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PLT0010.1177/1473095218764225Planning TheoryEizenberg

Article

Planning Theory
2019, Vol. 18(1) 40­–57
Patterns of self-organization in © The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1473095218764225
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participation

Efrat Eizenberg
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel

Abstract
This article unpacks the relations that exist between the planning institution and urban residents by
examining processes of self-organization in planning. Approaching self-organization with the lens
of assemblage, the article proposes three categories or patterns of self-organization of different
urban actors and portrays how they act in different forms to induce urban change. The three
self-organization categories are as follows: (1) self-organization by the disenfranchised for basic
rights, (2) self-organization by the ordinary for community interests, and (3) self-organization by
the powerful for economic gains. In these different forms of self-organization, power and agency
are differentially constituted by the relations between the residents, the planning institution, and
the physical space. Moreover, the impacts of these actions on the urban space vary. Nevertheless,
there are also some resemblances between groups and actions that are commonly dissociated.
Unpacking different manifestations of self-organization in urban planning proposes a more
relational interpretation that emphasizes the inextricable and overlapping relations of formal and
informal planning and of top-down and bottom-up planning, and surfaces a different understanding
of urban power relations.

Keywords
active citizenship, assemblage, formal planning, insurgent planning, participation, self-organization

Introduction
This article aims to deepen the understanding of the differences and relations between
concepts and the way in which they help propel the apprehension of new phenomena in the
planned and built space (Jabareen, 2009). By evaluating some actual urban manifestations,

Corresponding author:
Efrat Eizenberg, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology,
Technion City, Haifa 320000, Israel.
Email: efrate@technion.ac.il
Eizenberg 41

this article challenges commonly used conceptualizations of contemporary planning dis-

course. Specifically, this article unpacks the notion of self-organization in planning and
shows multiple forms of self-organization that coexist and their interrelations. The idea of
self-organization is used in the planning literature in relation to a wide scope of theories
and concepts. One stream of thought, based in urban studies, encapsulates theories and
concepts of informal planning, insurgent planning, active (urban) citizenship, and bottom-
up participation in planning. In another stream, originated in the natural sciences, self-
organization is defined as one of the fundamental components of complex systems, in this
case, the urban system. Whereas, according to the latter stream, self-organization is hardly
controllable or predictable, the former stream, although multilayered and self-critical,
tends to discuss self-organization and its related concepts as inevitably better forms of
planning, and as means to achieve more just planning processes and outcomes.
This article engages with the former stream and discusses the prevalent attention
given to self-organization, participation, and agency in contemporary planning research
by differentiating and conceptualizing several categories of self-organization of players
in the urban space. In other words, it deconstructs and conceptualizes the “self” and
“organization” in self-organization by examining the different actors and components
that interact and constitute cases of self-organization in urban planning. In addition, it
examines the forms of agency (i.e. the capacity to act for a certain goal or interest) and
power relations that emerge in processes of self-organization of residents.
I apply Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) concept of assemblage to unravel the common
dichotomous, compartmentalizing, stratifying, measuring, and affixing approaches to
the issue of agency, emerging power relations, and self-organization. Helpful to our
objective, assemblage is an approach that understands social complexities as processes
of mutually constitutive and dynamic relations between human and nonhuman compo-
nents. Connecting the concept of assemblage with forms of critical urbanism, McFarlane
(2011: 221, emphasis mine) contends that “Assemblage underlines the ways in which
urbanism is produced as an unfolding set of uneven practices that are—while being
more or less open or enclosed—never inevitable, but always capable of being produced
otherwise. It signifies the city not simply as an output or resultant formation, but as
ongoing construction.”
Building on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) conceptualization and on McFarlane’s
(2011) review, I argue first that self-organization in urban planning is an assemblage of
residents, the planning institution, the urban environment, and planning tools and prod-
ucts. As such, self-organization should be understood as a process in which relations
between these components are continually and mutually constructed. Second, I argue
that planning concepts have a limited capacity to capture the dynamic and mutually con-
structed workings of self-organization, most notably their tendency to understand the
actors of self-organization in juxtapositions.
For these purposes, the following section will review several planning concepts and
their implied approaches to self-organization. These concepts are divided into three
domains: (1) common understandings of formal and informal planning, (2) participation
and active citizenship, and (3) the concept of agency. Then, I offer a theoretical frame-
work of self-organization based on case studies of residents’ involvement with planning
practices. The different cases were drawn from the Israeli planning milieu, characterized
42 Planning Theory 18(1)

not only by a highly centralized system but also an increasingly neoliberalized one.
Moreover, the Israeli case is a fertile ground for various acts of self-organization because
it is abundant with spatial conflicts stemming from ethnic and economic divisions.
Actual incidences of residents’ self-organization for planning purposes from Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv-Jaffa are deployed. The analysis of the cases yielded three categories of
self-organization that capture the mutually constructive relations among actors. Finally,
the conclusion summarizes the main argument and discusses the possible contribution of
the theoretical framework to planning.

