Refereed Journal Papers

Abstract: Over the past four decades, neoliberalism has reshaped labor markets and urban–regional planning. This study examines the urban and regional precariat—a growing class shaped by neoliberal policies and marked by precarious work. While planning studies have addressed urban injustices, little attention has been given to the precariat’s interaction with space and its links to land use and satisfaction. To fill this gap, the study explores how the neoliberal city is segmented into precariat types, their use of urban and regional resources, and lifestyle integration across areas.
The study examined Israel, where neoliberal reforms began in the 1980s, surveying 352 employees in central and northern regions and assessing their residential environments. Factor analysis identified four precarity types, while statistical analysis evaluated their relation to urban space use and alignment with local services and institutions.
The findings reveal distinct precariat types and their varied interactions with land use in neoliberal urban space, emphasizing contrasts between economic cores and peripheral areas. The study challenges the notion of “good urbanism,” arguing that mixed land uses may reflect inequalities driven by neoliberal labor markets. It calls for urban strategies addressing precarious employment, improving service access, and ensuring affordable housing.

Abstract: Planning decisions are frequently impeded by an inadequate understanding of complex urban environments, necessitating data-driven and creative strategies. Based on a developed research question on this need, this study proposes a tool founded in the literature on strategic planning, sustainable development, and planning system innovation. The proposed tool depicts the components and interactions within urban ecosystems. The study employs the public transport sector as a case study to demonstrate the operationalization of the tool in Munich, Budapest, and Prague. The demonstration shows how the tool may better inform and support strategic urban planning decisions.

Abstract: Art and culture are essential elements of urban economic development and planning. However, research on the spatial and normative dimensions of arts consumption is limited. We propose an original theoretical framework outlining a normative concept of urban arts justice regarding the consumption of culture and art. Our framework is based on liberal theories of justice and highlights the distributive aspect of arts capabilities, which we call availability. We apply the framework empirically to the spatial context of the global city of Tel-Aviv and its surrounding metropolitan area. We analyze how the availability of arts is correlated with the social and physical characteristics of the population that is served by cultural institutions. Based on data collected through online web scraping and additional data, we compare the availability of arts offerings in Tel-Aviv and its surrounding area. The results show spatial inequality between the global city and its surrounding area in their levels of arts offerings, which is connected to questions of urban arts justice in the metropolitan ecosystem.

Abstract: Despite the fact that recent studies have shown that suburbia is growing more varied in terms of class and ethnicity, raising issues of belonging and identity, it has rarely focused on immigrants' social (dis‐) mobility and effects on place attachment. Using a Bourdieusian perspective regarding people's habitus, this study examines the formation of local identities and place attachment among Latinx immigrants (first and second‐generation) from Massachusetts' Merrimack Valley. The study examines how immigrants of various socioeconomic realities express their habitus and adapt it to their urban and suburban communities of residence. The 28 in‐depth interviews of the study indicate how the sets of interviewees claimed to feel both at ease in and alienated from their current communities, demonstrating that the habitus was more than just a reflection of the informants' social reality. This reveals how the connection between residential area and habitus emerges locally and is only partial for both groups studied. Habitus in this regard is more than just a particularized variation of the social structure in each sort of settlement. The findings highlight the need to carefully consider the many social class disparities that explain place identity and belonging, as well as their effects on people of minority ethnicity immigrants' assimilation in receiving cultures.

Abstract: Urban areas are regarded as a sustainable form of settlement, while the planned and built environments of cities are considered essential for the development of healthier communities. Nonetheless, urban sprawl has caused disparities in the health of those living in cities vs. suburbs. One explanation for this disparity is the willingness of residents to comply with the recommendations and instructions of health care experts or public directives. Compliance is an essential part of what makes communities resilient. However, we know little about the factors that influence this compliance. To fill this gap, we examined data from Israeli municipalities in cities and suburbs about compliance with the government’s COVID-19 regulations. We investigated whether social and physical aspects of cities and suburbs explain differences in compliance. We researched how the residents’ economic, social, and cultural capital, as well as their spatial distribution, influenced their compliance during the pandemic. The results demonstrate the important role of the spatial distribution of these various forms of capital in the residents’ compliance. Specifically, those living in suburban areas benefited from their capital accumulation, making them more inclined to adhere to the health regulations. This new perspective on the dynamics between cities and suburbs may strengthen community resilience and help mitigate regional disparities.

