Jerusalem 5800 English

The Metropolitan Jerusalem Master Plan

Water streams flowing through the

metropolis will be incorporated as

part of each park and will function as

a central system of focal points for

tourism and recreation.

Open areas within the city and surrounding the city have a vital role in

making metropolitan Jerusalem attractive for residents and visitors.

Urban Open Areas

Open areas and parks are the backdrops

for the metropolis. They serve as a green

lung and contribute to the enrichment of

the city’s biodiversity. This infrastructure

will provide residents with a high quality of

life and preserve the green character of the

metropolis. Each landscape will receive its

own character while protecting the values

of the culture, landscapes, and environment.

Further, the parks are part of the urban

infrastructure for tourism purposes.

In order to preserve urban open areas,

roads, railways, bicycle paths, and sidewalks

must be built according to the formation

of each landscape crossed, while still

allowing animals to pass and protecting the

biodiversity.

Streams flowing through the metropolis

will be incorporated as part of each park

and will function as a central system of focal

points for tourism and recreation, as a means

for cultural preservation, channeling runoff

water into groundwater, and preservation of

biodiversity.

The proposed Jerusalem 5800 Plan for

the municipal area of Jerusalem and its

surrounding built-up areas will establish two

“green rings” – internal and circumferential

– which are to serve as a central urban “axis.”

These rings will include promenades, bicycle

paths, and tourist development based on the

historical layers along the green rings and

on extending green axes branching out from

them and connected to them.

Forestation, pastures, and

agriculture

Over recent centuries, agriculture has, by

definition, left the city and disappeared from

it. This is in contrast to the traditions of

millennia, which always included agricultural

plots where people settled, including in cities.

The Jerusalem 5800 Plan proposes bringing

agriculture back into the city – urban

periphery agriculture will be incorporated

into parks, which will include professionally-

grown healthy produce agriculture and

plots for residents. The organic waste from

the metropolis will serve as compost for

cultivating the parks and lowering removal

ranges. The agriculture will be suited to the

soil and to the specific landscape in which it

is incorporated.

Pastures and forests are symbiotic,

ecologically speaking. The pastures and

forests east of the watershed are different

than those to its west. In grazing cultures,

herds would wander west-to-east and

back. Wherever they grazed, there were

cisterns and wells neglected and abandoned.

Developing forests and pastures will be

carried out by cultivating local species,

planting food forests, harvesting rain,

irrigation using reclaimed and gray water,

fertilizing with urban sludge, and channels

for organic residues. Implementation of

these means will achieve the following goals:

improving ecological continuity, creating

a green economic environment, providing

employment and providing food within

the metropolis, and returning the cultural

landscape to the region of the book of the

dessert. Pasture in the area separating the

The Layout of Open Areas

open areas while leaving open areas in

between cities, green partitions and using

systems of mass transportation for people

to meet these concerns. In order to achieve

this, the Jerusalem 5800 Plan strives, as

much as possible, to avoid building in areas

not adjacent to existing cities, and to use

saturated building as much as possible in

existing built-up areas, and to use quality

urban development in order to create a

high quality of life in urban areas.

The Jerusalem 5800 Plan has given the

protection of open areas great importance,

and thus, planners are expected to keep

construction away from areas of high

environmental sensitivity. All of these are

an expression of an orientation towards

sustainable development of land resources.

The Gai Ben Hinnom Park,

one of the well-developed

green open areas in the

city today

The Layout of Open Areas