100 Years of Zoning and the Future of Cities

The annual academic conference of the Gazit-Globe Real Estate Institute was held on June 13-14, 2016, on the IDC Herzliya campus. Titled “100 Years of Zoning and the Future of Cities,” the conference marked the centennial of the 1916 New York City zoning ordinance, which is considered an essential milestone in the development of zoning and other forms of contemporary urban land use controls.

The main goal of the conference, organized by Professor Amnon Lehavi, Dean of the Radzyner Law School and Academic Director of the Gazit-Globe Real Estate Institute, was to reconsider the fundamental principles of zoning and city planning over the course of the past 100 years, and their implications for the future of cities. The conference examined core questions about the functionality of cities and the public policies they should promote, considering, inter alia, the ever increasing pace of urbanization and the growth of mega cities, changing concepts on the role of mixed use, the new generation of inclusionary housing policies, and the effects of macro phenomena such as mass immigration and globalization on the changing landscape of cities.

The conference brought together leading scholars from around the world, including jurists, economists, sociologists, geographers and planners. Speakers included: Dr. Meirav Aharon-Gutman, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology; Prof. Raphael Fischler, McGill University, Canada; Prof. Sonia A. Hirt, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA; Prof. Gerald Korngold, New York Law School, USA; Prof. Amnon Lehavi, Dean of the Radzyner Law School and Academic Director of the Gazit-Globe Real Estate Institute; Dr. Ronit Levine-Schnur, Radzyner Law School, Reichman University, and University of Toronto; Prof. Kevin Leyden, National University of Ireland, Galway; Prof. Wolfgang Maennig, University of Hamburg, Germany; Dr. Nathan Marom, School of Sustainability, Reichman University; Prof. Daniel Shoag, Harvard University, USA; Prof. Fabian Thiel, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Germany and Prof. Eran Razin, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

As part of the conference, a study tour was held in Tel Aviv, guided by Dr. Efrat Tolkowsky, CEO of the Gazit-Globe Real Estate Institute, and architect Ehud Carmeli, Deputy Director of the Planning and Design Department at the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. During the tour, the participants visited a number of sites featuring different zoning concepts, including an urban renewal project in Neve Sharet, the mixed-use project “The Quartet,” in the neighborhood of Florentine , Sarona Village, and the Cameri/Opera compound.