The 1963 General Plan for Jerusalem: The Unrealized Vision for the Eastern Part of the City
Keyword: 
Jerusalem
urban planning
Housing
land use
parks
demographics
urban preservation
Jordan
Abstract: 

This article attempts to analyze the comprehensive urban plan commissioned by the municipality of Jerusalem from Brown Engineers International in 1963 in light of the status of the city within Jordanian governance and politics, and also compared to earlier British plans. This plan was the basis for the 1966 town scheme submitted to the Jordanian government just one year before the 1967 war by Henry Kendall, who was in charge of city planning for the municipality between 1963 and 1966. Faced with the extreme reduction of the space for urban development after the division of the city, the plan ambitioned to lay the basis for a “complete city” and to compensate for the lack of vital infrastructures. For the Old City, the plan sought to further approaches to preservation initiated during the Mandate period, while calling for the creation of residential neighborhoods outside of it.

Author biography: 

Jawad Dukhgan is an architect and a curator based in Amman. In recent years, he has developed and led research initiatives and public programs on architecture and urbanism in the Arab region for Columbia University GSAPP’s Studio-X Amman, focusing on urban planning and urban design in the region.

Falestin Naili is a historian based at the University of Basel and associated with the Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) in Amman. She specializes in the social history of late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine and Jordan and has focused much of her recent research on local governance and politics, particularly in Jerusalem.