Re-ecologizing Gaza

Shayya, F

Re-ecologizing Gaza

Shayya, F

Authors

Dr Fadi Shayya F.Shayya1@salford.ac.uk
Lecturer in Architecture & Urbanism

Contributors

Terreform
Editor

Abstract

Gaza is one of the most beleaguered environments on earth. Crammed into a space of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), 1.8 million people live under siege. This volume brings together designers, environmentalists, planners, activists, and scholars to create hopeful interventions that imagine a better place for Gazans. It seems today that we've never been further from a durable peace for Gaza, which makes this volume - and every other assertion of Gaza's humanity - all the more urgent."Rather than rehearse the statistics and calamities that have marked the abundant coastal enclave for social death, Open Gaza, provocatively shows how Gaza continues to be a source of life in its ingenuity, love, and possibilities. Simultaneously, it makes clear that current conditions in Gaza are not inevitable but have been constructed, reproduced, and justified by lawmakers indentured by a political present. From a journey through a network of tunnels, an alternative digital grid, agriculture zones, transportation routes that rehabilitate a fragmented Arab world, this collection of essays is a powerful retort to the tired discourse that has framed Gaza's future as a security question contingent demilitarization and containment. Open Gaza is an exciting invitation into new futures that Gaza and Palestine, more generally, offer for Palestinians and the world.