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Beersheba residents revitalize their city

Beersheba residents joined social activists and students in renovating neglected streets and public spaces in the poor neighborhoods of the city, engaging in a global movement of communal responsibility.
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Beersheba has many streets that look just like Rotenberg Street. Running through the heart of an older neighborhood, they are so derelict and ramshackle that the local residents have long abandoned any hope of living in a pleasant, well-tended and green urban space. Volunteers from the Making a Street project have now entered this grim reality to take up the challenge. For three hours on Jan. 13, student volunteers together with local residents turned the street around by revitalizing the community garden, creating a street cinema, building paths, painting murals and sidewalk paintings, and even setting up a neighborhood inn and creating hanging gardens.

That was the fourth time that the “Making a Street” group has completely turned a local street in Beersheba around, and on March 24, they’ll be doing it again to yet another street in the neighborhood. The project is part of an international “place-making” approach, which has been gaining a foothold also in Israel, where local residents take responsibility for the spaces in which they live, instead of waiting for the establishment to improve conditions for them. The person who brought this refreshing approach to Beersheba is Matan Saad, 28, who studies Urban Planning at Beersheba’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

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