Holy green: silwan, design knowledge, and the 1967 making of Jerusalem's Old City Walls National Park

Abstract

ABSTRACT One of the most volatile sites in Jerusalem is the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan, at the heart of which lies the City of David archeological site. Much scholarship focuses on the contemporary tensions that arise from its two contradictory identities: an East Jerusalem Palestinian residential community and a Jewish symbol of a mythical past. This article, by contrast, explores a largely overlooked historical moment that has been key to the shaping of these dynamics: the declaration within merely six weeks after the 1967 war of an Israeli national park around the Old City Walls. The article explores how an unrealized British colonial plan for a green belt around the historic walls of Jerusalem was updated in 1967 by Israeli landscape architects using cutting-edge North American environmentalist ideas. Their blueprint, we argue, was crucial to the shaping of the ‘holy basin’s’ spatial logic, landscape imaginaries, and legal structures, necessary to understand the current turn of events. In this process, we highlight the centrality of incorporating longer-term perspectives in the study of contemporary urban realities, bringing into closer dialogue scholarship on present-day urbanism with historical studies of planning and cities.