Instead of despairing about the environmental problems looming in their future, young Israelis have begun to grapple with solutions to such problems, through a competition to design a model environmental city for the new millennium.
by Shoshana Gabbay
In October 1998, a competition for students to design a model environmental city for the next millennium was launched by the Ministry of Education. The program was sponsored by the Israel Society for Ecology and Environmental Quality Services, together with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of the Environment, and more than 700 high-school students, Jewish and Arab, took part. Some six months later, 22 schools from all over the country, from the Galilee to the Negev, completed their presentations. The models were judged by a special team of town planners and environmentalists, and the most innovative solutions were exhibited at the Seventh International Conference of the Ecological Society held in June 1999, in Jerusalem.
The Youth Forum was first conceived by Dr Richard Laster, in order to raise environmental consciousness among young people in Israel through a project which would combine fun and creativity with education and information. The enthusiastic response and the impressive results, viewed by hundreds of participants in the international conference, attested to the success of the concept and assured its continuation in the future.
During the week-long conference, busloads of students from all over the country were brought to Jerusalem for a fun-filled day, which began at the Biblical Zoo and ended at the Youth Forum. Here, students visited the exhibition to see the work of their peers from across the country, to receive certificates and prizes, and to participate in small group seminars with environmental educators.
"It is remarkable to see how attentive students are to the exhibits and how engaged they become in our discussions. After having grappled with these questions themselves, they are quite interested to see what other students came up with," said Dr. Ronit Bodner, the program director.
Visitors to the exhibition, whether high school students or prominent scientists, were impressed by the originality and aesthetic quality of the work, which included computer presentations, an environmental calendar dedicated to a different theme for each month, videos and architectural models. The creativity in form was matched by the content of the presentations, with ideas ranging from underground transportation systems to futuristic clothes, equipped with temperature and radiation sensors.
One group of students from Tel Aviv envisioned artificial islands built in the sea near the city. "The advantage is that you could design it to be environmentally sustainable, right in the beginning," they said. The comment clearly illustrated the aim of the project: to encourage Israel's youth to take responsibility for designing their own future, in a sustainable and environmentally suitable manner, right from the start. The project organizers and the Israel Ecological Society have decided to provide a similar opportunity to students on an annual basis.
Perhaps the project that engendered the most hope for the future was a joint one by Jewish students from Lod and Arab students from Sachnin. Their project was combined with visits to each other's communities and a joint excursion. The final product was a series of city models, representing the past, present and future. Their vision of a future city included buildings with special windows that would change color during the day to let in or keep out sunlight, in order to minimize energy consumption for heating and cooling. In addition, the model featured receptacles for waste separation at source, areas for the production of compost from organic waste, and greenhouses for growing vegetables using the locally produced compost.
The results of this joint project were summed up by one of the students: "It was quite an experience. We learned that we are not different. We learned that there are many issues that are common to us all, which can only emerge during discussion of a specific, focused theme."