Arieh Sharon - Urban Planning

Urban Planning

When the State was created in 1948 the overwhelming majority of the population was concentrated in a narrow coastal strip. One of the main tasks of the newly established Government Planning Department, headed by Sharon and directly responsible to the Prime Minister’s Office under David Ben-Gurion, was to find solutions for the great waves of immigrants who entered Israel after the declaration of Independence. The team consisted of 180 urban planners, architects, engineers and economists. They set up a National Outline Plan, dividing the country into planning regions in accordance with economic resources, geographic features, communication factors and historical background. The regional structure would be completed by the development of a regional urban center – a medium-sized town. Thus the plan provided for the establishment of 20 new towns, dispersed all over the country and established guidelines for industrial estates to be located close to the new towns. Sharon's plan led to the creation of development towns for example: Beit She'an, Kiryat Gat, and Upper Nazareth. Agricultural regions were planned expanding into the southern Negev desert. A national water plan was set up that would carry water from the surplus areas in the north to the dry, water-poor areas in the south. And a network of National Parks was devised, spreading all over the country, exploiting the existing landscape features, nature reserves and historical sites. At the end of 1953, Sharon was invited by the United Nations to serve as a planning expert in a Seminar on Housing and Community Improvement, held in New Delhi, and afterwards to Burma and Japan.