Concepts of self-organization: powers and limitations

Within urban studies, self-organization is approached through different planning con-
cepts and discourses. This section reviews three such discursive domains. The domains
differ in their powers and limitations, in the actors of self-organization they choose to
focus on, in the relations each attributes to these actors, and in the role that is given to the
urban, social, economic, or cultural contexts in shaping processes of self-organization.
The domains are presented in a meaningful order. Moving from the first domain, “formal
and informal planning,” to the last domain, “the question of agency,” the discussion gets
ripe for the picking of a new reading of self-organization through the notion of the
assemblage. By indicating the powers and limitations of each domain in understanding
self-organization, this article wishes to also contribute to (1) further expanding the scope
of understanding how formal–informal planning is currently defined, (2) critically
engaging with the established discourse on community participation and its often one-
track perception of participation as benevolent and empowering (Cooke and Kothari,
2001; Purcell, 2006), and (3) emphasizing the possible contribution of a complex under-
standing of agency to the discourse on self-organization.

Formal and informal planning.  The common understanding in the field of planning con-
notes the distinction of formality versus informality with the distinction of rational and
modern versus irrational and chaotic, or the distinction of governed and controlled versus
that which occurs outside governmental control or formal legal structures (Mcfarlane,
2012; Porter, 2011; Roy, 2005; Van Assche et al., 2014). Silva and Farrall (2016) over-
come the dichotomy by suggesting three “spatial planning dilemmas” that evolve as a
result of the inherent gap between plans and the actual use of physical settings. The first
is the gap between the formality of rules and the flexibility of norms, the second is the
gap between top-down planning approach and bottom-up approach, and the third is the
orientation of planners to plan either for or with the users.
Despite these common divisions, it has been suggested by others that “purely formal
planning does not exist, whereas purely informal planning will always remain vulnera-
ble” (Van Assche et al., 2014: 657). It is important, then, to understand the dichotomy of
formal and informal as mutually constitutive through various relations (as suggested for
example by Mcfarlane, 2012; Porter, 2011; Roy, 2005, 2009). There is no argument,
though, that both formal and informal practices of planning shape space, whereas formal
and informal serve to identify power relations in general, and the rules, obstinacy, and
tolerance of the planning culture.
Eizenberg 43

Thus, formality and informality do not exist in a fixed divide, informal practices that
might have been perceived as criminal and unauthorized may become accepted and formal
over time or when considering different social groups. Part of this fluid dynamic is related
to systemic needs to control and restrain resistance and contestation (Mcfarlane, 2012). For
example, Miraftab (2004) suggests that insurgent planning practices that “invent spaces for
participation” are often becoming “invited space for participation” as a means of co-opting
insurgency. AlSayyad and Roy (2004: 5) suggest that “informality operates through the
constant negotiability of value” that the formal system is determined to affix.
Critical scholars developed the notion of informality as an alternative practice, “as a
particular mode of urbanization in contemporary human settlements” (Porter, 2011: 115;
Roy, 2005) and as a mode of resistance and contestation vis-a-vis the state and the mar-
ket. Notions such as radical planning and insurgent planning derived from informal prac-
tices (which may as well be utterly sporadic and spontaneous) are recognized for
embedding a contesting ideology (Miraftab, 2009). Ultimately, the existing definitions of
informality are based on dichotomies of legal/illegal, authorized/unauthorized, poor/
rich, and so on. Therefore, Roy (2011) stresses that most existing frameworks romanti-
cize informality as the “slum,” “the tactics of the poor,” and “a single, coherent politics
of resistance.” In all frameworks of informality, she argues (Roy, 2011: 233), “the infor-
mal remains synonymous with poverty and even marginality,” and informality “remains
the territory and habitus of subaltern urbanism.” Alternatively, she argues that “informal-
ity must be understood as an idiom of urbanization, a logic through which differential
spatial value is produced and managed” and proposes a shift “from slum ontologies to an
analysis of sovereign power and its various spatialized negotiations” (Roy, 2011: 233).
For example, in Roy’s (2009) understanding, informality is created by planning’s
choice to ignore or exclude from care or control. Marginalization, disinvestment, leaving
behind, or ignoring are all, according to Roy, inscriptions that create the arena for infor-
mal practice rather than inactions. Jabareen (2017) understands this inscription by the
formal planning as another set of rights—the right to necessity—endowed to the right-
less by the act of dispossessing them of planning privileges and rights. At the same time,
as Porter (2011) reminds us, defining some people and forms of action as informal and
uncontrollable may actually reinforce the legitimation of the dominant and formal.
While a dichotomous debate, if self-critical, may also be useful for unpacking “the
power in discursively constructing informality as informal” (Porter, 2011: 116), and mul-
tiple interpretations of formal–informal are highly insightful (Mcfarlane, 2012), contem-
porary discourse of formal–informal planning is still confined to oppositional relations
between the system and “outside-the-system.” This “outside-the-system” is dominantly
defined as the poor, the underprivileged, and the disenfranchised. Some of the literature
describes the subtle dialectic relations between the two (e.g. Jabareen, 2017; Roy, 2009),
but keeps the two sides apart and in conflict. In contrast to what is commonly seen as
informal practices, the proposed framework, presented after the following section,
emphasizes the relation of co-production and mutual constitution of agency and power in
the process of self-organization.

