About
Haira specializes in supporting and initiating projects in strategic locations inside cities aimed at improving the residents’ quality of life while benefitting the natural environment and the urban space.
The measures cities are taking to prepare themselves for climate change and to mitigate its impacts, as well as coping with the challenge of urban congestion are critical. Their importance is immense both at the local and global levels.
Cities implement urban sustainability practices, primarily renewal of the public space in an effort to reduce urban heating, to expand the green, natural areas and revitalize ecosystems.
The public space is also a community catalyst – it is the space for placemaking, it is what gives one a reason for walking, it strengthens the sense of belonging and facilitates cultural and community activities.
The public space as the main arena for engineering a spatial, environmental and community change
Haira draws its inspiration from several content areas. It bridges between theory and practice to create an innovative language for urban intervention, which consists of two synergetic moves – moves that complement one another:
Long-term strategic project for renewal of the public space through nature-based solutions. The project is built in a shared process that includes data analysis, studying the space and building a conceptual, organizational and physical framework for its realization.
Tactical moves and local projects – as a proof of concept, examination of the usefulness and needs solution, and as a confidence-building exercise between the community and the authority through activism.
Haira creates an innovative language for urban intervention in three activity circles
- Circle I – Physical: Intervening in the public space through space-altering strategic planning, supporting local projects and tactical moves.
- Circle II – Organizational: Development and implementation of organizational steps based on partnering with the municipal team, multi-sectorial strategic partnerships and participatory processes.
- Circle III – Communal: Building communities around local initiatives and around physical spaces for development.
Haira develops and implements a unique urban sustainability methodology.
The key principles of this methodology apply in all the cities in which Haira operates and in all the project types. Each principle is backed by a special work method that gets developed through the contact with the ground level and in accordance with the local needs of each city. The result is building a spatial network of urban sustainability consisting of localized projects and interlinked street sections (axes) based on the unique layout of each urban area.
- Haira creates location-specific solutions that comprise a different basket of solutions for each city.
- Haira creates a platform for joint dreaming, enabling visualization of an optimal spatial future and creation of a future picture of reality, one based on a concrete sustainable vision for the urban space.
- Haira focuses on promoting nature-based solutions and a lifecycle thought process that place the emphasis on rehabilitation of the natural stratum and transforming it into a vital infrastructure in the development and building of the city.
- Haira operates through multisectoral partnerships and implementation of multidisciplinary knowledge to deliver a holistic, long-term solution while creating force multipliers and a network of stakeholders that will support the urban initiatives.
- Haira promotes data-based decision-making practices, learning through doing and participatory processes by means of purpose-built tools.
Haira operates in three cities in Israel: Nahariya, Arad and Kiryat Bialik. Haira is currently expanding its work into additional cities.
Haira is supported by the Beracha foundation
Meet the Team
What is your personal connection to the Haira program?
The city has the most significant impact on our quality of life, and I am pleased that Haira enables me to apply my multidisciplinary knowledge and political experience to benefit the urban spaces in which we operate.
- Liat Arbel
Liat has extensive experience in strategic planning for business organizations and local authorities. As a feminist, humanist, and activist, she has founded and operated within several organizations for social change for decades. Liat advocates for a multidisciplinary approach as a tool to enhance the residents’ quality of life. In addition to her work at Haira, she serves as the Head of Urban Sustainability at The Natural Step Israel. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a Master’s degree in Public Policy. From 2008 to 2024, she served as a councilwoman in Kiryat Ono and led the Hamekomiyim movement in the city. councilwoman in the city of Kiryat Ono since 2008.
- Einat Aroch
Einat comes from a background in social entrepreneurship and leadership development. As an Operations and Project Manager at JDC Israel, she developed programs in the field of entrepreneurship. She was later involved in founding Mifras, a non-profit organization focused on educational entrepreneurship, where she managed the fellowship program. In recent years, she has been guiding social organizations through processes of change based on the horizontal leadership approach. This methodology enables multiple people within the organization to participate in shaping and leading change.
Einat is a member of IMO, an international organization comprising consultants from ten countries, which continuously develops and promotes the horizontal leadership approach globally. She currently works at the Sagol Center for Brain and Mind at Reichman University, where she teaches leadership courses for managers. She is also a mindfulness instructor and a ceramicist.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design and a Master’s degree in Business Administration.
What is your personal connection to the Haira program?
For me, Haira is all about connections. The first connection is between my private life and work. I live in the city, so the issues we address are relevant to my life. Then, Haira also enables me to address the connections between different fields of action and the past and the future. Finally, and most importantly, it engages me in the connection between the city’s residents and the connection between the decision-makers and the city in which they live.
What is your personal connection to the Haira program?
For me, the Haira program combines my great professional loves: fun and fruitful teamwork, promoting happy public spaces, deep connections between local authorities and their residents as well as the residents to their cities as well as adding trees to cities’ landscapes.
- Hila Lotan
Hila is a co-manager at Publica, a consulting firm specializing in urban strategy management and planning for local authorities, government ministries, and philanthropic foundations, with a particular emphasis on spatial and social aspects. She is the founder and editor of the online urbanism magazine Sfat Rechov and a lecturer in the Master’s program in the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she teaches an applied course on multi-generational public spaces.
Hila has extensive experience in strategic management and spatial planning, having gained practical experience as the Head of Long-Term Planning at the Holon Municipality, where she was involved in ongoing operations with various authorities. She has worked in architectural offices and academia, and acquired entrepreneurial experience as an architect in the founding team of the Sustainability Department at the real estate company Shikun & Binui.
Hila holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and a Master’s degree in Planning from the Department of Geography at Tel Aviv University. She is among the first generation of researchers at the Laboratory for Urban Design.
- Liron Dan
Liron is the Head of Haira. She is a product designer by training and holds a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies from the Porter School at Tel Aviv University. She has researched materials and technologies at the Materials Library at Holon’s Museum of Design and founded Materyus, a private consultancy specializing in sustainable materials and technologies for the product and construction industries.
Liron was part of the planning team that oversaw the establishment of the Zero Energy House in the international Solar Decathlon competition.
During her work with the Israel Green Building Council, she founded and managed The Catalog – The Online Green Building Product Database and developed the Neighborhood 360° measurement tool for planning and developing sustainable neighborhoods. Additionally, she managed the implementation of the Mare Makom measurement tool to promote walkability in the city.
Liron brings many years of experience in sustainable development and coordinating broad, multi-sector partnerships.
What is your personal connection to the Haira program?
I have spent most of my life living in large cities. As a child, the city seemed vast, gray, and sometimes even intimidating. Having experienced community life in a natural environment over the past decade, I dream of returning to a city that integrates nature and provides an optimal community infrastructure for growth.
