Reclaiming the Bat Yam Waterfront as a public amenity

Reclaiming the Bat Yam Waterfront as a public amenity

Project Name

City Seafront Bat Yam

The Bat Yam waterfront, has been and continues to be shaped by political, cultural, economic, entrepreneurial and ecological forces, outlining the current and future programs for the coastline’s ongoing evolution. Bat Yam is home to 160,000 residents with a high density of 2,000 people per dunam.
Between city and the sea, Bat Yam’s 3.5 kilometer waterfront is the largest, most continuous open civic space in the city.
The planning of Bat Yam’s seafront included the design and execution of a series of strategic operations, each leveraging spatial opportunities, from makeshift interventions to new green infrastructures aimed at transforming the city’s relationship to its waterfront.

The projects vary in character, program, scale, execution costs and design. Common to all of our spatial interventions is the promotion of every-day use of Bat Yam’s waterfront as a key civic amenity. By enabling accessibility and new programs, while future-proofing the beachfront’s resilience,  Bat Yam’s waterfront has become a central tenet of the city’s identity for its residents and within the greater metropolitan coastal culture.

In order to connect Bat Yam residents to waterfront developments we employed a number of informational tactics: The distribution of “barcode benches” near points of transformation. A barcode affixed to the benches lets users browse the a website to view plans for each location, and actively respond to and shape the planning process.
In cooperation with the Tourism Department, a tourist information booth was set-up in a shipping container, redesigned and repositioned each year in the vicinity of the sea, further offering information about waterfront happenings and future plans.

City Seafront Bat Yam Projects Include:
Sea Grove, Beach Front Park
Riviera Beach
Bat Yam Southern Promenade
The Separate Beach
Beach Ridge Promenade
Bat Yam Pier

More
Information
Location
Bat Yam, Israel
Clients
Municipality of Bat Yam Bat Yam Economic Development Agency
Date
2015
Status
Completed
Size
3.5 Kilometers