The Global City and the Holy City

Are all cities alike? Do people experience similar everyday life in such contrasting cities as London, the Global City, and Jerusalem, the Holy City?   The Global City and the Holy City explores experiences of women and men of different national, cultural and ethnic identities and age groups living in these two cities. Their narratives focus on three main concepts of Comfort, Belonging and Commitment to the various spaces in which we all live: the home, the building, the street, the neighbourhood, the city centre and the city and urban parks. The Global City and the Holy City challenges the viability and validity of such local knowledge in the planning practice. By deconstructing the meanings of these three notions and analysing their expression in cognitive temporal maps this text examines the practicalities of incorporating this kind of local knowledge into the professional planning knowledge.   The text further suggests alternative ways of thinking in urban planning and development that incorporates multiple ways of knowledge in the planning and management of cities in the age of globalisation.

This book will be of key interest to academics, practitioners and students alike in departments of planning, urban studies, geography, cultural studies and the social sciences.

Tovi Fenster is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geography and Human Environment at Tel Aviv University. She is the editor of Gender, Planning and Human Rights. She is one of the founders and past chair of Bimkom Planners for Planning Rights in Israel.

"This very timely exploration of the senses of comfort, belonging, and commitment of citizens of London and Jerusalem expands and challenges debates about what it means to be 'at home' in the city. It also helps the city- and community-building professions to think about how to incorporate local, embodied knowledge in planning processes."

Professor Leonie Sandercock, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia

"Tovi Fenster offers a rich exploration of people's feelings about the places of their everyday lives. In focusing on comfort, belonging and commitment she offers a vision for shaping humane and effective urban planning and management in an era challenged by the homogenizing forces of globalization and divisive cultural tensions."

Janice Monk, Professor of Geography, University of Arizona