This text addresses a question of enduring interest to planners: can planning really bring about significant and positive change? In South Africa the process of political transition appeared to create the preconditions for planners to demonstrate how their traditional humanitarian and environmental concerns could find concrete expression in the reshaping of the built environment. The requirement that the segregrated apartheid cities be restructured, reintegrated and made accessible to the poor was high on the agenda of the new post-apartheid government, even prior to their election.

The mass immigration from the former Soviet Union to Israel in the 1990s offers the opportunity to study one of the largest-scale (non-disaster) crisis situations in a democratic, advanced-economy country. This book recounts the saga of how policymakers and planners at both the national and local levels responded to the formidable demand for housing and massive urban growth. Planners forged new housing and land-use policies, and applied a streamlined (but controversial) planning law. The outputs were impressive. The outcomes and impacts changed the landscape and human-scape of Israel,...