Abstract
This paper offers a new perspective on everyday life in an ethno-nationally mixed vertical urban setting. It focuses on the cultivation of a shared residential identity that, seemingly, can overcome the binational divide. Drawing on interviews with Jewish and Arab residents in a new middle-class high-rise complex (HRC) in Haifa, Israel, we illustrate that Arabs and Jews share many reasons for living in the HRC, reflecting similarities between these populations that are often ignored. Moreover, the physical form of the complex – including its newness and its modern, universal design – makes it a relatively neutral space free from a particular ethno-national or religious identity. Finally, while the relevant literature largely assumes that ‘anonymity’ in high-rises is a negative force, the sense of privacy it affords allows residents to manage social proximity and cultivate a philosophy of ‘live and let live’.
Introduction
Over the past 20 years, Israel has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of high-rise buildings. Most of these are built as part of high-rise residential complexes (HRCs), typically located on the outskirts of cities, and are inhabited chiefly by middle- and upper-middle-class Jewish residents. As HRCs become the dominant development form, Arabs and Jews in mixed cities sometimes find themselves living close together in this vertical living arrangement. This calls attention to the potential of HRCs to engender a brand of coexistence hitherto unexperienced.
This paper uses as a case study a new, middle-class and ethno-nationally mixed HRC in Haifa, in order to make three arguments related to residential coexistence: (1) Arabs and Jews share many reasons for living in the HRC, reflecting similarities between these populations that are often ignored; (2) the physical form of the complex – including its newness and its modern, universal design – makes it a relatively neutral space free from a particular ethnonational or religious identity; and (3) while the relevant literature largely assumes that ‘anonymity’ in high-rises is a negative force, the sense of privacy it affords allows residents to manage social proximity and cultivate a philosophy of ‘live and let live’.
The article begins with a background review of the proliferation of HRCs in Israel and continues with a critical review of the literature on the social implications of high-rise living. The paper then reviews the case study and research methodology. The subsequent analysis focuses on shared and distinct residential preferences, the development of a necessary HRC etiquette, and the delicate management of distance and proximity to support coexistence between diverse and adverse populations. The conclusion discusses the potential contributions and limitations of anonymity to residential coexistence.
Residential high-rises in Israel
Across the developed and developing world, residential high-rises are being erected at an unprecedented pace (Baxter, 2017). Israel is no exception to this trend: over the past 20 years, the country has witnessed a dramatic increase in high-rise housing units (Eizenberg, 2019; Mualam, 2017). Most are built as large urban developments of HRCs, mainly on the outskirts of cities. These complexes – built at once by few developers – typically comprise homogenous, mono-functional buildings over ten storeys high, planned around or parallel to an open space. They include underground and/or on-lot parking space, and may also offer a residents’ club, gym, pool and other services and amenities. The design of residential high-rises, including HRCs, and what they offer residents, responds to a demand – seen around the world – for a ‘luxury’ lifestyle, or some facsimile thereof of housing (Graham, 2015). Like the suburban developments that preceded them, HRCs have been driven by the Israeli middle and upper classes seeking to separate themselves socially and geographically from the urban working poor (Tzfadia, 2005).
Despite the dominant trend of residential high-rise developments in Israel, there is little up-to-date research on the everyday life and social relations between residents of these buildings and complexes. Recent studies of high-rise residential environments in Israel have focused on the economic and social challenges of sustainably managing collectively owned spaces (Alterman, 2009; Eizenberg et al., 2019; Garfunkel, 2017; Mualam, 2017). Highlighting the often exorbitant per-unit maintenance costs associated with high-rises, as well as issues of condominium governance, these studies have offered new policies for helping investors, owners, tenants and managing agents to negotiate the working relationship that the HRC necessitates. A few mostly outdated studies that explored social relations in, and perceptions of, high-rises in middle-class Israeli neighbourhoods are limited in focus to specific populations, such as Jewish women and children (e.g. Broyer, 2002; Ginsberg and Churchman, 1985).
Social effects of high-rise living
Most studies concerning the social aspects of vertical living began during the 1970s and have largely been conducted in regions where high-rise living is most popular, that is, South-East Asia, North America and, to a lesser extent, Europe. This body of work engages with resident satisfaction, the wellbeing of particular groups (such as families with young children, women and the elderly) and interactions among residents (see Gifford’s 2007 comprehensive review of existing literature). The prevailing conclusion regarding social ties is that residents of high-rises tend to have less intimate relationships and care less about their neighbours: they may encounter and recognise many more residents, but they have fewer friendships in the building and are less likely to help their neighbours than those living in low-rise buildings (e.g. Kearns et al., 2012; McCarthy and Saegert, 1978; Zito, 1974). Some of these studies have found a sense of social isolation among residents in high-rise developments (e.g. Chile et al., 2014; Reid et al., 2017).
