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 The City on the Wall

Semesters XI+XII  | Location: Neve Sha'anan's slopes, Haifa, Israel

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Today, the planning of physical space is divided across multiple disciplines, from architecture and landscape architecture to transportation engineering, infrastructure, and drainage. This professional separation—a relatively recent phenomenon—often begins in academic training, which discourages interdisciplinary integration. As a result, planners frequently focus narrowly on specific spatial segments, producing disruptions and disconnections in urban environments precisely where connectivity is most needed.

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In mountainous cities, this disciplinary division often leads to binary, level-based separation between different spatial uses. Retaining walls frequently appear at critical interfaces, such as between residential buildings, sidewalks, and adjacent roads. While addressing soil-support needs, these walls have become monotonous and impermeable features that reinforce boundaries and fragment urban space. Consequently, retaining walls can be seen as underutilized spatial resources, born from narrow engineering solutions whose potential has been overlooked. This raises the question: How can we plan cities on mountainous in a way that encourage a connected, walkable urban fabric, instead of fragmentation and physical barriers?

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The proposed intervention treats elevation differences as a planning advantage, transforming retaining walls into Supportive Spaces of usable, multifunctional volumes. At the neighborhood scale, this strategy converts slopes into continuous urban fabric where movement follows the topography rather than opposing it. This approach was applied on the slopes of Neve Sha’anan in Haifa, in an open area trapped between residential streets, providing an opportunity to expand the neighborhood while enhancing spatial cohesion.