Abstract: Scholarly interest in innovation in the periphery has recently grown, along with the prevalence of studies investigating different forms of innovation. Given the relative paucity of research in these fields, this study aims to examine the probability of technological and non‐technological innovation in peripheral areas, compared to core regions. Drawing on a sample of over 3800 Israeli firms, we analyzed how their peripheral geographic location impacts their chances to innovate, in comparison to firms in Israel's core regions. The results showed that the probabilities to technologically innovate in most of the defined peripheries significantly exceed the probabilities in the core. Those probabilities decrease with the region's increasing peripherality. Peripheral firms that do tend to technologically innovate were found to be deeply embedded in their region's economy.
Unlike technological innovation, peripheries' non‐technological innovation activity was found to benefit from urban agglomerations that endow local economies with an (technological) innovative buzz. The results have policy implications for the promotion of regional economic growth.

Abstract: This paper introduces a theoretical framework for studying justice in the field of one of the most common leisure activities – arts and cultural engagement – which we term “arts justice.” We consider three forms of arts engagement: consumption, creation, and education. We develop the notion of arts justice as an expression of social justice, characterized by the unique ways art is embedded in social life. The proposed framework builds upon two theories of justice. Sen and Nussbaum’s capabilities approach highlights the observable and hidden dimensions of arts engagement, focusing on people’s actions and the conditions that facilitate or restrict them. Fraser’s perspectival dualism approach complements the capabilities approach by differentiating between distributive and recognitive levels of justice related to arts engagement. Combining both approaches, we construct a holistic model of justice for the domains of art and culture and demonstrate its application in the context of leisure arts consumption.

Abstract: The Energiewende (energy transition) is the dynamic and contested project of energy transition in Germany. It encompasses both the sociotechnical transformation of the German electricity system and the reorganization of the sector’s ownership structure. In this paper, we present a Capital-as-Power (CasP) based analysis, investigating industrial path-dependency and innovation as part of the dialectics of power and sociotechnical change in capitalism. According to CasP, dominant capital seeks to increase its differential accumulation, i.e., accumulation relative to a benchmark. Energiewende policies initially decreased the differential accumulation of dominant electricity firms in Germany. However, we find that by concentrating their control over the shrinking conventional generation capacity, while variable generation expanded, dominant firms gained the leverage needed to increase differential prices and profits, thus managing to regain sectoral control by increasing their threat to reliable power supply. We find that these processes coincide with spatial centralization, ownership concentration, and decreasing penetration rates of renewable energy resources in Germany. By presenting new conceptual tools and empirical findings, we trace the ways in which the recovery of dominant capital in the German electricity sector shapes and restricts energy transition processes.

Abstract: This paper presents a theoretical approach to the study of power in energy transitions that builds upon Capital as Power (CasP) theory and the critique of neoclassical growth theory. The approach integrates an understanding of capitalist power relations and a consideration of changes in societal energy capture. The approach includes two levels of social power — a deep level, in which the socio-technical conditions of power accumulation are predetermined; and a surface level, in which social dynamics of creation, sabotage, and distribution unfold. It conceptualizes the relations between differential accumulation strategies, societal energy capture rates, and socio-technical change processes. Renewable-resource-based decarbonization is historically unprecedented, in two fundamental respects. First, since it seeks to replace, not augment, the established set of socio-technical practices, inversing the historical trajectory towards higher energy density systems. Second, since these processes threaten to reconfigure power relations that have historically exhibited a coupled growth in hierarchy and energy capture. Thus, a perspective on energy transitions is needed that accounts for the mutual effects of sociotechnical change and organized power, under a set of specific historical conditions: global capital and the manifestation of planetary boundaries. To fully understand the power within energy transitions, we must study them from the perspective of differential accumulation — the driving force behind capital. With this context in mind, the dynamics of organized power and socio-technical change can become comprehensible.

Abstract: This paper examines the shift to remote participation in planning board hearings during the outbreak of COVID-19. Using the results of an exploratory survey among 182 planners, public officials, and stakeholders, we explore perceptions about this transition, compare online and face-to-face engagements, and discuss the benefits and pitfalls of video-conference meetings. The findings indicate that video conferencing in planning merits future use, yet it also highlights key limitations of virtual meetings. Regardless of the findings here, the long-term effects of video conferencing and online decision-making remain to be seen.

Abstract: Cities' planned and built environments are key to healthier communities. The Covid-19 pandemic challenged this relationship, when the issue of communities' compliance with government restrictions to mitigate the spread of the pandemic became apparent. Despite the growing literature on the relationship between communities' characteristics and Covid-19 throughout the pandemic, little attention has been paid to the drivers of compliance at the city and community levels. Our paper addresses this lack through the Bourdieusian concept of communities' capital resources. Using Israel as a test case, we explore how the economic, social and cultural capital of urban communities affected compliance with Covid-19 related restrictions. The analysis reveals how the spatial dispersion of the components of these forms of capital explains the likelihood of communities' level of compliance. In particular, it shows how the accumulation of various forms of capital increased compliance with health regulations. The study highlights the explanatory power of local resources in collective spatial behavior patterns, as well as the possibility of exacerbating existing injustices.