The physical design of high-rises and complexes as well as the buildings’ higher density can make it difficult for residents to form ties and even discourage social interaction (Amick and Kviz, 1975). As Gifford (2007) notes, many high-rise buildings lack spaces that foster socialising, or are structured so that one rarely meets residents of other floors, aside from in elevators and lobbies; consequently, these buildings support distancing and anonymity among neighbours. However, the literature suggests that while high-rises possess some physical characteristics that are discouraging to social relationships, they do not prohibit them, particularly when residents share unifying characteristics (e.g. Ginsberg and Churchman, 1985). Chief among non-architectural moderating factors are socioeconomic status, building location, population densities, familial culture, parenthood (to school-age children), gender and stage in life (e.g. Appold and Yuen, 2007; Forrest et al., 2002; Ginsberg and Churchman, 1985; Kern, 2011).
Studies of residential high-rises in Hong Kong and Singapore, where high-rise living is both common and popular, offer valuable insights into the varied physical attributes and socio-cultural factors that shape social dynamics and residents’ experiences (Yeh and Yuen, 2011). Yuen et al.’s (2006) study of public housing residents in Singapore, for example, found that adaptability to and satisfaction with high-rise living correlated with a better perception of the unit, the atmosphere, the sense of privacy, as well as the image associated with vertical living (especially among younger respondents, for whom it is considered more prestigious).
Forrest et al. (2002) contextualise high-rise living in Hong Kong within the local familial culture, arguing that the continued primacy of the extended family influences residents’ experience and satisfaction (in contrast to Western societies in which the extended family is not typically a factor in HRCs). Similarly, Appold and Yuen (2007) found that ‘over 95 percent of public housing residents in Singapore consistently report satisfaction with their family life’ (p. 584), and conclude that ‘social relationships have a stronger effect on the use of space than do spatial arrangements on social relations’ (Appold and Yuen, 2007: 584).
More recent studies have examined the role of Singapore’s housing policy and the provision of parks in promoting racial integration by allowing residents of different ethnicities to live together and interact on a daily basis (Leong et al., 2019; Sia et al., 2019). Examining the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP), which ensures that each block of public housing in Singapore has a mixture of households from all races, Leong et al. (2019) conclude that while some of Singapore’s public housing estates continue to show a higher concentration of selected ethnic communities, such housing policies prevent the formation of a complete racial enclave.
Thus, the vast literature on the social effects of high-rise living has generated a lively, if inconclusive, debate. The physical elements within and surrounding the high-rise complexes and the concomitant socio-cultural factors intersect in complex ways to influence residents’ social ties, adaptability and satisfaction. Many of these studies associate anonymity in the context of vertical living with psychological distress, and explicitly as a problem that demands solving (by design and/or social policy) (Larcombe et al., 2019). Our analysis of the intersections of physical and socio-cultural factors wishes to generate a more nuanced understanding of the different roles that anonymity plays in an ethnically mixed middle-class vertical residential setting.
Binational encounters in this study are rescaled to the urban area of everyday life, as Monterescu (2015) suggested, and more so to the sphere of home. By doing so we wish not only to overcome the often monolithic, unnuanced and linear accounts of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but also to problematise separatist imaginations and exclusive narratives of identity and place, and therefore challenge meta narratives of national segregation and struggle between Jews and Arabs. Examining the patterns of daily encounters between Arabs and Jews in a high-rise residential complex, we wish to join the emerging work on everyday life of residents in vertical environments (Baxter, 2017). Critiquing the omission of everyday life in early vertical literature, Harris (2015: 602) highlights ‘the importance of pursuing ethnographic detail to open up the variety of experiences, imaginaries and practices of vertical urban life’, and calls for more research on the ‘inhabited landscapes of vertical urbanism’ (p. 609).
Ramat Hanasi HRC in the mixed city of Haifa
Ramat Hanasi HRC is situated on the western edge of Haifa’s headland. Developed by a partnership between two construction companies, Gav-Yam and Rassco, the neighbourhood’s design reflects the typical physical characteristics of HRCs in Israel: it comprises 18 homogeneous residential buildings (19–22 floors each, totalling 1063 units) planned around a 20 km2 public park – The Butterfly Park (see Figures 1 and 2).
Ramat Hanasi HRC master plan.
Ramat Hanasi HRC: views of the enclosed park and from the main road.
Occupancy began in June 2013 and, as of summer 2020, nine buildings comprising 712 housing units were occupied by middle-class Jewish and Arab families. Limited available census data indicates that, in 2018, the population in the census tract where Ramat Hanasi HRC is located was 13% Arab (289 out of 2265) in comparison with 10.3% in Haifa overall.
The Butterfly Park was opened in February 2016 and boasts impressive amenities and a high level of maintenance. In addition, the complex houses a medium-sized commercial centre (including a supermarket, shops, a coffee shop and health clinics) and a kindergarten complex.
While Ramat Hanasi is a fairly generic housing complex, the city of Haifa is unique in the Israeli context. Today, about 10% of Arab-Palestinians in Israel reside in eight mixed cities, disrupting the pattern of Jewish–Arab residential segregation on a country-wide scale. The vast majority of Jews and Arabs live in well-defined, homogenous and separate ‘Jewish’ or ‘Arab’ villages, townships and cities (Jabareen, 2014), but neoliberal economic restructuring of the Israeli economy has spurred in recent years the emergence of an Arab middle class interested in migrating to mixed cities (Shtern and Yacobi, 2019).
