Daily Life in Lod

On Power, Identity, and Spatial Protest in A Mixed City

Abstract

In this article I analyze the production of space in the ‘mixed city’ of Lod. I argue that daily life in this city, as in other ‘mixed cities’ in Israel, is based on an ethnic logic of space. This logic controls and anchors the demographic, cultural and symbolic dominance of the Jewish majority over the Arab minority. My argument is informed by Henri Lefebvre’s model of the interrelations between perceived space, conceived space and lived space as three vectors that explain the production of space in its tangible, professional and symbolic levels. In the article I discuss the contribution of demographic dynamics in Lod to the segregated spatial pattern of the city. I later critically outline the planning discourse that shaped the urban landscape of the city since 1948. I conclude with a study of the symbolic meaning of space in the narratives of the city’s Arab inhabitants.