Memory and place in participatory planning

This paper looks at the role of memory in exploring multiple meanings of place, and its active empowering role in participatory planning processes. A team of scholars from the Planning for the Environment with Communities Laboratory at Tel Aviv University's Department of Geography and Human Environment (PECLAB) was invited by the Bat Yam municipality to initiate a participatory process with residents of Meo'not Yam Neighbourhood to formulate a consensual renewal plan. During the project's three years (2010–2013) dozens of meetings and in-depth interviews with residents were held, as well as surveys conducted to understand the residents' sense of place and wishes for their neighbourhood. One of the main methods was to remember and discuss the neighbourhood's past, with reference to its future development. This discussion is the focus of the paper.