The mixed city of Haifa is Israel’s third-largest city, an important industrial centre, as well as a locus of Arab socio-political and cultural activity, history and identity. Haifa is considered a model of tolerance among mixed localities (Kallus and Kolodney, 2010) and relatively pluralistic and inclusionary because of its more ‘equitable distribution of wealth and access to property, amenities, and political influence’ (Monterescu, 2011: 274).
Methodology
The local knowledge and narratives of Jewish and Arab residents of Ramat Hanasi were obtained through 21 semi-structured interviews. Eight of them included walking interviews, in which participants were asked to conduct an informal tour of the complex. Walking interviews facilitate a deeper understanding of the social and physical context (Carpiano, 2009). The interviews were structured around the themes of identity, belonging and attachment, social relations, and everyday experiences vis-à-vis the physical form of the building and the complex, intended to reveal the participants’ experiences, perspectives and interpretations. This ordered but flexible mode of discussion encouraged a convivial atmosphere and allowed the participants to raise their own issues and direct the conversation towards the diverse ways in which Ramat Hanasi’s planning and design enable, shape and delimit social interactions.
Interviewees had lived in the complex for at least one year, and all but one were married with children. Fourteen were Jewish, three were Muslim Arab and four were Christian Arab. They were selected via snowball sampling. The profile of the respondents reflects a middle/upper-middle-class socio-economic status; most of them had earned their tertiary education qualifications and about one-half held academic and professional occupations. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed.
Part I: Dreams and visions of high-rise living
Certain physical and social features of the HRC emerged as particularly appealing to residents. Young and largely secular, educated and middle-class Jewish and Arab residents were attracted to the high-rise lifestyle articulated by the branding and marketing of the complex. They value the expected class homogeneity in an enclosed housing complex that includes upscaled shared amenities and public services. The comparatively high standard of living offered by the HRC is perceived as an upgrade by members of both ethnic groups. Residents describe motivations and attractions that seemingly transcend ethno-national boundaries in favour of class-defined tastes. Overall, Ramat Hanasi provides a more globalised, status-oriented lifestyle desired by Arabs and Jews alike.
As mentioned above, residents were attracted to the neighbourhood’s physical infrastructure, which is more developed and better maintained in comparison with their previous neighbourhoods. Life in contemporary high-rise developments is often seen as a ‘move up’ by Israelis accustomed to mid-rise, mass-constructed public housing neighbourhoods (shikunim) that were built to house a booming population in the 1950s–1960s. Moving from ‘a small and cramped’ two-bedroom apartment in an old shikun in Haifa was for E, a 39-year-old Jewish computer programmer, a fulfilment of the Israeli middle-class dream. His wife was less enthusiastic, worrying about the new, unknown and far-flung neighbourhood, adjacent to underprivileged neighbourhoods: ‘As far as she is concerned, this is the wild west.’ But E believed in the vision that was presented to them by the developers: ‘[They] said it was for people like us […] young families, high-tech people … and yes, they got us. It’s starting something new here. Nothing was here yet, we bought an apartment on paper, we came in first – we were the pioneers.’
E draws on two familiar narratives. The first is that of a long history of pioneers in the State of Israel, who, like their American counterparts, settled in ‘uncharted’ and often hostile territories where they mostly worked the land in agricultural settlements. The second is of the urban frontier described by Neil Smith in 1960s America (and beyond) (Smith, 1996). The pioneers of Ramat Hanasi are bravely settling the ‘urban wilderness’ of West Haifa, a hitherto underdeveloped part of the city. Furthermore, they are doing so in a new kind of homestead: the middle-class, comparatively luxurious HRC. Arab residents of Ramat Hanasi represent a different kind of pioneering narrative, one in which people sacrifice a certain comfort – the advantages of living in their community – for an overall better quality of life. A, a 41-year-old Muslim Arab accountant, grew up in an Arab village in the Galilee and moved to Haifa in his early 20s, eventually settling in the German Colony (an old mixed neighbourhood in Haifa’s lower city). In 2015, the family moved to Ramat Hanasi and, like incoming Jewish residents, he and his wife were attracted to the amenities and services of the complex and the promise of a ‘quality population’. Moreover, he hoped his children would absorb the value of coexistence alongside appreciation of their Arab-Palestinian identity. As A states: My wife was the most concerned out of the two of us. It was hard for her to leave, she got used to [the German Colony neighbourhood] and was afraid that it would be difficult for the children, this transition [… but] we thought that it was close to everything, and that a new place […] it [Ramat Hanasi] is something else […]. The way it looks. What you get. The population. There is nothing like it in Haifa.
For A, the opportunity to shape the new neighbourhood helped overcome his family’s hesitations. Compared with Jewish neighbourhoods in Haifa, and historically mixed neighbourhoods such as the German Colony, Ramat Hanasi is a blank slate. While A expected the complex to be predominantly Jewish, he sees it as a place where a better future can be written for his children both in terms of material comfort and as members of a mixed society.
For M, a 29-year-old Christian Arab family doctor and mother of two, Ramat Hanasi HRC was attractive to people like her.
We have good [Christian Arab] friends that moved [here] way before we did. They were very happy here. We immediately fell in love with the place as well. [… Our friends] had well-educated, quiet neighbors of all kinds – Christians, Muslim, Jews, Druze. [They] had no trouble with anyone, they don’t even feel [the neighbours]. A different life than the one we were used to.
The physical quality of Ramat Hanasi, where ‘everything feels new and looks nice, clean, peaceful’, is drastically different from M’s hometown of Nazareth where ‘everything feels old, many parts are neglected’. The social atmosphere is different too. In Nazareth ‘it feels like everyone knows who you are, watching you’. Ramat Hanasi offers M proximity to work and a ‘new’, ‘clean’ and ‘peaceful’ physical environment, an opportunity for more private, convenient and aesthetic daily life. Less than an hour’s drive, Ramat Hanasi is a world away from Nazareth – an older, conservative and traditional environment that M has experienced as stifling and invasive, as well as one where the separation and tensions between Arabs and Jews are more pronounced (Jabareen, 2006).
Living in segregated spaces entails positive functions for marginalised groups amid ethnic conflict, including enhanced security, cultural preservation and political empowerment (Boal, 1996). When Arabs in Israel move away from their hometowns, they may experience a disconnection from their communities that can translate into a loss of identity and belonging (Monterescu, 2011). Yet, for M, the comforts of ‘home’– a homogenous Arab city – come with drawbacks. She is willing to trade a level of ethnic comfort for the values of privacy and individualism. Ramat Hanasi offers her independence from her family and the community in Nazareth in addition to improved residential conditions. A and M feel comfortable enough to pursue the lifestyle they want in a mostly Jewish residential complex because they perceive it as a new and relatively open-minded space.
Beyond convenience, for many of the interviewees the transition to Ramat Hanasi also engenders a projected sense of upward social mobility and luxury – a participation in a national, cross-ethnic understanding of wealth and status. The enclosed complex provides a bubble in which they can live, shop and sit in the park with (or around) ‘people like them’, and even be anonymous around ‘people like them’. ‘People like them’ is, of course, based on a conception of middle-class status and sensibilities. Ethnicity, background and activities behind closed doors are irrelevant as long as certain public standards are maintained. E, for one, does not care who his neighbours are or where they came from. ‘[As] long as [they are] keeping it clean’, says E, ‘we have no problem.’ But ‘keeping it clean’ is open to some interpretation; in the case of Ramat Hanasi, it is a middle-class residential practice shaped by and in response to the class-based and subjective sensibilities of the residents. The interviews revealed an unwritten code of conduct that governs life in the complex and serves, in a sense, to equalise the residents regardless of their origin and identity.
Part II: HRC etiquette
Following Valentine’s (2008) assertion that ‘urban etiquette’ does not necessarily amount to meaningful relations and mutual respect for difference, the prevailing etiquette among residents of Ramat Hanasi HRC is noteworthy because of the scale, the immediacy and the types of daily interactions between neighbours sharing this residential complex. The norms that emerge are centred around privacy (keeping to oneself keeping quiet) and cleanliness (keeping shared spaces clean), and are supported by the physical elements specific to this housing form, such as residential density and the design and function of shared spaces. Thus, we understand it as a specific structure of relations and norms which we refer to as ‘HRC etiquette’.
Day-to-day interactions in the complex – and the opportunities for their occurrence – are delimited and shaped not only by the norms of the ‘HRC etiquette’, but also by residents’ attitudes, the physical design of common spaces and the building density (i.e. the sheer number of residents sharing these spaces). These are all inter-related factors, the interactions of which coalesce to form a unique communal dynamic.
For example, AH, a 52-year-old Jewish pre-school teacher and mother of three, describes the difficulties of forming new social relations in the complex, compared with her previous low-rise building: It is difficult [to get acquainted] in a tall building with an elevator. It’s not the same. [In the old building] we would meet [neighbours] while sitting in the courtyard. Here people are more ‘high society’. They barely say ‘hi’.
AH’s comparison between the old and new residences refers to both physical and social differences, presenting them as interrelated factors that inhibit community building of the kind she would prefer. Speaking of her previous building, AH describes a physical design that accommodated chance and lingering encounters; Ramat Hanasi’s common spaces, by contrast, seem to discourage them. AH’s building entry boasts a few planters and no seating; the lobby has only a decorative and uncomfortable bench (see Figure 3), providing no incentive for residents to use the space other than to wait for the elevators or to check their mailboxes. Informal social encounters that might lead to good neighbourly relations are therefore limited, if not wholly prevented, by design choices.
Semi-public spaces in Ramat Hanasi HRC.