Abstract: Mobile academics have traditionally been conceived as cosmopolitan subjects who favor cultural diversity and search for new professional opportunities abroad. Their return to the homeland could therefore be interpreted as a sign of parochialism, which narrows down their professional opportunities and limits their exposure to global resources. In this article, we compare returning and non-returning academics with respect to their parochial and/or cosmopolitan tendencies. Drawing on a sample of 223 Israeli Early-Career Researchers (ECRs), we examine their cosmopolitan—or otherwise parochial—propensities and assess the effect they have on their return decisions.
We use statistical tests to analyze the effects of cultural orientation, attachment to the homeland-based national community, and patriotic feelings on their propensity to return. Our findings suggest that in comparison with their co-nationals who opted to remain abroad, returning ECRs exhibit higher levels of parochialism, reflected through inter alia stronger communal dispositions and patriotic attachment as well as geographically limited job search.

Abstract: Despite the fact that recent studies have shown that suburbia is growing more varied in terms of class and ethnicity, raising issues of belonging and identity, it has rarely focused on immigrants' social (dis-) mobility and effects on place attachment. Using a Bourdieusian perspective regarding people's habitus, this study examines the formation of local identities and place attachment among Latinx immigrants (first and second-generation) from Massachusetts' Merrimack Valley. The study examines how immigrants of various socioeconomic realities express their habitus and adapt it to their urban and suburban communities of residence. The 28 in-depth interviews of the study indicate how the sets of interviewees claimed to feel both at ease in and alienated from their current communities, demonstrating that the habitus was more than just a reflection of the informants' social reality. This reveals how the connection between residential area and habitus emerges locally and is only partial for both groups studied. Habitus in this regard is more than just a particularized variation of the social structure in each sort of settlement. The findings highlight the need to carefully consider the many social class disparities that explain place identity and belonging, as well as their effects on people of minority ethnicity immigrants' assimilation in receiving cultures.

Abstract: Issues of justice and inequality are among the most compelling themes in spatial studies. And yet, the field lacks a normative approach to justice in measurements of inequality in spatial scales, either in the regional, or alternatively, in the urban. In a paper by Israel and Frenkel (2018), the authors offer a theoretical framework that advances the study of social justice in space. It utilizes concepts of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory on social class, while using Amartya Sen’s 'capabilities' approach to justice to define the metrics of this concept. We take their proposed framework and examine it empirically by means of a regional case study in Israel. Data were collected on a central region in Israel and a field survey was conducted on more than 1,000 households. The concept of justice and the socio-spatial structures under which justice is created were converted into measurable values. By using Explanatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling, the conceptual framework was quantitatively estimated. In accordance with the inspected theory, we show that the interrelationship between a person's location in the social space and living environment influences his or her life-chances. The empirical results demonstrate how the proposed theory can be operationalized-that is, binding a normative idea with an empirically based scrutinization of the social and cultural constraints that affect freedom of choice. The framework's operationalization allows for applying it in future endeavors that strive to understand what normative implications spatial development carry when relating to the social space and built environment of a place.

Abstract: Migration studies emphasize the role of economic, social and cultural capital in shaping out-migration decisions. Yet, little attention is paid to the effect of capital endowment on return migration, particularly among the highly educated. This article examines the extent to which different forms of capital determine return decisions of early-career researchers (ECRs). We hypothesized that individuals from more privileged backgrounds would repatriate at higher rates, due to the benefits that their capital stock might offer them upon homeland re-integration at home. Drawing on a sample of 223 early career Israeli scholars in STEM (Sci-ence, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines, we used logistic regressions to analyze the effects of material wealth, social ties, and family-oriented cultural capital on their return propensities. No significant differences were found between repatriating and non-repatriating scholars with respect to cultural capital. However, accumulating social and economic capital was positively correlated with the decision to repatriate as was marrying into academic families.

Abstract: Justice has recently been deliberated in different spatial disciplines. Still, the question of its metrics remains unresolved. Accordingly, this article introduces a conceptual framework in which a metric notion of justice can be employed in different spatial contexts, drawing upon the theoretical conceptualization of Amartya Sen’s ‘capabilities’ and Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘field’, capital forms and ‘habitus’. The main hypothesis assumes that capital resources, which are formed in an individual’s living environment, determine their life chances, thus influencing spatial equality of opportunity (i.e. social justice).