Active citizenship and the promise of participation.  The literature on the right to the city,
starting from Lefebvre’s (1996) work and later developed by many (e.g. Blomley, 2008;
44 Planning Theory 18(1)

Harvey, 2012; Jabareen, 2017; Mitchell, 2003), serves as a fundamental legitimation and
justification for any call for, demand of, and actual practice of participation in urban life
and in shaping the urban form. This idea, still hardly tangible, that all dwellers of the city
are granted the right to inhabit, to access, to appropriate and use, to engage in space pro-
duction, and so on, is experimentally materialized through various practices such as the
urban commons and communing (Bresnihan and Byrne, 2015; Chatterton, 2016; Eizen-
berg, 2012), community economics (Gibson-Graham, 2016; Gibson-Graham et al., 2013;
Shaffer et al., 2004), and community control (Defilippis, 2004). The modifiers that are
associated with these practices, such as rebel, active citizenship, activist planning, and
insurgent planning (Harvey, 2012; Miraftab, 2009; Sager, 2016), indicate their perceived
potential. These different forms of urban collective organizations for planning and eco-
nomic ends are rallied and celebrated as possible remedies for neoliberal injustices.
Whether it is an agonistic mode of participation in planning (the “agonistic planning citi-
zen”) or a rational, growth-oriented mode of participation in planning (the “deliberative
planning citizen”) (Inch, 2015), for a while now, participation has been viewed as a
mechanism for democratizing the urban sphere and overcoming some of the vagaries and
harming effects of neoliberal urban planning and conduct (Healey, 1996; Innes and
Booher, 2004). The major obstacle that these promising alternatives face is their recla-
mation by the dominant practices and ideas, their suppression by the neoliberal system
(De Angelis, 2007; Harvey, 2012).
In light of this growing attention to residents’ participation, local governments and,
in some cases, comprehensive state policies1 work to integrate various forms in which
residents may become involved with the workings of the city in general and with
urban planning in particular. Some basic-level indicators of this trend are the initia-
tion of public participation sessions, a growing emphasis on transparency in various
issues such as the budget, the establishment of community communication units, and
public outreach efforts with various public consultant workshops (all these actions
were taken by many municipalities in Israel). However, as Inch (2015: 3) suggests,
the paradox of the contemporary rhetoric of planning democracy is that although the
political culture emphasizes citizens’ engagement in planning and decision-making as
an important principle, it simultaneously “defends against [the] disruptive effects” of
such participation.
Moreover, in contrast to the common perception that residents’ involvement in urban
politics in general and in planning in particular is an important venue for overcoming the
negative effects of neoliberal policies and democratizing the system, self-critical schol-
ars suggest that participation in planning has yet to yield more just and good-for-more
planning results (Boonstra and Boelens, 2011; Fainstein, 2010; Innes and Booher, 2004;
McCann, 2001). The illusion of participation in planning stems from the tendency of
both urban scholars and civil society groups to understand all forms of local action and
organizing as inevitably good and as advancing better politics and democratization.
However, Purcell (2006) warns that this is a trap in which we are caught—“the local
trap.” Considering that, at present, participation (organized under the concept of govern-
ance) may even lead to negative results, such as benefiting already powerful actors and
reifying rather than challenging the dominant power structure, clarifies the depth of the
trap (Purcell, 2006).
Eizenberg 45

It seems that these paradoxes lure many critical scholars to emphasize the importance
of insurgent planning—planning practices that defy the power structure of the current
system, no matter how participatory it is, and struggle to transform the structure itself
(Friedmann, 2002; Miraftab, 2009). Such practices are equated with a right in and of
itself—“citizens’ right to dissent, to rebel and to determine their own terms of engage-
ment and participation” (Miraftab, 2009: 46). But whether it is self-organization of resi-
dents to influence planning within the open channels or as acts of struggle and opposition,
the discourse of participation in planning also has its blind spots and limitations. Thus, in
the same way that the formal–informal planning discourse is entrenched within the jux-
taposition of the poor and the disenfranchised and the planning system, so the discourse
on participation and active citizenship, which includes more actors, is entrenched in a
highly promising and liberating perception of participation. Therefore, I turn to the con-
cept of agency that was discussed through the lens of the assemblage by McFarlane
(2011). The ways that agency was formulated in the literature help us step out of the
entrenchments of the latter two discourses and toward a more relational framework of
self-organization.

The question of agency.  The literature, therefore, recognizes a delegation of previously

