Tractors carving up the face of a hill in preparation for the new town. (photo by the author) About a half hour’s drive north of Ramallah, construction has begun on the first planned Palestinian city. Surrounded by sleepy hilltop villages and terraced olive orchards, Rawabi, which means “hills” Arabic, is being marketed as a green and […]
A rendering of Tel Aviv’s new central promenade: stairs leading down to the beach, a paved lower level, shade-providing structures and new sidewalk and beach furniture. (image courtesy of Tel Aviv Municipality) Two years ago, Tel Aviv presented a plan to redesign its central promenade. The plan – vague, unclear and buried inside another policy […]
Photo by sla514 via Travelpod. In Israel, renewable energy has become almost synonymous with solar energy in its various forms. But what about that other renewable resource – the wind? Worldwide, the wind energy industry is booming, with a $63 billion global market as of 2009, and half a million people employed in wind power-related jobs. […]
Empty land in Israel’s Arava desert. (photo by Jesse Fox) A conflict may be brewing between an emerging renewable energy industry and environmentalists over land preservation in Israel. The heart of the controversy has to do with where to put the massive solar installations that are expected to be built in the arid Negev and […]
Israeli Minister Ben-Eliezer addressing the Eilat energy conference this morning. (photo by Daniel Cherrin). Israel and Egypt are discussing a possible collaborative solar energy project in the Sinai desert, Israel’s Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Binyamin Ben-Eliezer announced this morning at the third annual Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Conference. According to Ben-Eliezer, he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]
“I used to get off at the old bus station, and to me it was like another country…” goes the Tipex song (free translation mine). Above: Tel Aviv’s Old Central Bus Station demolished. Photo by Moran Beth Halachmi, via Flickr. This week, Tel Aviv’s unused Old Central Bus Station became history. The much-maligned New Central […]
Solar panels at a testing site in Abu Dhabi. (photo by Jesse Fox) According to a report published this week in Globes, Israel’s public housing company Amidar is set to begin installing photovoltaic solar panels on the roofs of its buildings. And with 72,000 housing units in its portfolio, that could add up to a […]
The Tel Aviv City Council held a discussion yesterday on a handful of building plans that, if approved, would effectively transform some of the city’s most historic areas beyond recognition. The discussion, which council members described as “fateful” and “dramatic,” drew a large number of city residents, eager to have a say in the planning […]
A year after a municipal planning committee decided to put plans for a row of skyscrapers near Jaffa on hold, the plans are back on track. A new policy document formulated by a Tel Aviv planning committee calls for the construction of a row of very tall buildings in the south of the city, some […]
Ofer Kot, #10 on the Green Movement – Meimad’s list of candidates for Israel’s Knesset, spent election day in February handing out the movement’s fliers to people at voting stations – as they were on their way out. When asked why he was giving election fliers to people who had already voted, he replied: “To […]
Last month, I had the unexpected pleasure of visiting Abu Dhabi and Dubai, two of the seven tiny kingdoms that together make up the United Arab Emirates. I was there to cover the World Future Energy Summit, an international conference on renewable energy technologies. This was my first visit to the Emirates, which have a […]
I am not against public transportation. In fact, I am very much in favor. As a person who lives in Tel Aviv and does not own a car, I am completely dependent on my bike and the bus and train systems. What’s more, it often seems like the half a million vehicles that enter the […]
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0goOBK3zb8&feature=related Now that Barack Obama is on his way to the White House and the US seems poised for a “New Green Deal”, could things start heading in that direction in Israel as well? While on the national level, a new green party aims to secure a couple of seats in the Knesset, one of the outgoing […]
Kids on bikes cruise past Azrieli towers. A couple of years ago I read a book called Carfree Cities, which put forward a very convincing case for reducing the use of private cars in the city, and set out a whole series of design alternatives which, according to author J.H. Crawford, would obviate the need […]
Tuesday, September 23 was Public Transportation Day in Israel, the local answer to European Mobility Week and World Carfree Day, an attempt to “remind the world that we don’t have to accept our car-dominated society.” In Europe, they managed to keep the cars off the streets for a few hours. In Israel, we will have […]
Sometimes it is necessary to confront our decision-makers with what has been called “the threat of a good example” – to bring them face to face with evidence that, despite their insistence to the contrary, it is possible to do things differently. That, in a nutshell, was the idea behind an event held last week […]
For most people, solar energy conjures up images of rectangular panels on roofs or lined up in rows somewhere in the middle of the desert. And indeed, this is what we can expect to see over the next few years, as Israel begins to develop its most significant natural (and renewable) resource – the sun. […]
MK Dr. Dov Khenin announces his candidacy for the office of Mayor of Tel Aviv on Monday, flanked by members of the A City for All movement in Tel Aviv’s Gan Meir. (Photo by Yoav Lerman). What would happen if a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist were to take charge of a polluted and traffic-clogged city like Tel […]
Maybe it was the teetering government or the water crisis, or maybe it was just the sticky and oppressive summer heat. Whatever the cause, the summer session of the Knesset closed last week with an unprecedented burst of environmental legislation. Leading the charge was a trio of maverick lawmakers – Dov Hanin, Michael […]
Photo by Dan Keinan, Haaretz. A modernist skyscraper was built with no connection to the existing urban context, and plans for a row of similar towers threatened to destroy the character of the historical city center. This so outraged the residents of the area that they managed to bring about a complete ban on skyscraper […]
Notice anything strange about this scene? Said Leemor Chandally, who sent us these photos, “I was passing by Rabin Square, when I noticed this situation and had to laugh. A bunch of people were waiting for a bus, but nobody was waiting inside the bus stop, which was obviously brand new. Instead, everyone was crouching […]
Last month, hundreds of Tel Aviv residents spent their Friday afternoon marching up Rothschild Boulevard in support of the Clean Air Act, stuck in the Knesset for the past three years. Knesset lawmakers must have been paying attention – last week the act passed its first reading. Video by Daniel Cherrin and Jesse Fox.
To be perfectly honest, I received the news about Al Gore coming to Israel to collect a $1 million prize for his achievements in raising environmental awareness with a dose of skepticism. Does Al Gore really need more money or recognition, especially when there are so many committed, homegrown environmentalists in Israel, many of whom […]
What is microfinance? How does it work? What kind of potential is there in Israel for microfinance projects to succeed? The Microfinance Club, a project created by third-year Interdisciplinary Center students Misha Nataf, Gilli Cherrin and Simon Seroussi, in collaboration with international NGO PlaNet Finance, will answer these questions and discuss opportunities for new microfinance […]
Late Friday afternoon at the Carmel Market in the center of Tel Aviv. Shabbat is approaching, and the “shook” is winding down for the weekend. Vendors are hawking the last of their merchandise, heavily discounted, to the few remaining stragglers. Straining to yell over cantorial Oriental music, the vendors ask each other what time Shabbat […]