Sustainability of population growth: a case study of urban settlements in Israel

One of the most sensitive criteria for gauging the degree of socio-economic prosperity of an urban settlement is the ability to sustain stable rates of population growth by attracting newcomers and retaining existing population. The present paper argues that after reaching a particular size (on the average, 20-30 000 residents), urban localities in Israel tend to experience substantial changes in components of their annual population growth. Starting with this inflection point, the growth of settlements gradually becomes less dependent on natural causes (birth and death rates) than on the ability to attract newcomers and retain current residents. On the basis of this conclusion, a strategy of 'redirecting priorities' to developing the peripheral regions of the country is suggested. This strategy proposes the concentration of state and local financial resources on selected development settlements until they reach the above population threshold and become more attractive for newcomers, followed by the sequential transfer of this support to other small urban localities in frontier areas. Although the present analysis was restricted to urban settlements in Israel, the mode of analysis and its applications for planning policy may be applicable to regional and urban physical planning elsewhere.