centralized power to residents and that this delegation entails a movement toward a more
inclusive urban life, one less controlled by the power of capital and the neoliberal spatial
order. The literature also recognizes two major traps: the perceptual trap, à la Purcell
(2006), in which self-organization of people for planning purposes is intrinsically good
and bettering, and the systemic trap, à la Harvey (2012), the capacity of the neoliberal
system to not only suppress resistance but also to deploy it as its own engine.
Thus, the power of urban residents to act together and determine the urban space, their
agency, is also questioned due to its legitimacy and impact. Agency, its existence and its
potency, is the subject of a long debate. Within the tradition of complex systems, urban
complexity theorists, such as Allen (1997), Batty (2007), Portugali (2011, 2012), and
others, understand self-organization in the city as spontaneously evolving processes with
no central organization or intention. Therefore, they understand collective action in the
city and over space as an integral part of the urban system. The self-organization of peo-
ple (and space) is the result of dynamic and unforeseen changes in which unpredicted
and spontaneous patterns emerge with no central manager or director (Boons et al., 2009;
Boonstra and Boelens, 2011; Heylighen, 2001; Klijn, 2008). The notions of insurgency,
agency, and activism are not perceived as playing a dominant role in the emergence of
subsystems within the complex system of the city, and therefore, are not directly
addressed by urban complexity theory (Batty, 2007; Portugali, 2011).
Within the tradition of urban studies, agency is an important explanatory factor of the
social reality. Nicolas Rose pays a considerable amount of attention to the power to act
and the agency of individuals and groups. However, he is critical of the prevailing dis-
course on agency and suggests that:

The ‘question of agency’ as it has come to be termed, [i.e., is it in the hand of the people or in
the governing structure] poses a false problem. [… Rather,] capacities for action emerge out of
the specific regimes and technologies that machinate humans in diverse ways […]. [A]
46 Planning Theory 18(1)

gency is itself an effect, a distributed outcome of particular technologies of subjectification that

invoke human beings as subjects of a certain type of freedom and supply the norms and
techniques by which that freedom is to be recognized, assembled, and played out in
specific domains (Rose, 1998: 186–187, emphasis mine).

Rose’s conceptualization of agency somewhat resembles Giddens’ (1984) “duality of

structure” but without the effort to even the relation between structure and agency. He
understands agency as an assemblage, a dynamic capacity that is reconstituted in rela-
tions to other components.
Rose’s understanding entails a quest to review and unfold the particular technologies
of subjectification and the specific regime that makes people organize and act to inter-
vene in planning and transform the urban place. What is the present outcome of the
technology and the regime? What type of freedom follows? In addition, what is the form
that agency takes within specific constellations?
Similarly, McFarlane (2011: 215) understands agency as a simultaneously social
and material force that directs the makings of the city. But even more interesting to
our discussion is McFarlane’s assertion that assemblage is “attuned to the possibili-
ties of human and nonhuman relations holding together in uneasy interactions even
where there is an absence of coherence and rigidity in the relations.” Therefore,
intentional acts of residents and other actors such as the planning institution, civil
society institution, private actors, and nonhuman actors that might be seen at first as
posing a pure opposition may be reconsidered as entangled in complex and incon-
sistent relations. Thus, while agency plays an important and influential role in the
making of the city, it should always be understood as part of, and mutually consti-
tuted by, the complex and many times inconsistent relations between actors. The
different cases, presented in the following section, support the proposed framework
by exemplifying the uneasy and less expected aspects of the relations between actors
in self-organization process.
The discourses on self-organization within urban studies make different distinctions,
emphasize different aspects, and also generate different critiques. They differentiated
between the types of groups involved in self-organization and identified their position
within the formal–informal divide or their access to participation. They also provided
some indications of the motivations for self-organization, how agency was exercised and
what are some of the reactions of the planning institution. However, each discourse has
its own blind spots and limitations.

Theoretical framework: stretching the spectrum of self-

organization
Building on these ideas and their critique, I argue that the analysis of forms of self-
organization in planning through the lens of assemblage offers a more processual, multi-
ple, and intermediary understanding that can embrace the negation of formal–informal,
top-down and bottom-up, and structure-agency, and overcome the local trap. It allows a
more cognizant gaze on the complicated, multiple, and dynamic relations that exist in
urban planning, even within a highly centralized planning system.
Eizenberg 47

Table 1.  Three categories of self-organization in planning.

Category The group Formal– Spaces of Main motivation Essence of Position of

character informal participation (goals) practice planning
(based on institution
Miraftab)
A Disenfranchised − Closed Necessity Space Ignores/
production legalizes
B Ordinary + invented Community/ Space Negotiates/
collective conception collaborates
C Powerful ++ Invited Entrepreneurial Space Facilitates/
consumption/ restrains
exchange

An inductive analysis of different cases of residents’ involvement in the planning and

production of urban space yielded three categories or patterns. The analysis distinguishes
between the groups involved in self-organization and identifies their power and position
within the urban system and vis-a-vis the planning institution. It also categorizes the
goals of action, locates the different motivations, and defines the dominant modes of
practice. Finally, the analysis proposes the dominant reaction of the planning institution.
All these factors (summarized in Table 1) are derivatives from and elaborations of the
three discourses on self-organization.
The Israeli case is especially interesting for examining the self-organization of resi-
dents. On one hand, the Israeli planning system is well-established and professionalized.
It evolved based on the British planning system, which was applied in Palestine during
the British Colonial period (the British Mandate for Palestine), before the establishment
of the Israeli state, and it continues to function as a regulatory planning system that
“produce[s] long-term statutory land-use plans that are attempts to both forecast and
determine future development activities” (Alfasi, 2006: 553). In general, the Israeli plan-
ning system is commonly understood as being highly centralized, with the central gov-
ernment producing national, district, and locally binding plans for land usage and
overseeing local-level planning decisions (Fenster, 2004; Jabareen, 2014). Moreover, the
model of the local government limits citizens-residents’ political involvement to voting
in municipal and state elections, submitting objections to plans, and occasionally organ-
izing to express objections to a possible infringement of rights. In addition, the Israel of
recent decades is considered an advanced neoliberal economy subjugating its institutions
to the same logic. On the other hand, since its establishment, there is a deep ethno-
political conflict in Israel, and in the last few decades, the inequality gap increased dra-
matically. Within this state of affairs, it is inevitable that informal, unofficial, or less
controlled procedures and efforts will flourish to address uneven urban development and
planning injustices and as suggested by Alfasi (2006), to fill the gap between the long-
term plan and the immediate needs that surface.
It is important to note that the case studies used for this examination of planning ini-
tiatives by active residents that resulted in (or tried to accomplish) statutory, long-term
plans are not exhaustive of the scope of self-organization initiatives in Israel. Nevertheless,
48 Planning Theory 18(1)

