Rural City | Rural Urbanization of Palestinian villages in Israel – The case of Tamra

Palestinian villages in Israel are experiencing a deterioration of their rural-urban fabric due to rapid urbanization, population growth, migration, land expropriation, and neglect. These villages traditionally developed around a vibrant rural core, with semi-private neighborhoods connected to it. This structure integrated traditional agricultural lands within and around the village, functioning together coherently. These values formed the cultural and economic foundation of the community. The project aims to address the way modern urban planning issues, which focus on efficiency and functionality, overlook the unique way in which the local community has shaped the space until now. Tamra serves as a case study – a village that has undergone rapid urbanization and is about to double its size. The village serves as an example of a city containing many remnants of agriculture, which continue to disappear due to the expansion of new, generic neighborhoods at the city’s outskirts. This expansion has resulted in a physical and mental disconnect between the urban fabric and the agricultural one.

The project identifies an opportunity to create a rural-urban hierarchy and presents a new model of urbanization, where the city develops along the seam between the existing urban space and the agricultural area, by drawing a historical axis from its core to the fields found on the other side of Highway 70. This alternative planning approach weaves in values from the village’s unique urban code, and creates a toolbox of typologies of semi-private residential clusters, the development of the main urban axis, and guidelines for coping with the development in private spaces within the agricultural field area. The planning strives to preserve the community’s values while strengthening the connection to the land, thus creating a sustainable urban system based on productive agriculture, which will provide social spaces and attract investments and economic development opportunities. In a reality where villages undergoing urbanization are dependent on central cities, the planning will serve as a model for the expansion of Arab villages in Israel, emphasizing on the right to quality urban life that will enable the community to exist and thrive in its own right.