The hedgehog whose death paved the way for a greener Jerusalem

Join date : 1970-01-01

A citizen-led battle for an urban park finally pays off, yielding an esplanade that weaves through the city's neighborhoods, allowing residents from all sectors to mingle.

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This is a story that begins with a funeral for a hedgehog. In 2008, a dead hedgehog was found on the railway tracks in Jerusalem, between the Katamonim (Gonen) and Mekor Haim neighborhoods. At the time, a group of residents was waging a battle to prevent the city's old railway tracks from being paved over. In memory of the deceased hedgehog, these residents, along with students at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and the Society for Protection of Nature, decided to establish the “Trail of the Hedgehog," a walking path that celebrates urban nature.
This was the first of many initiatives taken by the activist group, consisting mainly of residents of the Katamonim neighborhood, in an effort to create an urban park along the course of the old railway tracks.
Two hundred residents attended the walking path's inauguration; Mekor Haim Street was closed and municipal dignitaries came to honor the hedgehog and the residents. “It was cute and surreal at the same time," said Ehud Uziel, one of the activists. “This party was a pinnacle of civic engagement, one of the most successful and emotional ones ever held in Jerusalem."
That activists' struggle eventually paid off, leading to the birth of Railway Park, a long and narrow esplanade that has become a favorite spot of many Jerusalemites. The park has also raised the value of real estate in adjacent neighborhoods, and attracted young, new residents, linking together populations that had never interacted before. One could argue that the park has changed the conceptions of space and transportation in the city, and turned almost everyone living nearby into a social activist.
Until 1988, a bulky train intersected the city. The train, making its way from Tel Aviv, traveled through the Malha neighborhood to its terminal at the end of Emeq Refa’im Street. When this section of the line stopped running, the tracks and their surroundings became a neglected, trash-littered eyesore right in the core of the city. According to city planners, the tracks were to be paved over, making way for an extensive road network. Residents of the adjacent Katamonim neighborhood discovered these plans and set out to thwart them.
Former Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski was not impressed and declared that he would go through with the planned construction “for the benefit of the residents."
“We quickly changed our own concept," says Yossi Saidov, one of the leaders of the park initiative. “Instead of fighting against something we started to fight for something, namely creating the park. We were constantly one step ahead of City Hall, establishing facts on the ground and neutralizing the municipality. Before a meeting with the city engineer I arrived early and left a flyer on each chair, inviting everyone to the inauguration of the 'Hedgehog Trail.' The Engineer said that he would attend as a private citizen. So they all came as private citizens and saw parents with baby carriages, with the street closed to traffic. That changed their opinion."
After a two-year struggle, which included art events under the auspices of Bezalel and the creation of a community garden with the assistance of the Society for the Protection of Nature, the residents secured a promise to establish the park from then-mayoral candidate Nir Barkat. The changing of municipal guard in 2008 made a major difference. Barkat and his deputy Naomi Tsur, together with the Jerusalem Development Authority, advanced the initiative, and the park began taking shape.
Three months ago, the full length of the park was inaugurated. It spans 7 kilometers from the old station to the Teddy soccer stadium in Malha. It is set to be extended in the future, linking up with the metropolitan park that surrounds Jerusalem in the Refa’im valley area.
The park quickly altered its surroundings, even before its completion. “We kept saying that all the neighborhoods along the way, from Beit Lehem Road to the village of Beit Safafa, turned their backs on the tracks," said Prof. Kimi Kaplan, a historian from Bar Ilan University and a leader of the park committee. “That is why the tracks became neglected and were covered in trash. If we could only turn and face the tracks, a connection would be made. This is actually what transpired. Now you can see Arabs from Beit Safafa alongside youth and residents of the German Colony neighborhood, all mingling in the park. It’s amazing how people discovered what was in their back yard."
An old Jerusalem adage has it that Emeq Refa’im Street is the most Tel Aviv-like street in the capital, since it is the only main road with a gentle slope. Due to the topography of the valley, the park, too, enjoys this gentle slope for its entire length. This is precisely why this route was selected for the train in the 19th century. This slope also makes the park a perfect place for cyclists and pedestrians. Riding along it reveals the unexpected long axis of Jerusalem.
In contrast to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem is conspicuously divided into neighborhoods, without long axes which traverse the city and its different sectors. Railway Park is different. It starts in the urban and commercial area of Emeq Refa’im and the old railway station passes along the spacious houses of Baka, through the residential blocks of the Katamonim and then along the houses and orchards in Beit Safafa, until it leaves the urban areas and links up with Nahal Refa’im at the southern edge of the city.
The impact of the park was greater than just changing the entertainment habits of its neighbors. “Community identity in Katamonim revolves around the school or synagogue, but here we have something on a citywide scale," says architect Yair Avigdor, who designed the park. “A small, side-street apartment in Katamonim suddenly found itself at the center of the attention. There were four isolated sectors here. There were the Katamonim residential blocks, surrounded by highways, Beit Safafa, Mekor Chaim and Baka-German Colony. Residents in each sector went about their business separately, disconnected from other areas. Now you see people along the whole park and this creates a continuum. I don’t mean the cyclists who whiz through it in a quarter of an hour. You now see head-covered Arab women on Shabbat walking alongside men returning from synagogue. When I first saw professional cyclists from Beit Safafa along the path I realized that the different cultures were indeed mingling”.
Residents of Beit Safafa soon discovered the economic potential of the park. They opened stands selling soft drinks and ice cream to cyclists and pedestrians. Two women, Maya Frankfurt and Sunna Zo’abi-Othman, are planning to open a community café in the yard of the bilingual school that abuts the park. It will sell food and local artwork produced by Jewish and Arab women.
The park also changed the political organization among Katamonim residents. In the last elections, activists for the park handily won control of the community administrative body (a statutory body that runs the community together with the municipality). Saidov became the head of this body. In nearby Baka, activists set up a "Park Patrol." Housing prices in the area are rapidly rising since the end of construction and new populations, particularly families with children, are moving in.
The Railway Park in Jerusalem is joining a group of other parks around the world that were built on disused railway lines. The most famous of these is the Highline Park in west Manhattan. Similar parks have been erected in Europe and the United States in recent years. The tracks, usually surrounded by fences which separate neighborhoods, can be transformed at low cost into long and narrow parks that connect neighborhoods and are suitable for sporting activities. The planners of the Jerusalem park took care to preserve the old tracks as part of the design, as was done elsewhere. Along the tracks they planted plane trees, which will make the park shady in coming years.
While waiting for these trees to grow, two dangers lurk. One is a plan to lay down a light rapid transit train through the park, and the other is a plan for a multi-lane highway that will link the Katamonim neighborhood to the Talpiyot industrial area. This road will also cross through the park, at the juncture of Beit Safafa and the Jewish neighborhoods. “We support the light rail train on condition that it doesn’t harm the park,” said Saidov, “but we oppose the highway, since the area is suited for public, not private transportation. The park is a fait accompli and can no longer be harmed. It’s more than an established fact, it’s a strategic asset to the area, its oxygen line”.

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