K, a 42-year-old Jewish private-business owner and a father of two, finds the sterility of the common spaces alienating, even as he recognises that it is in fact attractive to some of his neighbours. ‘People care about how [the lobby] looks; they want to keep it clean’, he notes, but ‘some don’t feel like it belongs to them’. The neutrality of these spaces makes it hard to cultivate a feeling of shared ownership, much less shared experience or community. But K’s general impression is that his neighbours do not want to socialise, and that he himself ‘feels lost among the sea of people’.
K’s impression is supported by others, as G, a 44-year-old male Jewish therapist, describes it: I barely bump into [my neighbours], maybe for a few minutes while riding together by chance in the elevator, or if we happen to go out into the halls together, or just saying ‘hi’ in the park, which almost never happens. I am totally fine with it … being casual and light. I have enough family and other people in my life to [not need] new ones, especially my neighbors picking at my life. [I] don’t need that.
G firmly rejects the aspiration for closer relationships with the strangers who live alongside him, preferring superficial acquaintanceships with them. The physical expression of such relationships distinguishes the complex from more traditional housing options. When asked directly about the social function of shared spaces, such as the lobby or courtyard, G responded: We don’t need that here! [Otherwise] it will quickly become shchuna [neighbourhood]. I didn’t move here to live in a shchuna… There are too many people here, of all kinds, trust me. It looks nice because we don’t have that [shchuna] here.
G employs the loaded Israeli slang shchuna to refer to a neighbourhood of low socio-economic status characterised by the sort of informality and familiarity among neighbours that would contradict the upper-middle-class image that Ramat Hanasi aims to project. Keeping shared spaces clean, quiet and unusable prevents G’s neighbours – of ‘all kinds’– from degrading the complex. Design elements are then an enforcement mechanism for the HRC etiquette.
If the design elements serve as defensive mechanisms, residents also have more offensive tactics to employ in order to promote and police adherence to HRC etiquette. If residents are generally uninterested in getting acquainted in person, some are comfortable openly attacking their neighbours via social media. I, a 41-year-old Jewish teacher and a mother of three, complains that in Ramat Hanasi ‘you cannot use [the corridor], and if you leave anything there for a moment, you can immediately be shamed on [the building] Facebook [group]’. In her previous building, she could leave her shoes and furniture in the corridor without fear of being robbed or criticised. But in Ramat Hanasi, the lifestyle upgrade comes with a new social contract befitting its image: keep it clean, and do not treat shared spaces as if they are part of your home. Thus, an important part of the HRC etiquette is a practice of disengagement among residents, and between residents and common spaces, with ‘shaming’ as punishment and deterrent.
HRC etiquette therefore emerges from residents’ expectations – themselves based on a globalised culture of high-rise living rooted in socio-economic status and promoted by developers – which prioritise privacy, cleanliness and formality at the expense of interpersonal relationships. While certain aspects inherent in the high-rise form accommodate privacy/anonymity and impede relationships by nature (such as housing density), the emergent etiquette is actively enforced through deliberate physical (e.g. design elements) as well as social (e.g. shaming) means. These phenomena are fascinating enough when observed in a homogenous environment but take on special characteristics in the context of an ethnically mixed space, particularly one defined by intense conflict.
HRC etiquette in an ethnically mixed environment
Perhaps unsurprisingly, obeying the norms maintains disengagement and anonymity that suppress possible ethnic tensions, but contradicting the expected conduct may exacerbate tension and make them explicit again. A conversation with one resident, D, reveals the complexity of inter-group tensions, not only along ethno-national lines (Jews versus Arabs) but also relating to religious and urban/provincial ones. Remarking that, overall, ‘it is not simple to live with a hundred tenants’, she details anti-social behaviour on the part of some tenants: parking where it is forbidden, throwing trash wherever, not recycling. She points specifically to an apartment occupied by a family from Taibe, an Arab town an hour away. Because it is not their primary residence, according to D, they are even less inclined to treat the space with respect: They throw things out of the windows. They think they are in the village. One of the neighbors is an elderly woman who was almost hurt when one of the children threw a metal object out of the window, things like that. Look, I do not want to sound racist, but I do not think they belong here. Just as we do not go to live in their village, they do not have to come here, they are not the Christians of Haifa. I have neighbors on the floor who are Christians [Arab] and they are great neighbors, and we get along very well. It’s something else. (our emphasis)
Whereas I describes an atmosphere of surveillance, D perceives the anonymity of the complex as giving rise to lawlessness. She is not specific as to the origins of all the guilty parties, but she singles out the (Muslim) Arab family from Taibe, distinguishing them from the Christian Arabs of Haifa, who are, from her perspective, urbane and adjusted to the social expectations in the building. D’s comments demonstrate how easily tensions can emerge as a result of ‘bad’ behaviour; at the same time, she also reveals nuances that complicate the ethnic binary associated with Israel’s Jewish and Arab populations.
