Multi-spot zoning: A chain of public–private development ventures in Tel Aviv

• Highly flexible spot zoning was studied for its incremental effects in the city of Tel Aviv and in its planning system.
• Practical continuity between site-specific projects subverted all wider planning policies.
• Ever greater public–private ventures blurred planning logic, criteria and legitimacy.
• Current planning authorities and civil groups have contradictory perspectives on the urban planning and development.

The paper discusses the cumulative aspects of flexible planning’s engagement with massive public–private (PP) development ventures, tracing five ventures in Tel Aviv–Jaffa and analyzing each as a link in a chain of planning precedents. As in many other instances that materialized in this city, each venture was based on a spot-zoning elaboration of a planning deal that balanced cost and benefits for PP agencies. In each test case, public benefits and properties were bargained and official policies were modified. Neo-liberal policies have escalated planning flexibility, linking local multi-spot zoning with extreme luxury and increasingly high buildings. However, as citizens’ criticism progressively questioned the legitimacy of PP planning, a judicial debate is now taking place concerning the definition and function of spatial planning. Focusing this debate and the urban planning tradition that led to it are proposed here as a way of evaluating the concrete assets of urban PP planning today.