Rejuvenating the Core of Umm Al-Fahem

Abstract

Umm Al-Fahem is an Arab city in Israel, a city of social, geographic, historic, and political importance. Once a small village, Umm Al Fahem developed to be the third-largest Arab city in the state of Israel. It endured several hegemony stages of occupation and mandates, which shaped its socio-spatial systems through the years. The social and spatial features created a system of segregation and inaccessibility within the different scales of the city, mainly reflected in the core of the city. Therefore, given the long history of the city and its constant unplanned spatial growth, and its important cultural familial heritage, the city core gradually became impenetrable to those who do not live in it, socially and spatially. It became stagnated in order to prevent unauthorized access to it, only readable and open to those who culturally belong, resulting in the need for rejuvenation.

This project’s main focus is to understand the city and its people, create intervention strategies in order to rejuvenate the core of Umm Al-Fahem to be socially integrated and spatially accessible on different scales. Through the medium of investigating the history and context of the city and proposing possible minimal and extreme spatial intervention scenarios, this project will be examining and answering the main question:
”To what extent can the socio-spatial strategies of rejuvenation make the stagnated core of Umm Al-Fahem be socially integrated and spatially accessible?”.