Playgrounds as colonial infrastructure
Biopolitics and spatial control in Jaffa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22994640 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yara Sa’di-Ibraheem (0000-0002-9398-2044, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-14 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Children s Geographies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1473-3277 • E-ISSN: 1473-3285 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14733285.2026.2694346 |
| OpenAlex | W7166512431 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
Research has examined the role of national parks in rural areas under colonial conditions and explored their role as mechanisms for masking territorial control, displacement, and dispossession. This article aims to shift the focus to urban green spaces. It investigates the proliferation of playgrounds as infrastructural tools of settler-colonial urbanism through a genealogical approach. Focusing on Jaffa – a historically Palestinian city within Israel currently undergoing neoliberal urban regeneration – the article traces the histories and developments of the playgrounds’ spaces. The findings show that they not only obscure past processes of dispossession and displacement but also function as biop instruments in the present and toward a settler-colonial future. These playgrounds inscribe socio-political distinctions into the urban fabric, delineating whose lives are to be nurtured, whose future is to be envisioned, and whose presence is taken as superfluous.
Biopower · Colonialism · Displacement (psychology) · Gentrification · Masking (illustration) · Placemaking · Urbanism · Agricultural and Environmental Management · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Urban Green Space and Health
Erased from Space and Consciousness
Jaffa Shared and Shattered
The Promise of Infrastructure
Jaffa amid Theoretical Transformations
Thorough surveillance
Good Arabs
Decolonizing the Study of Palestine
Urbanizing settler-colonial studies
Theorizing Gentrification as a Process of Racial Capitalism
Immigration restriction, ‘Americanization’ and the Playground Movement
Teaching the Children to Play
Settler colonial temporalities, ruinations and neoliberal urban renewal
The settler colonial city in three movements
Settler-colonial urbanisms
Keeping Apart on the Playground
The Agricultural Exports of Southern Palestine, 1885-1914
The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and its Aftermath
The politics of greening unceded lands in the settler city
Narratives of Redemption
What is a settler-colonial city
Exploring race and nation in playground propaganda in early twentieth-century Toronto
The Social Space of Gentrification
Placing Property
Fetishizing the modern city
Jaffa's times
Do Palestinians Live across the Road? Address and the Micropolitics of Home in Israeli Contested Urban Spaces
Infrastructural violence
The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |