Liora BIGON, HIT - Holon Institute of Technology, Israel
Yifat BITTON, Achva Academic College , Israel
The lecture will expand on the usability of the concepts of "place making" and "place attachment" as recently developed in urban studies research in the context of housing insecurity of marginalized communities in today's neo-liberal city. Particularly, against the growing threat of urban evictions, it will utilize a transdisciplinary approach, showing the relevance of both concepts for (a) a better understanding of bottom-up processes of spatial production and attempts to create a sense of place on the part of such communities, and (b) offering an innovative legal strategy for doing justice to these communities in terms of their compensation rights, especially where a title to land has not been registered on a private basis. These issues will be critically examined on the site-related case of the Givat-Amal quarter in Tel Aviv, Israel. This district had been under an actual threat of forced eviction following seven conflicted decades with the state, municipal authorities and private entrepreneurs. Due to a gap opened between governmental responsibility and land privatization process since the 1990s, the municipality just managed to finally evict the quarter (November 2021). Our transdisciplinary lecture is based on qualitative methodologies in human geography such as fieldwork, visual evidence, and interviews. It is equally based on revisiting "traditional" legal property rights through the lens of post-liberal human rights analysis. The argument can apply to many situations of forced evictions across Africa, Latin America and the West itself.
Mots clés : place attachment|urban evictions|Tel Aviv|extra-formality|compensation rights
A102461LB