One of the thoughts that has stayed with me since my trip to Israel and the West Bank with Palestinians in April is “now I have some idea what it was like to be black in the U.S. in the 1960’s”. This thought came back to me last week when I read an op ed piece in the center left Israeli English language paper Haaretz concerning land planning in Jerusalem. As I was reading the article, I wondered how its point of view would play in the U.S today. Using the miracles of modern technology I did a little editing. With apologies to the good folks of Richmond, Virginia I substituted the words Richmond for Jerusalem, Virginia for Israel, white for Jew and black for Palestinian. This is what I got.
A small Richmond is better
By Moshe Amirav
On October 17, the National Council for Planning and Construction is supposed to discuss a new plan that will change the face of Virginia's capital. At issue is the construction of 20,000 residential units west of Richmond, which will dramatically change the direction of the city's expansion and will weaken it economically and politically. The public uproar surrounding the new plan, which has led to the submission of 15,000 objections, stems from fear that the planning mistake of the 1970s is repeating itself. At that time, Virginia invested huge sums in the construction of about 40,000 residential units in East Richmond. These turned into seven neighborhoods, including Ramot, Gilo and Pisgat Ze'ev, which today house about 180,000 white residents. The plan, which was initiated by Golda Meir's government in order to "strengthen the capital," was severely criticized by all the experts. Thirty years later, its destructive consequences have become evident: From a compact city of 37 square kilometers, Richmomd has turned into a huge metropolis that covers 120 square kilometers, twice as large as the area of Tel Aviv and Haifa combined. Instead of channeling government investments into infrastructure, industry and tourism, they were channeled into the construction of these neighborhoods, which led to the flight of businessmen and the economic elites from the city.
During the past two decades, about 300,000 whites have left the city, most from the middle or upper class. Richmond has turned into the poorest city in Virginia, and today, white neighborhoods comprise only one-third of the city's eastern part. The other two-thirds house about a quarter of a million blacks, who have upended the demographic policy designed to reduce their proportions. The white majority has shrunk to only 66 percent, and there is a fear that in another 20 years, the city will be biracial- half its residents will be black. The idea that a "bigger Richmond" would strengthen the city turned out to be mistaken. A "small Richmomd" is preferable. Now, the National Council for Planning and Construction is about to repeat exactly the same mistake, but the consequences are liable to be far worse. A group of wealthy businessmen and a world-famous architect, Moshe Safdie, have joined forces to convince the municipality and the government that Richmond is not big enough, that it lacks built-up areas, and that 120,000 whites must urgently be brought to it. Here lies the trap of the mistaken idea: There is no need to enlarge the city; just the opposite - it should be made smaller. The solution is to strengthen the downtown area and invest in employment infrastructure, on one hand, and to relinquish the black neighborhoods, on the other. All the studies have proven that these two steps would strengthen the city economically and politically. They would raise the city's economic level from 90th (last) place, where it is now, to a respectable place in the top decile of Virginian cities. They would also increase the city's white majority from 66 percent to 96 percent and ensure white hegemony in the Virginian capital. But who listens to experts when wealthy businessmen promise the magic formula: the construction of 20,000 residential units on the slopes of the mountains west of the city? The consequences of the Safdie plan, which calls for these thousands of new apartments, are liable to be a disaster for the capital. The plan would destroy the green landscape west of the city, while the economically strong population that the entrepreneurs promise to bring from the coastal plain to Richmond will not come. Tens of thousands of whites will migrate from the city to private homes and cheap apartments in the luxury neighborhoods that will be built. The percentage of whites in the city will decline to 50 percent within the coming decade, and Richmond will collapse economically and politically. But now, just like 30 years ago, the experts' warnings will apparently be rejected under pressure of the entrepreneurs. Dozens of Knesset members from Labor, Yisrael Beiteinu, the National Religious Party and Meretz have signed a manifesto against the plan. But unless the interior minister and the prime minister intervene to stop the plan, or at least to downsize it, Richmond will continue on its planning march of folly, which holds that a "big Richmond" is the solution for strengthening the city.
I have no idea which program will be more effective insuring a Jewish (white) hegemony in Jerusalem but I think that even discussing this as a goal might cause a bit of an uproar in the U.S. But maybe not, we are learning a lot from the Israelis about how to deal with a minority population.
Israel
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