“The Plan for Neighborhood Rehabilitation and Renewal” known as the “Rehabilitation Project” has been in operation in Israel for ten years. Now it leaves the neighborhoods and changes it character. Formally, however, it still includes within its framework 90 neighborhoods countrywide, in which about 15% of the country’s citizens reside. In scope and complexity this is a unique project and attracts much research activity. The research findings have generally been published in periodicals abroad or in research reports by Israeli academic institutes, with only a limited circulation. Not much material is available to those Hebrew readers interested to learn about the project and its results and use its research lessons. The book presented herewith is meant to answer this need.
The book opens with an analysis of the factors contributing to the proliferation of underdeveloped neighborhoods in Israel, and their character, continues with a description of the rehabilitation project, deals with the physical and social changes brought about in the neighborhoods by the project, and concludes with an evaluation of the project’s rate of success in achieving its goals. Those interested in aspects of housing rehabilitation in particular, will find relevant additions in the book’s appendices. These also include a complete list of the Samuel Neaman Institute’s publications (in Hebrew and English) on subjects pertaining to neighborhood rehabilitation.
The book’s chapters were culled from research reports and articles published during the 1980’s by the Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, at the Technion. Adapting the material to book form was done by choosing from the reports, without rewriting, and with only minimal updating of the chapter dealing with the project and its budgets.
The book’s central part was taken from the comprehensive evaluation research on the Neighborhood Rehabilitation Project in Israel conducted during the years 1982-1985. Only selected parts of the research are included. Other parts, dealing with planning and execution procedures and evaluating in detail the cooperation of the residents in those procedures will be published soon in a book by Rachelle Alterman and Arza Churchman, by the Samuel Neaman Institute.