the effort to understand each case in itself and in comparison with the other cases yielded
insightful categorization to which more cases and additional categories may be added in
future research. It is argued that identifying the characteristics and patterns of these
appearances is necessary to show the many forms of self-organization that coexist and to
gain clarity about the ways in which different forms of planning are connected.

Self-organization by the disenfranchised for basic rights

This category understands the self-organization actions of those groups that are not nor-
matively considered as entitled citizens but are nevertheless part of an urban or non-
urban environment. Those people who “are denied planning approval or full membership
in the urban community” (Nufar and Yiftachel, 2014: 487) are most tightly associated
with urban informality, which is used to characterize large metropolitan areas in develop-
ing countries, where more than half the population can be classified as “informal”
(AlSayyad, 2004; Roy, 2005, 2011). Urban informality then “denote[s] developments,
populations and transactions which do not comply with planning or legal regulations and
are denied planning approval or full membership in the urban community” (Nufar and
Yiftachel, 2014: 487). Davis (2006: 24) speaks of “informal survivalism” as the primary
mode of livelihood in “Third World cities.” Informality is conceived of as a manifesta-
tion of the uneven nature of capitalist development (Rakowski, 1994) and as the spatial
representation of the grassroots rebellion against state bureaucracy and the extralegal
spaces that lie outside its legal framework (De Soto, 2000). Bayat (2000, 2010) suggests
that informality is the habitus of the poor and the dispossessed.
Almost 20% of the population in Israel comprises Palestinian Arabs, who are gener-
ally underserved by the state and its highly centralized planning system. National plan-
ning policies act to restrict and annul the organic development of neighborhoods, villages,
and towns of Palestinian Arabs (Jabareen, 2009, 2014; Yiftachel, 2006, 2008). Illegalizing
new unauthorized housing constructions (and other planning tools) is a means to domi-
nate and control the Palestinian population (Braverman, 2007; Jabareen, 2014). In such
constellations, the collective or individualistic production of space by the disenfran-
chised, creating realities on the ground (which are considered illegal and are then sub-
jected to demolition by the government), is entailed by necessity. Thus, Jabareen asserts,
when some groups are officially denied planning rights by the state and its planning
institutions, planning actions carried out by these disenfranchised groups out of necessity
may be framed under “informal rights to space production” (Jabareen, 2017). He argues
that a state’s ethno-political structure produces differentiation among its inhabitants
based on variations in privileged rights and citizenship status. This differentiation is
infused at the urban level and affects the distribution of urban rights in general and the
right to space production in particular. Furthermore,

the experience of the Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem teaches that collective groups have
the power to create alternatives to the formal mode of space production and be creative in their
survival and resistance. The right to necessity makes the life of Palestinians in Jerusalem
slightly more reasonable and contributes temporarily to the maintenance of the city (Jabareen,
2017: 28).
Eizenberg 49

Other examples of those who are outcasts of the planning system can be found in
Palestinian settlements that were or are now subjected to evacuation and destruction,
such as the case of the unrecognized settlements of the Bedouins in southern Israel. As a
matter of fact, in recent years, Israeli authorities have demolished thousands of Arab
homes in the unrecognized villages in the Negev (southern Israel) (Jabareen, 2017). In
these cases, the groups are reacting to and sometimes confronting specific planning
efforts of the formal planning institution. Their dissent is voiced in multiple channels:
legal channels of claiming rights or submitting objections to plans and prefigurative
practices of planning and making their space.
Similar instances in which the public and private spaces of a city are produced through
self-organization by the disenfranchised are highly generalized in space and in number;
such situations are globally spread and account for a large portion of the housing stock
in the countries where these acts prevail. It is generalized to such an extent that these
self-organization processes can be understood as a dominant mechanism of urban devel-
opment. Although they may be unrecognized or considered illegal, they are not in actual
conflict with the city and its planning institution. These emerging urban features, such as
the growing favelas in South American countries and shanty towns in South Africa and
West Indian countries, which are the product of self-organization by the disenfranchised
are all, to various degrees, an integral part of the city. Some of them are being legalized
de facto. The less fortunate ones remain legally unrecognized but are being partially
included into the urban infrastructure (Pamuk and Cavallieri, 1998), and others are being
ignored. In Israel, as Jabareen (2017) suggests, an estimated 20,000 illegal buildings
exist within the Jerusalem municipality alone, which makes up 80% of the housing infra-
structure of Arab population in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, only approximately 60–70 dem-
olition ordinances for illegal buildings in Jerusalem are issued each year. Thus, while the
planning institution does not take responsibility for these spaces or just ignores them,
these forms emerge as hard facts on the ground as part of, and in connection to, the regi-
mented city.

