Rural planning, in housing or residential contexts differs from urban planning. While rural residential planning is purposefully sparce and intentionally dictates detached housing and great distances separate the residential units, in contrast, urban residence is dense, allowing much less non-residential space, and expands skywards.
Residential densification is often justified by a widespread supposition that higher density enhances greater net positive environmental effects (Dembinsky et. al., 2025)[1]. In that sense, rural planning has more negative environmental effects. This research explores whether urban planning effects rural planning, regarding residential density?
The case study chosen is the State of Israel. The prominent trend of intensifying residential density is reflected a well through the evolution of rural planning in Israel over 75 years. This planning system was designed for planned 700 cooperative villages (aka Kibbutzim and Moshavim). Currently, this rural planning policy is undergoing a transformative amendment, which in effect triggered this research.
This presentation aims to describe and analyze through desk top research how the rural planning system evolved from a restrictive policy of the amount and purpose of residential units in Israeli planned cooperative villages towards much more flexible amounts and proposes. Note that cooperative villages in Israel differ from other villages that are non-cooperatives. This is a different planning situation that calls for separate research[2].
Descriptions of one kibbutz and one moshav through the lenses of evolution of their residential planning from 1950 to the present, will be highlighted.
[1] Sebastian Dembski, Thomas Hartmann, Andreas Hengstermann and Richard Dunning (2025) Densification policy between state and market: strategies of land policy in four European countries, https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/epdf/10.3828/tpr.2025.13
[2] Kais Nasser (2025) Public, sharing and land: urban planning for the Arab population in Israel, https://bgri-press.bgu.ac.il/node/1116. ISBN: 978-965-510-163-8. Dr. Nasser's research is not focused on rural planning but on more general planning and cultural aspects.