Hummus is a spread made of chickpeas, eaten all over the Middle East, and not exclusive to any of the countries there.
Humus is the fertile part of the earth, the life support system of soil, bringing it to life.
Jerusalem 2050 – the temporal frame of the program already anticipates our answer to the competition. Looking more than 40 years ahead necessitates big and bold thinking and calls for a comprehensive answer to the problems at hand. With regard to Jerusalem, the core of the problem is the conflict. To respond to the question of Jerusalem’s future requires tackling the conflict and pooling as many relevant facts as possible in order to draw a more complete picture of the future.
Jerusalem is a crucial part of the process towards a peaceful future, but the conflict itself has roots and branches reaching beyond the boundaries of the city, and even far outside of Israeli and Palestinian Territories. Therefore our considerations had to go beyond the city limits.
Upon examination of this territory, a geographical figure emerges, defined by natural boundaries like the sea, deserts, and mountain ranges. It reveals a narrow strip of land stretching from Egypt's Nile delta along the coast of the East Mediterranean up until the southern central part of Turkey. This region covers about 427,500km2 (almost exactly the size of the state of California in the USA), and today is home to 106 million people (nearly three times the population of California).
The most outstanding characteristics are population density, the number of urban areas, and the strikingly short distances between large cities, or urban agglomerations. There are myriad administrative districts with densities of 3,000 people/km2 and more. Within this belt of land there are 95 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, 23 urban settlements with over 500,000 inhabitants, and 15 urban areas with over 1 million people. Distances between major centers are as close as 68km (Gaza to Tel Aviv/Jaffa), 70km (Amman to Jerusalem), and 86km (Beirut to Damascus)—distances easily traversed in less than an hour by a mobilised society, but taking at least half a day in this part of the world.
According to UN prospects, demographic development in the highlighted area will raise the number of inhabitants to 166 million by the year 2050. On top of an already high degree of urbanization (Israel 91.7%, Lebanon 90%), the number of people living in urban concentrations will also rise tremendously, putting extreme pressure on municipalities and nations alike to urbanize.
HUMMUS 2050 therefore aims at the integration of the East Mediterranean as one interlinked city-region, with the different areas keeping their unique cultures and identities and using them to contribute to and build a diverse whole. Aspiring to a notion of solidarity, areas are encouraged to use their specific strengths to help others develop in order to promote and cultivate peace.
This discussion about the region’s capability to configure a coherent space with especially well-connected urban centers intends to raise hope for mobilizing endogenous potentials, rather than relying on an ever-failing, single-minded “peace process”.
Keywords:
City-Region, density, proximity, demographic development, integration, endogenous potential
