The role of strategic planning in advancing sustainability at the metropolitan level: The case of Tel Aviv

This chapter explores the potential and the constraints of strategic planning for introducing environmental considerations at the metropolitan level, and its potential for advancing sustainability notions at the level. It describes the environmental aspects of the Tel Aviv strategic metropolitan plan and compares to those in the statutory land use plans covering the same area. The economic growth was driven in part also by globalization and the advent of the high technology sector in Israel’s economy, both of which were particularly felt in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Within the Tel Aviv metropolitan region a comprehensive update of the statutory central district master plan was prepared in the early 1990s. The main innovations of the metropolitan plan are the non-statutory measures it proposes as a complement to the land-use plans. The plan advanced an integrated transport vision, which includes all land transport modes.