Kibbutz' Renewal - Survival Gentrification אדריכלות ישראלית Architecture of Israel #135 November 2023 | | 58 food for work the kibbutz renewal - survival gentrification against all odds Architect Freddy Kahana, Dr. Ami Ran This article is dedicated to the victims of the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on Simchat Torah 2023. During the heinous Hamas blitz in which thousands of terrorists took over many parts of the Gaza envelope, including military bases and police stations, many of the bordering kibbutzim were destroyed; among them, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv Ha'asara, Holit, Nahal Oz, Beeri and Zikim were burned and many of their inhabitants brutally murdered, wounded or abducted to the Gaza Strip. Gentrification is an anti-social (destructive) process that accompanies urban renewal. Destructive, since it acts in stark contrast to the stated purpose of improving the life and standards of residents, most of whom have grown older with their neighborhoods. And due to the fact that living standards dramatically improve, residents cannot afford the resultant higher maintenance costs, and, in a long and tiring process that lasts 7-10 years, are forced to sell their apartments and move to lower standard flats. The main reason for this socially devastating result is that what actually motivates the “Evacuate and Build” process is not the tenants' benefit, but rather, the economic interests of entrepreneurs, unfortunately backed-up by local authorities who have no interest in the local residents’ welfare. Since this characterizes many places in the western world, from important cities such as New York, Copenhagen and London to Jerusalem or Jaffa, the process ends with the elimination of a local milieu, instead producing almost identical buildings, as if they were stamped out by a cookie cutter. One of the least spoken-about examples in this regard is the kibbutzim, with a lifestyle, since the beginning, of neither town nor village, in which groups of people chose to live together with socialist values of sharing, and which managed to survive the process despite all odds. These are small (originally Zionist) settlements, each initially having several hundred residents who made their living by working the land. And when this became economically unviable during the 1980s, they switched to industry, tourism and commerce, re-purposing uncultivated agricultural areas, some of which prospered after hard work and learning were invested. In the absence of dependence on local authorities, the somewhat cohesive kibbutz population has been able to adapt to the gentrification process properly. In this regard it is worth emphasizing that gentrification is not the renewal process itself, but rather, the social result that usually follows it. And due to the fact that ownership remained in the hands of the kibbutz members, and not in the hands of entrepreneurs, the process contributed to their wellbeing. Leaving most of the kibbutzim to the full or partial ownership of their members allowed most of them to build 'expansions' designed to capitalize on high land values as well as to attract-back the following, younger generation, many of whom had left. Social changes accompanied all this, central of which were privatization, non-kibbutz related occupations, the abolition of common, separate-fromparents sleeping quarters for children, and sometimes even desertion of that most well known icon of the kibbutz - the common dining hall. One way or another, it has been proven again, that despite the natural disagreements between people when they share a common purpose, they can deal with the devastating social effect of gentrification. In practice, although the renewed kibbutz now largely ignores its original cooperative and equitable vision, most of the 270 existing kibbutzim manage to succeed (even leading in their areas) economically in their neo-liberal lifestyle. In this context, which is not a city nor a village, the shared spaces have become, in many places, the infrastructure of industrial, commercial and private "build your own house" neighborhoods owned by new kibbutz members. And some history. The first kibbutz in the country was established during the "third immigration" in Ein Harod, after the "second immigration" denoted "group" had been established In Deganiya Aleph as the first cooperative settlement. At that time three separate rooforganizations were established to include all kibbutzim in Israel. In this context, various conceptual and legal definitions were formulated, to which most of the kibbutzim in the country were obliged. Although it has been about a century since then, the kibbutz is still an interesting social phenomenon, which raises questions about its role, its essence and survivability in a reality that has almost completely abandoned the main goals of cooperative settlement.
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