Digital displaceability in the settler-colonial city
The case of Musrara in western Jerusalem
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7153129 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hagit Keysar (0000-0003-4472-4230, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 1525-1545 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning C Politics and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2399-6544 • E-ISSN: 2399-6552 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/23996544251370856 |
| OpenAlex | W4417310113 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 45 |
This article examines the correlations between top-down digital transformations in urban space and the contemporary conditions of displaceability. Using a case study of the Musrara neighborhood of Jerusalem, it analyzes the construction of a digital entrepreneurial “quarter” by historicizing the spatial and material conditions within which it emerged. In contrast to the hegemonic discourse propagated by city officials and tech companies, which describes the emergence of digital innovation as a watershed moment in the socio-economic development of the city, my analysis situates this event within the structures of the Israeli settler-colonial regime, and as the latest iteration in a genealogy of displacement. The specific history of settler-colonial displacement in Musrara is constituted by the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinian community, and the construction of a no-man’s-land, an urban frontier characterized by state abandonment and absence. I show how the spatial conditions materialized by the no-man’s-land were instrumental in the social marginalization of the Mizrahi Jews who populated Musrara after 1948 and became ingrained in the development of the neighborhood till this very day. On this basis, I argue that the turning of Musrara into a digital entrepreneurial “quarter” creates conditions of displaceability, which are shaped by similar patterns of abandonment and absence and mediated by the new actors and discourses of the tech hegemony
Frontier · Hegemony · Narrative · Urban space · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Smart Cities and Technologies · Urban Planning and Governance
The New Urban Frontier
Urban Social Movements in Jerusalem
Sorting Things Out
The Origin and Development of the Israeli Black Panther Movement
Algorithms and Posthuman Governance
E-scaping apartheid
Cities and the Creative Class
Making Jerusalem “Cooler”
From displacement to displaceability
Actually existing smart citizens
Jerusalem’s Road 1
Revisiting the urban frontier through the case of New Kvillebäcken, Gothenburg
The evolvement of neighbourhood activism and the extension of citizenship rights
People-Centered Smart Cities
Smart” Colonialism and Digital Divestment
The Marginalization of the Mizrahim
Territories and identities in Jerusalem
The Properties of Space
Public Housing as Control
Selective rescaling, inequality and popular growth coalitions
Smart cities, the digital divide, and people with disabilities
Who is the ‘smart’ resident in the digital age? The varied profiles of users and non-users in the contemporary city
Art’s failure to generate urban renewal
(Digital) neo-colonialism in the smart city
Re‐inhabiting no‐man's land
Digital displacement
Cuts, Flows, and the Geographies of Property
Law, Property, and the Geography of Violence
The New Urban Frontier
Widespread and diverse neighborhood gentrification in Jerusalem
Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native
What is a settler-colonial city
Becoming digital citizens
Devaluation, erasure and replacement
Civic Infrastructure and the Appropriation of the Corporate Smart City
Test-Bed Urbanism
Digital colonialism
Place Making' and 'Place Attachment' as Key Concepts in Understanding and Confronting Contemporary Urban Evictions
Introducing
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |