Sharon Plan — Physical Planning in Israel (National Outline Plan)
Core idea
Israel's first national plan, dispersing population through new towns and regional centres across the country
Why it matters
Established the state's settlement geography and the doctrine of population dispersal that shaped Israel for decades
Description
Prepared by the architect Arieh Sharon as head of the Planning Department attached to David Ben-Gurion's Prime Minister's Office, and published as a book in 1951, Physical Planning in Israel was the new state's first comprehensive national plan. Drawing on a team of some 150 architects, planners and land experts, it divided the country into planning zones and set out a doctrine of population dispersal away from the coastal Tel Aviv conurbation. The plan proposed a hierarchy of new towns and regional centres, particularly to settle the Negev and Galilee, organised around agricultural hinterlands and graded service centres, with designated population-growth targets for cities.
Significance
As Israel's founding national outline plan, the Sharon Plan codified the population-dispersal doctrine that guided decades of state-led settlement, including the development-town programme. Although it was not implemented as drawn, its zoning logic, new-town hierarchy and emphasis on settling peripheral regions durably shaped the country's settlement geography and the institutional practice of national planning.
What shaped it
- Garden Cities of To-Morrow (1898 / 1902)
- The master plan (early 20th c.)
- The green belt (1898 concept / 1938 law)
- New Towns Act (1946)
Sources
- https://www.ariehsharon.org/Archive/Physical-Planning-in-Israel/Introduction
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Outline_Plan