Self-organization by the ordinary for community interest

Within this category, purposes of self-organization by residents are identified as collec-
tive interests that may be positioned on the scale of profit from non-profitable, to indi-
rectly profitable, and also to profitable but not entrepreneurial. Two distinctions should
be made here. First, ordinary residents are distinguished from the other two group cate-
gories—the “disenfranchised” and the ‘powerful’—by means of rights: the “disenfran-
chised” have no or very few entitlements pertaining to planning; the “powerful” (which
are discussed in the next category) have multiple rights and entitlements (mainly eco-
nomic) that grant them opportunities to produce urban space; and the ordinary residents
are varied in their socioeconomic background, education, cultural capital, and so on, but
not being disenfranchised, they have better access to the planning institution and plan-
ning tools. The second distinction concerns the goals of self-organization. Here, too,
there is a wide range of goals, such as a demand for a park or other community amenities
or alternatively a fight to remove community hazards, which share a community-ori-
ented interest.
50 Planning Theory 18(1)

Whereas, in general, the Arab collective in Israel is excluded from planning rights and
its self-organization efforts should be considered as falling within the previous category
of the “disenfranchised,” there are a few examples of Arab groups that self-organized in
an effort to transform their situation by utilizing and working with institutionalized plan-
ning tools to advance community aims. The case of the El-Ashkaria area in Beit Hanina,
Jerusalem, illuminates this course and with successful results. When one of the neighbor-
hood residents received an order for the partial demolition of his home, he initiated the
organization of his fellow neighbors, many of whom were threatened with demolition,
and together, they approached the local council (a subdivision of the Jerusalem munici-
pality that is unique to Jerusalem).2 The group asked for help and collaboration with the
council in finding a planner and in guiding the process. The result was an unprecedented
statutory plan for 20.51 acres for the existing structures and including future planning
rights for both housing and public services. This case exemplified the self-organization
of residents, which emerged as an alternative planning process that produced, in turn, a
statutory detailed plan for the area. Using Miraftab’s (2004) notions, this group, which is
usually associated with the disenfranchised, invented a space for its participation that
then became open to the planning institution.
Two other cases from a very different socio-geographical context illuminate some
variations that exist within this category. The first consists of residents’ self-organization
in reaction to the local outline scheme for Tel Aviv-Jaffa 2020. The municipality organ-
ized public participation sessions to present and discuss different aspects of the plan.
However, suffering from urban disinvestment and blight for many years, this ad hoc
group realized that the city now planned to direct considerable redevelopment efforts to
the area (the other areas were saturated, and there was very little development potential
in them) but not in a way that corrected historical injustice and improved their situation.
With the help of a non-governmental organization (NGO) and local professionals, the
group produced an alternative outline scheme for the southern and eastern neighbor-
hoods of the city.
Throughout the development of the alternative plan, the group held public meetings
presenting their plan and developing it according to the comments that it received. The
group learned the city’s master plan—a vision document—and showed how its plan bet-
ter fit and followed the vision more than the proposed outline scheme. Finally, the group
presented its plan to the municipal planning unit—sometimes in very difficult and con-
frontational meetings—and was able to recruit elected officials to support it. This is an
example of the self-organization of residents that resulted in a comprehensive, rather
than localized, plan. However, the residents were eventually dismissed, and the city pro-
ceeded with its original plan perhaps because their form of action and the resulting pro-
posal were too strong a contrast to the power at hand such that no accommodation was
possible.
The second example concerns an empty lot in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa city center awaiting
approval for the development of three skyscrapers. Despite its many advantages, the
center of Tel Aviv-Jaffa suffers from a severe lack of open green space. The empty lot
was used as an unofficial dog yard and as a local dump. The residents of the area became
self-organized to envision an alternative future for the four-plus acres of land. They
organized massive rallies under the slogan “green instead of gray,” sent petitions, and
Eizenberg 51

advanced a conservation status for one of the structures in the periphery of the lot, in that
action dismissing the possibility of demolishing it in future development.
The municipality, for various reasons, invited the group to round table discussions but
still asked them to choose from some options, all of which included high-rise buildings
in some combination with a park. Although the discussions developed and a resolution
was foreseen, a fraction of the group decided to refuse all option and change tactics. They
prefigurated a neighborhood park in the lot by holding weekly picnics there, inviting
speakers for conversations, give-and-take markets, and a potable garden, and bringing
their kids to play on the dirty gravel surface. While appropriating the space with great
perseverance for several years, they envision it as the first community ecological demo-
cratic park in the city. Eventually, the city withdrew from the development plan in favor
of a park (and invested money to buy parts of it that were not publicly owned) and invited
the group to plan the park in a participatory process.
In the lengthy process of developing a park attached to the vision of the group, resi-
dents worked together with the architect and various municipal officials. The on-ground
result is pretty unique for Israeli standards of public space. The park was opened in 2013
and gained considerable attention from visitors, news, and academic research, much
more than what a neighborhood-scale park usually receives,3 probably because it offers
a unique public space nowhere to be found elsewhere in Israeli cities.

