Terror, barriers, and the changing topography of Jerusalem created by H. V. Savitch and Yaakov Garb

This article deals with the impact of urban terror and the construction of a peripheral barrier around Jerusalem. We are interested in an atypical set of conditions, or what might be called punctuated change, characterized by (1) an extremely shortened or telescoped time span; (2) the presence of an abrupt crisis that threatens to seriously harm, negatively transform, or even destroy a social order; (3) a volatile environment in which response is unpredictable; and (4) a set of presumed solutions whose efficacy or effects are unknown. On the Israeli side, we find that terrorism has contributed to an existing momentum of decentralization and accelerated a declining city center. On the Palestinian side, the construction of the Jerusalem barrier has changed the shape of the metropolitan area, separating neighborhoods from one another and some from the rest of the city. Together, terror and barriers are changing the topography of metropolitan Jerusalem.