Settler Colonial Urbanism(s) and infrastructural changes in Palestine

Join Prof Haim Yacobi as he has been invited by the “GDI Students for Palestine" group, and the "Global Urban Futures" and "Resource, Environment and Development" research groups at the University of Manchester to present his work on settler colonial urbanism(s) in Palestine\Israel.

This lecture is a joint initiative between the "GDI Students for Palestine" group, and the "Global Urban Futures" and "Resource, Environment and Development" research groups. The session will focus on understanding the links between urban and infrastructural transformation and destruction in the face of the current situation in Palestine, with a focus on settler colonialism, urban planning, and environmental justice.

Speaker information

Prof Haim Yacobi: 

Architect and urban planner, Development Planning Unit, UCL

"In this presentation I aim to discuss settler colonial urbanism(s) in Palestine\Israel, while exploring the different spatial and political typologies developed during the last few decades. I will discuss how colonial planning has been used as a tool of social, demographic and spatial control and how Palestinian claims for the right to the city are meaningful political forms of protest. The presentation will refer to Palestinian cities (such as Lydda) that were transformed into “Jewish-Arab mixed cities”, to new “Jewish cities” that are going through a process of “Arabisation”, to Jerusalem as a neo-apartheid city, and to the current spatiocide of Gaza." 

Chloe Chbat: 

PhD researcher from the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), U Manchester

"In this talk I will focus on the urban and infrastructural transformation that takes place in the unrecognized villages of the Naqab desert where Palestinian Bedouins are at the crux of a battle between recognition and unrecognition, legibility and illegibility, existence and non-existence in the face of Israeli settler colonial abuses"