Planning for the Environment with Communities

PEC Lab has been established in 2007 with the goal to develop theoretical, methodological and practical frameworks concerning the incorporation of principles of justice and sustainability in urban regeneration and development projects.

PEC Lab researches, teaching and public activities aim to produce knowledge and guidelines for researchers, planners, decision makers, civil society organizations, individuals and communities that are involved in urban development and regeneration projects.

PEC Lab activities focus on three interrelated topics:

Just and Sustainable Cities

The engagement of justice and sustainability in urban regeneration and development projects has become one of the major challenges of cities in the 21st century especially in the light of the growing socio-economic, ethnic and national gaps in today's urban spaces.

Working with communities

The rapid capitalist growth in cities and the growing involvement of the private sector in urban regeneration and development projects present the challenge of securing individuals' and communities' rights and interests, especially those of the poor and the disadvantaged. In PEC Lab we develop new methodologies of working with communities and their implementation in research projects.

Urban conflicts on issues of memory and belonging

Massive urban regeneration projects bring wealth and advancement to today’s cities with the heavy price of massive destruction of old and historical areas and buildings in the city that dramatically change cities functioning and appearance.

In PEC Lab we identify situations of conflicts in urban settings on the base of different memories and work on their theorization.

PEC Lab researches include among others:

• Research Project: Residents Plan for Themselves in Meonot Yam – Bat Yam   

• Spatial Activism in the Ccity: Perspectives of Body, Identity and Memory

• The Transition Model in Israel  

• Structuring Public Spaces in Jaffa : Between the Local and the Professional  

• Home in the Desert ; A Critical Psych geographic Approach to the Home study in the Arava Area  

• The Ethical, the Social and the Aesthetical in Contemporary Israeli Architecture  

• Urban Protest Movement and Housing Policies