This book focuses on the Muslim, Christian and Jewish neighborhoods outside the walls of old Jerusalem during the final decades of Ottoman rule in Palestine. Prof. Kark reviews the conditions that influenced the building of the new neighborhoods: availability and price of land, construction costs, rental rates, and the nature of the initiatives behind the ventures. The book also focuses on physical and social planning of modern construction in Jerusalem and considers the unique phenomenon of Jewish neighborhood by-laws. The author shows how the physical, economic and especially social neighborhood planning embodied in these guidelines, based partly on Jewish legal tradition, were quite advanced compared to prevailing European, American and no doubt Ottoman towns of the same period.
