult. It is therefore crucial for desert cities to adapt to climate change while preserving their genius loci, rooted in natural values, community ties, and economic resources.
Eilat, as a unique desert city situated at the intersection of a country’s border, the desert, and the sea, faces significant planning challenges. These include modernist neighborhoods built in the 1950s with designs that are not necessarily climate-adapted, a severe lack of urban shading across approximately 90% of its area, and wide, car-oriented street layouts that harm community resilience, quality of life, and connections to the surrounding natural environment. In its current state, Eilat has a small core of long-term residents, with only 30% of its inhabitants living in the city for over 10 years, which indicates the difficulty of staying there long-term and the urgent need for improved urban planning.
This project proposes an alternative to the existing motorized and pedestrian urban grid by creating a set of sustainable planning tools for the existing network of lanes. It integrates a soft mobility axis to form an urban system with climate-community resilience. The design will create a walkable, accessible, and shaded network within a dense, desert-adapted urban plan, allowing for community gathering spaces in open areas, redefining the public-private boundaries, and implementing climate-responsive design solutions. Through this network of lanes and green axes, the project will connect the city center, its neighborhoods, and a proposed peripheral promenade that provides access to the unique desert and coastal natural values surrounding the city. The goal is to enable a high-quality desert life that encourages long-term residency among its inhabitants.