Jerusalem 2050: Visions for a Place of Peace seeks to open new windows of understanding - from within the region and around the world - about the shared hopes, dreams, and desires of citizens from Jerusalem who want to make their city peaceful, but who have been prevented from doing so because the aims of competing national states to control this particular territory have pushed urban livability concerns off the agenda. Jerusalem 2050 was conceived in response to the deteriorating situation in the city (from the occupation of East Jerusalem to the building of the wall to the accelerating and ongoing violence) and the failures of Track I and Track II diplomacy, the latter of which may partly owe to the great inequality in power balances among the negotiating parties. As a strategy for generating peace and understanding, this project differs from conventional approaches in several ways.
By focusing on the city, not nations, it emphasizes the uniquely tolerant and cosmopolitan character of the urban experience. It encourages imagination and vision, not the real politics of negotiation and political trade-offs. It proceeds under the premise that when given an opportunity to voice their desires and dreams about the city, most citizens - be they Muslims, Christians, or Jews, Palestinians or Israelis, residents or not - are likely to find common ground and share similar sentiments about what might make the city of Jerusalem a vibrant, peaceful, tolerant and democratic place. This project does not aim to be a ‘solution' for the city, but rather, to inspire imaginative ideas and tools which open alternative, innovative ways for discussing and eventually dealing with urban and political conflict.
Finally, by looking forward in time - to the year 2050 – it emphasizes hope and recognition that the future is neither inevitable nor completely knowable, but rather, made by small but incremental decisions and commitments whose contours are open for discussion and debate. Visioning a peaceful future and what might produce it is one way to make sure current decisions and commitments lay a path towards peace.
It is our hope that the production and critical examination of such visions for the city can generate new forms of awareness and open alternative avenues for dialogue that may help to break the impasse over the issue of the status of Jerusalem which has for years stalled conventional paths of diplomacy.
For a more in depth, academic framing of the project, visit the "Academic Papers" tab on this page's sidebar to read:
JERUSALEM/Al-QUDS 2050: VISION FOR A PLACE OF PEACE
Diane E. Davis
January 2005