Self-organization by the powerful for economic gains

Neoliberal urban governance and planning are producing new forms of residents’ engage-
ment in spatial production, delegating responsibilities for urban development to market
actors in collaboration with groups that are motivated by economic gains. Self-
organization by those who have economic power for entrepreneurial purposes is grow-
ingly encouraged through planning ordinances in Israel. To clarify, this category refers to
residents who are not what is generally considered as entrepreneurs in the urban develop-
ment industry.
A renewed form of self-organization for housing production is the “purchasing group”
executed within the private sector in its contemporary form (rather than through not-for-
profit associations). Individuals self-organize in ad hoc groups to purchase an urban
parcel of land, plan, and develop a condominium building on it. Being entrepreneurs and
developers themselves, the group saved somewhere approximately 20% to 30% of the
housing expenses. Many become involved in such adventures to have an apartment that
they cannot afford buying in a place with booming housing prices. A few in the more
expensive area get involved as an investment. Regardless of their motivation, these resi-
dents, who are neither planners nor developers, produce urban space and are involved in
materializing the city’s plans.
A second more novel form of entrepreneurial self-organization is encouraged as a
means for neighborhood renewal and densification delegated (from the state and the
municipality) to the private sector. As part of a national outline plan (#38), an a priori
group of residents can contract a developer allowing them to construct 1 to 2.5 additional
floors on top of their building for the expansion of apartments, façade renovation, eleva-
tor incorporation, and foundation recalibration for earthquakes.4 The self-organized
52 Planning Theory 18(1)

group of residents is responsible for finding the most attractive deal and a reliable devel-
oper and developing and submitting a plan with the developer for approval.
There is another differentiation to be made here between developers’ entrepreneurial
activity in the housing market and the entrepreneurial involvement of residents’ groups
in the housing market. The case of national outline plan #38 requires the collaboration of
developers and residents in a for-profit deal that eventually, although gradually through
the application of on-the-spot plans, transforms urban areas—density levels, urban
design, and infrastructure needs.
The newly approved (February 2017) 2040 National Housing Strategic Plan allocated
this form of planning and space production to cover 40% of the objective growth in hous-
ing stock in economically viable municipalities where this kind of “planning deal” is
feasible and where such deals are currently materialized and less than 10% of the hous-
ing 2040 objective in the lower economically rated municipalities. However, apart from
planning for the magnitude of the future housing stock, actual urban planning, as in this
national plan, is left for the self-organization efforts of individuals to initiate urban
renewal.

Conclusion
This research engages with the discourses on residents’ participation and agency in plan-
ning by exploring different forms of planning that coexist and their interrelations. Three
categories were offered to further unpack the notion of self-organization and suggest the
inextricable and overlapping relations of formal and informal planning, of top-down and
bottom-up planning, of the so-called “resistance” or “insurgency” and the so-called “cen-
tralized” planning system, and so on. The three categories of self-organization for plan-
ning ends that have emerged from the case studies are as follows:

1. Self-organization for basic rights (by the disenfranchised/disempowered);

2. Self-organization for community interest (by the ordinary);
3. Self-organization for economic gains (by the powerful).

These categories or patterns are argued to be part of a wider spectrum of assemblages

of self-organization in planning. Whereas, in general, urban planning in Israel is under-
stood as a highly centralized system and, for the most part, does not support residents’
intervention, the different instances reveal a somewhat more complex picture.
Based on these categories, I propose an integrative framework of self-organization
according to which urban planning emerges on many different levels: it is interplay of
institutionalized and centralized aspects and ad hoc self-organization aspects as well as
everyday practices. Table 1 presents the three categories of self-organization in planning.
The purpose of this framework is to propel the understanding of social complexities as
processes of mutually constitutive and dynamic relations between different components.
The table differentiates the categories based on common principles in planning theory
(as reviewed in the Introduction of the article) and new examinations suggested here as
needed to avoid a narrow or singular understanding, and challenge the dichotomies, and
commonly affixed notions.
Eizenberg 53