For other interviewees, adjusting to the ethnic mix of the HRC is simply part of adjusting to a new way of life at high densities. ‘There are several Arab families here’, said DD, a 34-year-old Jewish electrical engineer. ‘But I barely feel them, like I barely feel other neighbours. We get along fine that way.’ DD has developed his own set of rules to cope with the high-rise lifestyle: ‘You must keep to your own [social] circles. You do not have to get to know everyone in the building, and you do not have to be recognised by everyone in the building. It’s also impossible to get to know them all, and it’s just fine like that.’ These rules help DD manage proximity to, and distance from his neighbours, while establishing some sense of privacy. Furthermore, the rules are applicable to everyone in the HRC and DD sees them as a means of eliminating issues of ethnic identity. ‘This is our way of dealing with this’, he says, referring to life in the HRC. ‘This is how you can all get along in a place like this, whoever you are – Jewish, Arab, Druze – it doesn’t really matter.’
HRC etiquette offers an implicit regulatory framework that normalises the relations between neighbours, so long as everyone adheres to the shared code of conduct that reflects no other culture than that of middle-class status and sensibilities. ‘Outsiders’, therefore, are not defined along the Arab–Jewish binary, but are rather the residents or visitors that do not conform to this code, and, thus, do not belong. This is especially noticeable in the HRC’s park, which is open to all. ‘Some members of the public take advantage of it’, complains E, ‘[including] the Haredim [ultra-orthodox Jews]. During the holidays and in the summer, they come by bus from all over the country, flooding the park, making noise, dirtying [the park], getting into the fountain, and climbing the amenities.’ E and his neighbours, united against a common adversary, turned to the municipality, who were limited in their response because the park is public. ‘But we did not give up until the city banned the entry of buses and promised enforcement,’ E added.
E’s comments underscore the centrality of class-based identity in the local dynamic, as opposed to ethno-national differences and conflict. Class surpasses ethnicity on the local, everyday level; as Shtern and Yacobi (2019) have asserted, ‘the social category of class should be revisited and understood as a potential sphere of habitation that can challenge the ethno-national divide’ (p. 3). The ascendance of a middle-class identity is changing the script associated with Arab–Jewish relations and challenging the binational split. In Ramat Hanasi, adherence to the unwritten code of conduct paves the way for Jews and Arabs to blur, if not erase, the conflict over ethnic lines in order to coexist, if not exactly bond, along socio-economic lines.
Part III: Managing distance and managing proximity
Despite the prevailing sentiment of alienation and disengagement from one’s neighbours in the HRC, it would be a mistake to assume that Ramat Hanasi offers residents no opportunity to form meaningful relationships; neither does it allow neighbours to completely escape one another. While, today, people’s day-to-day activities, social networks and communities often extend far beyond the sphere of their physical residence, immediate neighbours develop an interdependence based on their proximity and their overlapping lives (Blokland and Nast, 2014). In dense residential spaces, whether people seek or avoid relationships with their neighbours, unintended contact is inevitable. The vertical form enables more control over this process with positive consequences: vertical living enables residents more control to set boundaries and use various tactics for moderating levels of interaction with neighbours and visitors (Gifford, 2007). The ability to manage proximity and distance emerges as an identified benefit for residents, who find that the complex allows them to choose their relationships, as well as to ‘live and let live’ in ways they may not have enjoyed previously.
Marketplace of relationships
The two distinctive features of high-rise housing – building height and number of people – offer residents relative privacy as well as a bigger ‘inventory’ of neighbours. As E puts it: There is one family in the building that we are close to. They have children of similar ages as ours, and we host them. They host us. We have a few more friends at the buildings nearby. […] It is here that the friendships are stronger. I have closer friends. […] When you have a building of 6 tenants, everyone knows each other. You do not have much to choose from. Here you have hundreds of families. You can really choose your friendships.
E’s experiences of living in the Ramat Hanasi complex were articulated through an explicit spatial comparison with living in a low-rise shikun. He enjoys the variety of options rather than being forced into a close but unwanted relationship with neighbours he has not chosen.
Y, a 33-year-old Jewish pharmacist and a mother of two, describes a similar approach. Her social ties in the HRC are limited to three neighbours, all young, Jewish, middle-class mothers like herself, and to otherwise maintain her privacy and limit unintentional encounters: [My] relationships are by no means spontaneous, and I like it that way. I like the distance. [I] don’t want to mix too much. I have them, and we all think alike. That’s what I like about this place, I like that there is some distance, and it’s totally fine. You don’t have this pressure [to socialise].
Y describes a controlled community in which she defines the terms of her relationships and is protected from unwanted interference. In other words, she can establish and maintain a workable balance between ‘keeping one’s distance’ and ‘being there when needed’. This maximises the extent to which relationships in the high-rise are a benefit to residents rather than a burden.
Live and let live
In the densely populated high-rise, anonymity among the crowd translates to privacy (Ginsberg and Churchman, 1985; Shilon and Eizenberg, 2020; Zito, 1974), and privacy, for residents such as M, is liberating: I like that [the HRC] is so big and that everyone minds their own business here. It’s not like in other small places where everyone knows you [whether] you like it or not. That is how I grew up … It always felt suffocating to me. It is different here, here there is a sense of freedom. To me, freedom is privacy. It means the privacy to live your own life. You can live your life peacefully, no one knows who you are and what you are doing if you don’t want [them] to. At home, you have privacy. There’s enough distance between buildings so no one can hear or see what you are doing. I like it.
