Planning as a Principle of Vision and Division: A Bourdieusian View of Tel Aviv's Urban Development, 1920s—1950s

Abstract

This paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of ‘principles of vision and division’ to conceptualize the role of urban planning in processes of sociospatial differentiation and distinction. Planning, through its classification schemes and specific methodologies (such as zoning), mediates the long-term processes by which the divisions and hierarchies of social space are inscribed and reproduced in urban space. The paper develops this conceptual framework within a historically specific urban setting, analyzing Tel Aviv's planning and development across several periods, from the 1920s to the 1950s. It examines Tel Aviv's constitutive plans in a wider political, social, and cultural context, including colonial development, modernism, the Jewish–Arab ethnonational conflict and consecutive migrations to Palestine and Israel. The analysis highlights how urban planning in each period applied and mediated different visions and divisions to shape the sociospatial distinction between Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and the city's ‘slums' and ‘periphery’. In conclusion, the paper suggests some general contours of planning as vision and division to inform planning theory and urban research more widely, in historical and contemporary contexts.