These categories and the principles that demarcate them thus support a few objec-
tives, already postulated as such in the literature. First, they help retract the course of
either heralding bottom-up demands for participation, self-organization, and top-down
initiatives of participation as benevolent, empowering, and democratizing or dismissing
them as cynical, manipulative, and another form of neoliberal strategy. Thus, instead of
mere good or bad practices, the new categories encompass both potentials and poisons.
Second, as the different instances show, self-organization happens in many different
ways, sometimes approved and encouraged and sometimes not. In either option, it is an
integral part of producing the space in which we all live. Self-organization is integral to
the so-called planning institution, regardless of its culture. Even in a rigorous, centralized
planning institution, as the example of Israel presents, there is an ongoing negotiation
and co-determination between the institution of planning and various self-organization
efforts. The centralized planning institution either overlooks self-organization efforts
until they cannot be ignored or assimilates them into the “system” through legalization,
legitimation, or other means.
Third, understanding self-organization efforts as an assemblage of components rather
than on a formal–informal axis or a top-down–bottom-up axis brings to the fore different
aspects that are negotiated in the making of urban planning, such as the tools and pro-
cesses of planning undertaken in self-organization efforts. Self-organization efforts
exhibit a considerable amount of creativity in using and inventing planning tools, pro-
cesses, and products. As these efforts are always in negotiation with the institution, they
constantly produce and shape the planning culture.
A broad discussion on self-organization in planning is also important in the context of
the state’s withdrawal from public planning and the consequent privatization of urban
planning. Self-organization as a planning tool is part of this process of privatization and
delegation of responsibilities of what were once public services to individuals and
groups. Opportunities for self-organization for planning, as we have observed, are
deployed by underprivileged groups, but they are also deployed by individual entrepre-
neurs and market forces. Other research from various places (e.g. on the localism act in
the United Kingdom: Bailey, 2014) has indicated that normative tools for self-organiza-
tion favor and enhance the already privileged. Therefore, self-organization further con-
tributes to the well-off and the powerful rather than democratizing the urban sphere.
Thus, as well-suggested by Purcell (2006), openness and opportunities for participation
and self-organization are not necessarily the path to a better, more just society. In the
context of a dominant entrepreneurial mode of thinking and conduct—“We are all entre-
preneurs now” (Pozen, 2008)—self-organization should be very cautiously interpreted.
Nevertheless, even in such a context, the process of delegation of responsibilities to
individuals and groups marks a change in the heretofore centralized planning institution.
This crack in the system may also support the needs of disadvantageous groups and the
disenfranchised by opening opportunities to participate in processes that were utterly
shutoff for them. Note that all groups in the analysis, including the disenfranchised, also
used normative planning tools and practices such as zoning changes, on-the-spot plan-
ning, allocation of more building rights, and re-parcellation.
Unpacking different manifestations of self-organization in urban planning proposes a
more relational interpretation that is based on multiple distinctions. Two more
54 Planning Theory 18(1)

distinctions should be highlighted. The first is the prospect or goal of self-organization.

The goals of residents organizing in planning may change through the process or may
even not be fully articulated by the participants. Nevertheless, understanding the purpose
of self-organization, whether for financial gains alone, for improving the urban experi-
ence, out of necessity for survival, or as a combination of these aims and others, is neces-
sary for pinning down general tendencies as well as dire needs and conflicts.
Finally, identifying the type of outcome achieved by residents’ intervention through
self-organization is essential. Here, too, a combination of outcomes is most likely to be
the rule. The self-organization of residents can be dissolved without any planning prod-
ucts, without any effect on the planning process and conception, or without changing the
actual urban space. However, self-organization could have a dramatic effect on all three
fronts. Portraying these assemblages reveals some unexpected realizations on power
relations and agency; the identification of the “self” in self-organization by the group’s
rights and power does not necessarily correlate with the extent of the outcome. The cases
analyzed in the article, for example, suggest that the most intense impact on the physical
environment is actually by the disenfranchised, the traditionally rightless.
The widely accepted failure of the communicative turn in planning and the implemen-
tation of participatory spatial planning methods have led to disappointing results
(Boonstra and Boelens, 2011; Eizenberg and Shilon, 2016; Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000;
McCann, 2001, and others). This failure is usually explained by a drastic imbalance in
control and authority between participating residents and those in power—the govern-
ment and the private market (Fainstein, 2010; Innes and Booher, 2004). However, per-
haps this failure indicates that we have not fully understood and are not yet capable of
conceptualizing the multifaceted spatial relations that produce our urban environment.
The study of different aspects of self-organization according to the aforementioned dis-
tinctions, and other distinctions that will be proposed in further research, opens up a
window to a new understanding of the power relations and the potency of different
groups and actors in the planning system.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Notes
1. The Localism Act (2011) in the United Kingdom, for instance.
2. On one hand, the local councils of Jerusalem provide the utmost participatory resident
engagement with local issues nowhere else found in Israel. On the other hand, when under-
stood within the annexed East Jerusalem territories, the local councils might be understood as
a mechanism for local control over the non-integrated and disenfranchised population.
3. For example: http://worldlandscapearchitect.com/kiryat-sefer-park-tel-aviv/#.V-o6K_l95aQ
4. This plan was not defined as an urban renewal plan until its third correction in 2014. It was
devised as an earthquake protection plan for buildings constructed before 1980. However, it
was immediately adapted by those who live in market-attractive areas as a means to renovate
buildings and yards with no public investment. The correlation between the number of appli-
cations of this strategy and earthquake-prone areas is negative.
Eizenberg 55

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Author biography
Efrat Eizenberg is an environmental psychologist and an assistant professor at the Faculty of
Architecture and Town Planning, The Technion, Israel. Her research topics include planning with
communities, urban regeneration, urban struggles and the politics of space, urban nature and land-
scape perception. She is the Author of “From the Ground Up: Community Gardens in New York
City and the Politics of Spatial Transformation”, published in 2013 by Routledge.