The Changing Landscape of a Utopia

Book excerpt: This book appears on the 100-year celebration of the kibbutz movement, a century since the establishment of the first kibbutz, Deganya (Alef) in 1910. The kibbutz started as a farming community, and over the years has defined and developed its unique ideology of social and economic aspects of self-rule, equality, mutual responsibility, and common ownership of the means of production. The kibbutz, that some define as an utopian community, has gradually developed into a community with diverse means of production, including leading international industries. The book describes the development of the unique system of zoning, with landscape and gardens that strongly reflect the ideology. This uniqueness was developed while rooted in the Western international tradition of landscape architecture, with planners and designers educated mainly in central Europe. The book describes the different periods and styles in the development of the kibbutz landscape, as well as some of the main landscape issues and elements such as the dominant tree species and the circle. It also describes in detail some of the key people involved in the development of the kibbutz landscape and gardens - landscape gardeners, landscape architects, and kibbutz gardeners. The dramatic political and economic changes that occurred in Israel have not bypassed the kibbutz, for they caused changes in kibbutz ideology and the community's social and economic structures. These changes and the changes that they have caused and are still causing in the kibbutz landscape are carefully detailed in the last chapter. The dramatic changes in the kibbutz landscape have also led to a discussion of of the need for landscape conservation as well, and some examples are described.