לב העיר

The Heart of the City – Kiryat Gat Upon its establishment, the State of Israel faced challenges that made spatial planning a central tool in shaping its social structure. The Sharon Plan aspired to create a hierarchical system connecting agricultural settlements with urban centers as a single network. In practice, however, policies of segregation and inequality shaped the pattern of settlement and distanced the vision from reality. Development towns, initially meant to serve as urban centers and attract residents from surrounding areas, gradually drifted away from their historic cores. New neighborhoods were built on the city’s periphery, while the old centers weakened, losing their public, commercial, and communal functions and becoming less relevant to daily life. The project takes place in Kiryat Gat – a development town that began as a transit camp and today experiences two opposing processes: massive expansion and construction of new neighborhoods alongside the ongoing decline of older ones. Now more than ever, the city needs a strong urban anchor to reconnect its parts. The project identifies the historic city center of Kiryat Gat as a space rich in architectural value and symbolic identity, proposing its renewal through three lenses: what once was, what exists today, and what could be. In this way, it weaves together a space that connects history with life—creating a future in which the urban center once again becomes a focal point of community, memory, and encounter.