IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

Urban regeneration, developed in response to urban decline and inner-city disinvestment, is commonly framed through the paradigms of the urban renaissance and the entrepreneurial city, positioning planning and housing redevelopment as instruments for competitiveness, investment attraction, and growth (Harvey, 2003). Critical scholarship shows that these framings often translate into property- and design-led, market-driven strategies prioritizing densification, value creation, and real estate financialization, frequently at the expense of social justice (Watt, 2021). In Israel, state-led renewal mechanisms institutionalize these logics within statutory planning, targeting socially vulnerable neighborhoods and producing uneven outcomes, including indirect displacement, tenure restructuring, and homeowner self-gentrification (Hamilton & Alfasi, 2018; Shamai & Hananel, 2021; Geva & Rosen, 2022). Against this backdrop, the paper presents an in-depth case study of an ongoing, innovative applied research project led by the Keret Institute in four socially vulnerable Israeli neighborhoods. Rather than approaching regeneration as a one-off moment of “renewal,” the project conceptualizes it as a long-term, neighborhood-scale process of managing urban contradiction: between growth and preservation, market logics and social needs, and top-down planning frameworks and bottom-up community action. Building on theories of the just city and integrated neighborhood renewal (Fainstein, 2010; van Beckhoven & van Kempen, 2010), the research seeks to develop holistic and democratic neighborhood governance mechanisms. The project operates through sustained collaboration with municipal departments, local organizations, and residents, and is structured around four interrelated pillars: policy and governance reform through engagement with local and national authorities; participatory planning and capacity building for neighborhood actors; integration of local economic drivers and communit