M’s sense of freedom stems from the perceived anonymity that the complex affords because of its physical attributes as well as the attitudes they effectuate. M’s hometown of Nazareth, less than one-third the size of Haifa, is a far more horizontal urban environment – a city more like a small village where ‘everyone knows you’. In Ramat Hanasi, she can ‘disappear’ among the other residents while the physical form of the complex – specifically the distance between buildings – accommodates her preference for isolation.
N, a 33-year-old Muslim Arab and a mother of two, echoes M’s emphasis on privacy contributing to her personal comfort. Having moved to Ramat Hanasi from Wadi Nisnas (the heart of Arab Haifa) with her husband and children, N remains closely connected with her family and former neighbours, to the extent that she feels no need to form new bonds in Ramat Hanasi. As with M, the structure and spacing of the buildings informs N’s sense of privacy: Nothing is blocking my view or the breeze from the sea, so I sometimes forget that there are neighbors above and below me. Most of the time it is very quiet. I almost don’t know anyone on my building, really, only a few faces and the person from the building’s board, he is very nice. But other than that, I don’t know [my neighbours]. I don’t need to know them well to feel comfortable. It’s enough that they will remain polite and quiet.
N articulates not needing to recognise her neighbours and, like M, she finds comfort in the crowd. Somewhat contradicting E, N appreciates the public nature of the Butterfly Park because it densifies and diversifies the complex as a whole, making her less distinguishable: ‘There are all the languages [in the park] – Arabic, Hebrew, Russian. There’s no problem here. I don’t think that anyone cares at all. No one will bother you here [it is] Haifa, after all, so people are used to [hearing Arabic] in a [public] place like this.’ The presence of multiple languages in the park – including municipal signage in Arabic – allows Arabs, such as N, to perceive the park as a neutral space, or at least not overtly Jewish. N asserts that Ramat Hanasi – while very different from Wadi Nisnas or the shikunim– is still ‘Haifa, after all’. Furthermore, by equating Russian with Arabic as alternatives to Hebrew, she attenuates the Jewish–Arab conflictual dichotomy.
Still, as an Arab in a predominantly Jewish environment, it is understandable why the privacy of high-rise living provides comfort to M and N. Intergroup contact can prove stressful for members of minority groups who are unsure of how they will be received, who may not welcome the burden of representation (Valentine, 2008), and who may even dread such encounters because of past experiences of marginalisation and discrimination. It seems that, when neighbourly interactions are fleeting and superficial like those of Ramat Hanasi, as long as these encounters are polite, issues of ethnic identity will remain distant.
The fact that the privacy and anonymity afforded by the HRC has made it a more diverse space – both ethnically and otherwise – is not lost on Jewish residents. As R, a 50-year-old female Jewish accountant who has been living there since 2015, explains: It is not only high-tech people here, like they [the developers] promised. Maybe the first buildings were mainly high-tech, but it has changed. Now we have all kinds of people, the whole Israeli ordeal: Arabs, new immigrants, people who cannot afford buying, so they rent here. And we all get along because we live and let live. I think this is part of why it works. Israeli society can learn from us. If I want to get closer to people, there are ways of doing that here: Facebook, going to the park, talking to people. The point is that there is no pressure to get along. That’s why people get along.
Like M and N, R highly values the privacy that the high-rise affords her: No gossip. I can keep what happens to me in my life to myself. In such a small place where everyone knows each other and everyone is the same, information travels very fast – she got divorced, he went through a bankruptcy, he is that, she is that. But here you don’t have gossip. It is too big for gossip and people value their privacy.
R disrupts the assumption that anonymity is a negative social and psychological force in high-rises by asserting that personal relationships are indeed possible at a minimal effort, if a resident is interested in them. The key factor was choice: she can choose to get to know someone or not – without fearing that her personal life will become fodder for public discussion. Moreover, she credits the absence of forced interaction with fostering an environment that is comfortable for residents of all backgrounds; her neighbours respect each other’s privacy because they are protective of their own – another commonality among residents of all ethnicities.
The fact that privacy is a recurring theme particularly among female residents recalls Kern’s (2011) study of female, middle-class condominium owners in Toronto, who similarly appreciated the convenience, amenities, privacy and security offered by their inner-city residences. While condominium life was emancipatory for these women, Kern also criticises it as a privatised form of development, an urban ‘gated community’ that was empowering to women but exclusionary based on class. The same appears true of Ramat Hanasi, but at the same time that the complex is socio-economically exclusive, it is ethno-nationally inclusive relative to other residential environments in Israel.
