National Home/Personal Home: Public Housing and the Shaping of National Space in Israel

Abstract

The massive investment in public housing for immigrants in the early years of the State of Israel has usually been presented in terms of the achievements in modernization and absorption of immigrants. A closer look at the State agenda reveals the dual role of public housing--the shaping of territory and the shaping of identity. This article provides a critical view of the hegemonic practice of the State in its formative years, in which the location, planning, design, population and administration of these housing estates were carried out. The aim of the article is not to challenge the achievements of housing in the nation-building process, but to provide some new dimensions for consideration in the analytic discourse of housing in general. A critical definition of public housing that goes beyond the usual portrayal as public good is presented. This is seen in the context of the physical shaping of national space, or the spatialization of territory, whereby the State via the ideologically conscripted professionals used public housing as a tool to mould new immigrants into loyal citizens of an imagined nation-state. The resulting peculiar physical/cultural landscape, which persists to this day, is associated with a large marginalized and excluded social group: the Mizrachi population. Several crucial questions concerning the future of these public housing estates are raised and the prospects of their transformation into meaningful living places within the dialectics of spatial production by the State are questioned.