Summary and conclusion

The present study compared the mechanisms used by members of the Litvish and the Hasidic communities in four residential areas in the UK to construct a private and public “demarcation line” between the abstract obligations and the spatial reality in which they are applied and expose value-based elements that ensure the communities’ survival and resilience. Going beyond the case studies, identification of a flexible and adaptive approach to delineation-setting in the spatial reality of these four neighbourhoods broadens our knowledge about the spatial behaviour of the Haredi population, and the ramifications of changing policy on the strengthening of individual and collective identity in view of the challenge of exposure to “others”. The conflicts between the sacred and the profane, between the individual and his community and the general population, between the centre and the periphery, raise the old question about the role of interventions such as planning. The “terrain of interests” in which social groups use planning methods and rights to achieve sectoral goals underlines the impotence of the liberal planning system to regulate the infrastructure and enforce planning laws in areas where interests clash. Addressing a problem by bringing various approaches and methods together, while at once combining data gathered at the most micro level, the project aims to further interject in more narrow public debates on residential relations.