Planning a Nation: the Jewish Land from the Sharon Plan to Irael 2020

Soon after the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, proclaimed on 14 May 1948, the new Jewish State developed a planning process in the scale of the overall national land. Modernist theories in architecture and urban planning have been conformed to this pluralistic and multi-ethnic geographic area, lacking of water resources and infrastructures. Arieh Sharon, who graduated from the Bauhaus in Dessau, was called by the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel and Head of Jewish Agency for Palestine, David Ben Gurion, to coordinate a national plan, in order to encourage social and economic progress and to support imminent waves of Jewish immigrants. After the sixties, the Sharon plan started to be unable to support the changes that characterized the Israeli society and territory and, during the last five decades, new orientation has conditioned the new planning doctrine. This article focuses on the nature of Sharon's plan and its legacy and differences with the current management of Israeli territory.