Designs for a Divided Jerusalem

As part of TheAtlantic.com's and the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace's ongoing Is Peace Possible? special report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Karen Lee Bar-Sinai, Yehuda Greenfield-Gilat, and Chen Farkas, a trio of Israel-based architects involved with the group SAYA/Design for Change, have offered up a series of designs developed in collaboration with Palestinian planners that illustrate options for specialized border crossings in a potentially split Jerusalem. It's a fascinating case study of the challenges urban planners would face should a two-state solution ever come to pass.

The architects' preferred design for an entry/exit point on Road 60 (above), for example, the main north-south artery through Jerusalem that's used by both East and West Jerusalemites, calls for a pedestrian border crossing composed of two structures, east and west of the road, and connected by a bridge. They write: