Israel’s largest landfill rehabilitation: creative landscape design as a catalyst for a functioning metropolis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Urban rehabilitation of brownfields advances cities' resilience and contributes to residents' wellbeing and nature preservation. This article explores the transformation of one such site-Hiriya, once the largest landfill in Israel-into a large metropolitan park. The rebirth of the area, taken to new levels by the design of German landscape architect Peter Latz, combines a regional solution to problems exacerbated by climate change, drainage, and transportation and brings social recovery to neglected neighbourhoods in the southern Tel Aviv metropolis. We argue that the success of Hiriya's transformation was a national-scale event, resulting not only from an evolved Israeli environmental discourse but from parallel processes including a maturing national planning system, a new approach to water and streams, and an overdue national plan for waste treatment problems resulting from threats to vital infrastructures. Using a range of textual and visual documents, the article examines the processes that led to the transformation of Hiriya and looks at how an excellent design turned Hiriya from a brownfield on the outskirts of the cities into a lively, green, functioning space in an urban setting, thereby providing a regional, even a global, model for creating sustainable spaces.