Abstract: Suburbanization has been accused of imposing a significant cost on spatial equity. The study examined suburbanization (as a form of urban sprawl), not necessarily as the primary driver of fundamental social inequalities, but as an important vehicle by which inequalities might be extended over time and as an important product of fundamental social inequalities. It suggests an innovative measurement that relies upon Amartya Sen and Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical conceptions. The current study suggests that economic, cultural and social forms of capital, formed in an individual’s living environment, determine a space’s equality of opportunity.
The paper examines this theory by means of a case study that includes a medium sized city and eight of its suburbs located within Israel’s central metropolitan region. By using diverse statistical methods, data from 1063 sampled households is analyzed in new indices that measure spatial inequality. The results reveal that suburbanization is related positively to highly unequal patterns of social stratification. Social groups in the suburbs were found to benefit from better life-chances than their urban counterparts. This inequality is positively related to the accumulation of capital forms and the formation of the physical environment. We conclude that urban residents would not be able to fulfill their freedoms to do and to be, a situation that could hurt the distribution of real equal opportunities in space.

Abstract: We conducted an in-depth analysis of an Israeli startup, RAD Bynet, founded in 1981, that has intentionally, through the vision of its founder, given rise to 129 other startups employing some 15,000 workers, and created a unique “cloud”. Through a survey of the existing firms, we sought to explore the nature of this ecosystem and to quantify the relationships that exist between the mother company and the enterprises that emerge from it. Our main findings were: (a) social and technological proximity encourages the tendency of the companies to maintain business relationships that probably contribute to knowledge exchange, while technological diversity drives innovation and startup formation; and (b) firms will choose to cooperate on the basis of a shared past and personal proximity relations, as well as technological proximity at a certain level; “viral clouds” of startups like the one we studied can thus intentionally be designed and developed.

Abstract: Many sustainable urban development approaches are based on mass public transportation ventures, especially railway development, which has been considered a panacea for the unfavorable effects of suburban development. But rail transit also improves accessibility to the fringes, thus encouraging an exodus to the suburbs. This paper explores suburbanization and sprawling effect of commuter rail transit on the rural exurbia of the Tel Aviv metropolis by analyzing its effect on residential location decisions. The findings indicate that the suburban rail system was a determinant factor in the location choice of households which migrated from the inner parts of the Tel Aviv metropolis, since it allowed them to maintain strong commuting connections to their residential origin. This suggests that rail transit, along with its potential to strengthen the inner cities, also accelerates suburbanization and counter urbanization.

Abstract: In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the literature on demand-driven innovation, using a generic national innovation ecosystem map as a unifying framework. We organize the literature review around four key innovation dimensions and seven related demand-driven processes. Our review reveals that business networking which accelerates access to new markets and technologies is vital for free markets. But classical competition alone cannot sustain the creation of new technologies or innovation paths. Rather, national policy is essential in creating lead markets. On the other hand the private sector has a crucial task in leading R&D activity. We found that the relationship between R&D stock and productivity is mostly positive. With regard to cluster strategies our literature review suggests that increased variety of innovative activities strengthens regional economic growth through \spillover e®ects" between products and industries. Based on the literature, we found that universities are evolving to play a major role in the research of innovation. The enormous innovative potential of universities therefore should be directed toward shaping more e®ective tools for public–private cooperation. But innovation, whether its origin is in academe or elsewhere, must follow a standardization process in order to converge into a well-de¯ned technology. Our paper highlights a fundamental paradox underlying pro-innovation policies: while innovators often express the desire for a liberal, open and °exible market system with minimal bureaucracy and governmental interference, to allow market-driven innovation to °ourish, they often bene¯t greatly from a variety of governmental interventions that include direct or indirect ¯nancial support (such as tax credits).

Abstract: Questions of justice have been raised in recent years when contending with the social costs of urban sprawl. But this field of inquiry suffers from the difficulty of translating the abstract notion of justice into measurable spatial indices. The aim of this paper is to empirically measure the liberal notion of justice in the metropolitan region of Tel Aviv by adopting Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of three forms of capital. Under this theory, the formation of economic, cultural, and social capital in the individual’s living environment determines the person’s exposure to different sets of life-chances (i.e., capabilities), thus influencing equality of opportunity (i.e., social justice) in space. The analysis reveals that suburban inhabitants benefit from a larger accumulation of the three forms of capital than do urban inhabitants. Accumulation of these capitals has a positive effect on exposure to life-chances, thus enhancing spatial segregation between cities and suburbs.