Neighborhood Rehabilitation Without Relocation or Gentrification

Abstract

Abstract Project Renewal, Israel's program for social and physical rehabilitation of distressed neighborhoods, is based on lessons from American experience with neighborhood programs in general and with the Model Cities program in particular. A five-year evaluation found that the project has helped to improve living conditions of residents and to prevent deterioration in its target areas, but that those improvements were not enough to overcome the low social and economic status of the neighborhoods and their populations. The major factors that led to the qualified success of Project Renewal were extensive political support, selection of “appropriate” neighborhoods, the opening of some middle class opportunities to lower income populations, and a strategy of public-individual partnership.