About
What makes some cities attractive to residents and businesses and other to commuter towns?
How can community and trade be boosted by applying a few smart and simple actions?
Haira’s professional team works together with the local authority to build together a program that would revive various public spaces throughout the city.
The process is tailored and attentive to the community on the one hand, and to the needs that arise from the local authority on the other, resulting in a measurable and proven multidisciplinary program that fits the city.
Throughout the program, city leaders receive comprehensive training, a rich toolkit, and a variety of leads for professional collaborations, for the purpose of running similar projects in the city independently in the future.
Why is that important?
Investing in a sustainable urban space and creating active and vibrant public areas, bring many significant benefits to cities and their residents: forming new communities, increases sense of security, support for local businesses, strengthening the sense of belonging to the city, creating local culture and more. These and other benefits are proven time and again by similar experiences throughout the world, academic research as well as our own professional experience with projects that we lead here in Israel.
The Haira program is supported by the Beracha Foundation and run by The Israeli Green Building Council (ILGBC)
Hop aboard the global trend
enable your city’s residents move,
stay, and meet in thriving public spaces.
You too could enjoy the benefits and values of such a process while receiving professional guidance and support by the staff of the Haira program.
Meet the Team
What is your personal connection to the Haira program?
Haira enables me to use my multidisciplinary knowledge and my political experience for the benefit of the urban spaces in which we operate. In addition, the program inspires and fuels my ongoing academic research.
- Liat Arbel
Head of Urban Sustainability in The Natural Step Israel, which aims to employ and promote sustainability throughout Israeli society. Liat has worked in various roles in social change organizations and as a corporate responsibility director in large companies. She has extensive experience in building cross-sectoral partnerships, business development and is extremely familiar with public and political systems.
She holds a B.A. in social sciences from the Open University and an MBA in globalization and democracy studies from the Open University. She is currently writing her thesis in a doctoral program at Ben-Gurion University on the connection between sustainability and trust of residents in local authorities.
Liat has been serving as a councilwoman in the city of Kiryat Ono since 2008.
- Einat Aroch
Guided by the “horizontal leadership” approach, Einat accompanies social organizations in change processes, offering a methodology that provides many people within the organization an opportunity to take part in shaping and leading the desired change.
In her position as Operations and Project Manager at JDC Israel, she developed entrepreneurship programs, and took part in the establishment of the “Mifras” educational initiatives organization and ran its fellowship program.
Einat also belongs to the IMO, in which its international members, consultants from ten countries strive to develop the concept of horizontal leadership throughout the world.
She a B.A. in industrial design and an MBA in business administration.
What is your personal connection to the Haira program?
Haira in my view is connections. Primarily between private life and work. I live in the city so everything we deal with is relevant in my own personal life. Then comes connections between various disciplines; between the past and the present and most importantly, between residents among themselves as well as between them and 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 an architect and city planner. She is the founder and editor of the online magazine “Street Language” and partner at “Publica” – a consulting firm specializing in managing urban strategy and planning for local authorities, government ministries and philanthropic foundations, with a spatial and social emphasis. Hila has extensive experience in strategic management and spatial planning both in local authorities, the academia and in the entrepreneurial arena.
Hila also has urban planning research experience. She has MBA in planning from the Department of Geography at Tel Aviv University and was part of the ‘founding generation’ of the research team of the Laboratory for contemporary Urban Design (LCUD).
In addition, Hila is a lecturer on multi-aged public spaces. at the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- Liron Dan
Head of Haira Program.
Liron is a trained product designer. She holds an MBA in multidisciplinary environmental studies from the Porter School at Tel Aviv University. She has researched materials and technologies in the materials library at the Design Museum in Holon, and founded “Materyus”, a consultancy agency with expertise in sustainable materials and technologies for the products and construction industry. Liron was part of the planning team and oversaw the establishment of the Israeli crew’s “Zero Energy House” in the international “Solar Decathlon” competition.
As part of her work at the Israeli Green Building Council (ILGBC), she set up and managed the online for green building catalog, managed the development of the ‘Neighborhood 360‘ measurement tool for planning and developing sustainable neighborhoods and managed the implementation of the ‘Mar’eh-Makom‘ tool to promote walkability in the city.
What is your personal connection to the Haira program?
That moment when you’re riding your bicycle in a vibrant urban center; it’s nice out, you see so much greenery and interesting people around you and you hear inspiring music in the background. That moment is quite rare here right now. I would like to see more sights like this in cities we work with.