R’s comments – as with those of some other interviewees – are encouraging in the context of Arab–Jewish coexistence because she acknowledges that her Arab neighbours choose to live as she chooses and share at least some of the same values and interests with her. Passing, pleasant encounters between Arab and Jewish neighbours can reinforce this sentiment, which is a gratifying experience for residents who have never lived among members of the other group. To the extent that residents view the HRC, and not just their own apartment, as home, the better they will appreciate that they share that home with the ‘other’. While it is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to note the potential of middle-class, ethnically mixed vertical residences to improve inter-ethnic relations.
O, a 36-year-old Christian Arab, highlights the everyday interactions that, while passing, are nonetheless significant: [My children and I] go to the park almost every day, and you know how kids act. They bond very fast, better than adults [laugh]. The kids play together and we [parents] talk. Having kids connects you to other parents. We talk [about] all kinds of stuff, the issues with the developer, regular stuff.
O and his neighbours are drawn together in a shared space (the park) by a major common factor (i.e. children/parenthood), and they bond, if temporarily, over common interests (i.e. the developer, daily life). These meetings give them the opportunity to discover their similarities and become acquainted on a personal level.
The park’s play areas for children support contact between their guardians (particularly among mothers of different ethnic backgrounds), or at least let them acknowledge each other’s presence while their children play, and therefore provide a basis for social cohesion (e.g. Coley et al., 1997; Kaźmierczak, 2013). More broadly, this reveals and re-emphasises one of the many values of public spaces, particularly parks, as a well-integrated component of urban life. The way in which relationships form in the park indicate a potential for reconciliation consistent with previous studies that illuminate the capacity of unintended, fleeting encounters to counteract prejudice and promote tolerance (Valentine, 2008).
Conclusion
This paper offers a new perspective on the everyday life in an ethnically mixed vertical setting. It focuses mainly on how relations between neighbours are perceived and practised based on a shared group identity – as middle-class, educated, urban ‘pioneers’. It also discusses how the development of a code of conduct – the HRC etiquette – is constructed to manage relationships between residents, and between residents and common spaces, with physical design and public shaming employed as the main enforcement mechanisms.
Throughout, anonymity and privacy emerge as both commonly held values among residents, as well as a critical part of the HRC’s social contract. Within this setting, an opportunity arises for equality among ethno-national and religious groups. The assumption is therefore that residents of all origins, so long as they adhere to the behavioural standards, will be accepted (if, perhaps, ignored). Adjusting to the behavioural expectations is a potential challenge faced by any resident, whether they come from a Jewish public housing neighbourhood (shikun) or an Arab village. By adopting the shared HRC etiquette, the group of residents can surpass ethnic issues and challenge the binational divide. These observations support the claim that the binational divide can be challenged by rescaling these encounters to day-to-day life in Israeli mixed cities (Monterescu, 2015).
While anonymity and privacy were found to be highly valued by both Jewish and Arab residents, they had indeed ‘to some degree been designed into the building’ (Reid et al., 2017: 22). Because of the nature of high-rises, as well as the design of Ramat Hanasi HRC, contact between fellow residents is infrequent and limited to short interactions in uninviting spaces designed as spaces of transit, where people pass without noticing one another. In contrast to the buildings themselves, however, the park between them by nature and by design offers an opportunity for interactions and relationship-building, if residents so desire it. Given that residents both value anonymity and privacy, and/or seek to build relationships based on commonalities, this may suggest that current high-rise design practices secure the best of both worlds so long as they include dedicated spaces that facilitate interaction, such as a park, but otherwise allow residents to live separated lives free from unwanted intrusions. To date, most studies that have explored social interactions in high-rises tend to associate anonymity with social isolation, psychological distress and social fragmentation and tension, problems that need to be solved by better design or policy (Larcombe et al., 2019). The experiences of residents in the Ramat Hanasi HRC challenge such a monolithic narrative on vertical anonymity. Our observations suggest that anonymity is not only desired by many, but also potentially enables coexistence in mixed environments through the associated establishment of a common high-rise etiquette.
While this neighbourly indifference may seem unimpressive, in the context of ethnic conflict, such coexistence could lay the groundwork for a meaningful change at a higher level. The way in which relationships between residents are formed in the HRC indicates a potential for reconciliation that is consistent with previous studies of everyday encounters and their influence on the larger political order of the nation state (Valentine, 2008). This potential, and the conditions that produce it, should be investigated further.
Overall, this research provides useful insights about high-rise, high-density living in mixed cities, which lay the foundation for future research. For example, Arabs’ and Jews’ motivations for living in high-rise settings, and their perceptions and understandings of this lifestyle, remain largely unknown; we have only begun to sketch residents’ shared and distinct preferences, aspirations and imaginations that pre- and post-date the move to Ramat Hanasi. Greater understanding of these factors is important in order to determine how we can accommodate ‘difference’ in high-rise buildings. Our work, and hopefully work that will follow, can and should influence planners and developers to consider the particular needs and wants of residents of all ethnic groups, as Israel – and its mixed cities, in particular – continues to grow outwards and, more importantly, upwards.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Tamir Arviv is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for the award of an Azrieli Fellowship.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by ISF – Israel Science Foundation, grant # 2262/20.
