Urban development and expansion trends under the political instability in Palestine: Jerusalem- Ramallah Case Study

×

Error message

User warning: The following theme is missing from the file system: journalijdr. For information about how to fix this, see the documentation page. in _drupal_trigger_error_with_delayed_logging() (line 1138 of /home2/journalijdr/public_html/includes/bootstrap.inc).

International Journal of Development Research

Urban development and expansion trends under the political instability in Palestine: Jerusalem- Ramallah Case Study

Abstract: 

Urban development, expansion, and Land use changes in the urban environments are a global phenomenon, by 2050, urban population in the world will increase to be more than 6.6 billion inhabitants and they will live with less than 1% of the world land surfaces. Political instability is one of most important drivers that effecting on the land cover/land use change and urban expansion, especially in the areas that faced the political problems and wars. Urban development in Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) impacted strongly by Political Transformations during 20th century and early of 21th century. The political instability factor in OPT leaded to distortion of Palestinian urban form and effecting on future urban expansion and development. Therefore, this study aims to assess of urban development and planning in Palestine during the political transformation stages, as well as it aims to explore urban expansion trends under the geopolitical effects in Jerusalem – Ramallah urban region as a model in the Palestinian urban environment. Descriptive, historical, and cartographic methods conducted based on used Geographic Information System to explore existing and future urban expansion trends in Jerusalem – Ramallah region as a case and model in the Palestinian urban environments. The result showed how the political instability conditions effected strongly on the urban development process and expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Therefore, this study will improve our Knowledge in the urban development research context about the relationship between the urban development and the political transformations. Palestinian policy makers and planners, as well as Palestinian planning organizations at different levels need to put more efforts to prepare of the regional, sub-regional , and master plans for all Palestinian localities and regions especially in the OPT, in the conflict and sensitive areas such as Jerusalem –Ramallah region. This study recommend to adaption a new planning ideas and strategies to face the Israeli physical planning in the Palestinian urban environments like compact communities and principles of smart urban growth.

Download PDF: