Uncertainty in the Absence of Urban Design: A Right-to-the-City Analysis of Informal Spatial Justice in Zanjan's Palestine Neighborhood

Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health , V ol ume 10 ( 1 ). https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.16689288 Copyright: © 2025 by the authors. Submitted for open access publication under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Research Article Uncertainty in the Absence of Urban Design: A Right-to-the-City Analysis of Informal Spatial Justice in Zanjan’s Palestine Neighborhood Saeid Gholami 1* 1 Phd. Urban Planning, Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch,Tehran, Iran. * Corresponding Author: [email protected]. Abstract: This article explores the relationship between spatial injustice, mental well-being, and the absence of formal urban design in the informal Palestine neighborhood of Zanjan, Iran. Using Henri Lefebvre’s Right to the City and spatial triad as theoretical frameworks, the study examines how the lack of planning recognition leads to material deprivation, psychological vulnerability, and civic exclusion. The research adopts a critical qualitative methodology, combining semi-structured interviews, field observations, and document analysis within a transductive analytical strategy. Findings indicate that spatial injustice arises not merely frompoverty or informal construction but from the systematic erasure of informal settlements from planning and policy systems. Residents experience daily hardship, stigmatization, and emotional distress, yet also demonstrate spatial agency through collective infrastructure, symbolic ownership, and social resilience. The study reframes informal settlements as active urban spaces that produce their own spatial order and knowledge, challenging dominant narratives of illegitimacy. It concludes that design under uncertainty must shift from technical intervention to ethical co-production, grounded in recognition, participation, and lived experience. Implications: Urban design in informal contexts should prioritize mental health by integrating inclusive, participatory, and community-led design practices that recognize existing spatial agency and foster long-term civic resilience. Keywords: Right to the City; spatial justice; informal settlements; urban uncertainty; mental wellbeing; participatory urban design; Lefebvre; Iran; epistemic marginality; Global South urbanism. 1. Introduction Urban design plays a foundational role in shaping equitable, inclusive, and psychologically sustainable cities (Dempsey et al., 2011; Corburn, 2009). Yet in many contexts across the Global South—particularly in informal or neglected settlements—formal urban design is absent, incomplete, or exclusionary (Watson, 2009; Roy, 2005). This article investigates how such design absences shape experiences of spatial injustice, mental vulnerability, and symbolic marginality. We anchor our analysis in the case of the Palestine neighborhood in Zanjan, Iran: a small informal settlement structurally excluded from official planning frameworks (Pourahmad et al., 2016; Kamyar Rad et al., 2022). Rather than approaching this absence through a purely technical or administrative lens, we draw on Henri Lefebvre’s Right to the City (1968/1991) and his spatial triad—conceived, lived, and perceived space—to examine how space is produced, experienced, and imagined under conditions of exclusion (Schmid, 2008). In this context, urban uncertainty refers not only to infrastructural deficits or informal construction but to a broader condition of epistemic marginalization and symbolic invisibility in planning discourse. As Roy (2005, 2016) and Yiftachel (2009) argue, dominant planning paradigms in many Global South cities systematically erase informal neighborhoods from policy imaginaries, rendering them both politically excluded and Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 2 of 14 epistemologically unknowable. These absences are especially pronounced in centralized planning systems such as Iran’s, where technocratic urbanism and megaprojects (e.g., Iran Mall, District 22 of Tehran) overshadow the needs of informal communities (Parizadi & Shamaei, 2024; Ghaderi Hajat & Hfeznia, 2020). While a growing body of research has addressed informal settlements in Iranian cities, few studies have critically examined how the absence of urban design contributes to psychological precarity and symbolic exclusion at the neighborhood scale (Meshkini et al., 2021; Ebrahimi et al., 2023). This gap is particularly relevant in contexts where planning absence is not accidental but structural, sustained by epistemic blindness and institutional inertia. This article addresses this gap by localizing Lefebvre’s spatial theory within Iran's informal settlements and by developing the concept of “informal spatial justice” through grounded empirical research. Rather than reproducing binaries such as Planned vs. Unplanned or Global North vs. South, we ask how these categories are complicated or even subverted in specific urban contexts. The Palestine neighborhood is not a blank space of non-design; it is a site where space is actively co-produced through informal labor, communal rituals, and adaptive infrastructural strategies. As such, we approach informality not as a deficit, but as an alternative spatial logic that challenges technocratic paradigms of planning (Roy, 2005; Manouchehri & Burns, 2021). Methodologically, the study draws on Lefebvre’s spatial triad in combination with critical discourse analysis and a transductive approach, linking empirical fieldwork— interviews, observations, and policy document analysis—to evolving conceptual frameworks (Krippendorff, 2018; Schmid, 2008). This method allows grounded experiences to reshape theoretical understandings, rather than forcing field data to serve pre-existing models. The research adopts a critical qualitative stance, consistent with recent calls for ethical and localized approaches to spatial justice (Watson, 2019; Roulier, 2022). This study contributes to the localization and “southernization” of urban theory by testing the limits and possibilities of Lefebvre’s radical ideas in the Iranian context. Iran’s informal settlements, while sharing characteristics with other Global South cities, reflect unique socio-political configurations shaped by centralized governance, weak civic engagement, and complex legal ambiguity (Kamyar Rad et al., 2022; Tahyarian, 2024). In this light, we ask: How does the absence of formal urban design affect spatial justice in informal neighborhoods like Palestine? How do residents interpret, resist, and reshape urban space under uncertainty? And how might these practices reframe urban design as an ethical and political endeavor, rather than a purely technical one? To address these questions, the article proceeds in six parts. Section 2 outlines the theoretical framework, including Lefebvre’s spatial triad, informal spatial justice, and complementary perspectives from squatting, urban informality, and political economy. Section 3 presents the methodological design and empirical context. Section 4 details the findings, organized by Lefebvre’s triad. Section 5 reflects on how theory can help navigate epistemic gaps and reimagine design as a situated, participatory practice. Section 6 concludes with implications for policy and future research in contexts of urban uncertainty. 2. Methodology and Contextual Background This study employs a critical qualitative methodology to investigate how the absence of formal urban design intersects with spatial injustice and informal urbanism in the Palestine neighborhood of Zanjan, Iran. Rather than assuming a binary of “Planned vs. Unplanned” or importing external theoretical dichotomies, the research adopts a transductive and grounded approach, allowing spatial practices and narratives on the ground to shape and challenge conceptual frameworks. Methodologically, the study integrates three interrelated components: 1. Lefebvre’s spatial triad—conceived, lived, and perceived space—as an analytical tool to interrogate how spatial injustice is experienced and constructed (Lefebvre, 1991); 2. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine how planning discourse produces invisibility, illegitimacy, or marginality (Krippendorff, 2018); Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 3 of 14 3. A transductive method of theory building in which field data and theory evolve together (Schmid, 2008). This approach aligns with critical urbanism perspectives that call for situated theorybuilding in contexts of epistemic neglect and spatial marginality, particularly across the Global South (Roy, 2016; Watson, 2009). Reflecting the speculative nature of theory, the framework emerges through ongoing interaction with the field, rather than being predetermined or externally imposed. The Palestine neighborhood is framed as a “modal case”, not an exception, allowing analytical generalization to other informal settlements facing similar exclusionary conditions in Iranian cities. 2.1.Data Collection and Analytical Strategy Data collection took place in Spring 2024 and involved:  Twenty semi-structured interviews with residents (11 women, 9 men) selected through purposive sampling to ensure diversity in age (22–73), gender, occupation, and migration history. Themes included perceptions of injustice, access to services, lived insecurity, and spatial strategies;  Structured field observations, with systematic recording of housing types, street forms, public space, and infrastructure using a spatial audit checklist;  Document analysis of master plans, planning maps, health and education service layouts, and informal maps provided by residents, analyzed using CDA. The data were coded using MAXQDA and structured around Lefebvre’s triad. Themes such as service deprivation, symbolic marginality, and informal spatial strategies were mapped across spatial dimensions (see Figure 2). The coding process emphasized transduction: theory and empirical findings were recursively connected, ensuring that analysis emerged from lived urban realities rather than theoretical projection. 2.2.Site Description: Palestine Neighborhood as a Modal Case The Palestine neighborhood (Kuy-e Felestin) is an informal settlement located on the southern fringe of Zanjan, bordering the Zanjan–Mianeh railway and the Southern Beltway. It spans approximately 3 hectares and contains 137 households, housing roughly 350 residents, most who are rural migrants from Kurdistan, Lorestan, and Hamadan (see Figure 1). Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 4 of 14 Figure 1. Aerial Photograph of the Palestine Neighborhood, Zanjan Figure 1 shows an aerial view of the Palestine neighborhood, located on the southern fringe of Zanjan. The image illustrates the settlement’s proximity to the railway and Southern Beltway, its compact urban form, and infrastructural disconnection. This spatial context supports the analysis of informal spatial production that follows. Infrastructure and services are extremely limited:  Streets are unpaved and irregular;  Most homes are self-constructed without adherence to planning codes;  There is no formal sewage system, with wastewater flowing in open drainage;  The neighborhood lacks clinics, schools, parks, and public institutions;  The closest primary school lies beyond walking distance, along traffic-heavy roads;  The nearest health clinic is over 1 km away, violating recommended urban accessibility standards (Kamyar Rad et al., 2022). These features are not unique. GIS studies show that many outlying settlements in Zanjan fall outside service coverage zones (Hajipour & Zanganeh, 2016; Aghayari Hir, 2021), reinforcing the representativeness of Palestine as a modal site. Table 1 presents key infrastructural indicators and their spatial implications. Table 1. Spatial and Infrastructural Indicators of Palestine Neighborhood Indicator Current Status Implications Population ~350 residents, 137 households Small - scale, high - density Education Access No schools within neighborhood Mobility and safety risks for children Health Services No clinics or health posts Heightened vulnerability to health crises Green/Public Space Absent Loss of social interaction and physical relief zones Wastewater Management Open drainage Public health and hygiene risks Transportation No bus service; railway barrier Physical and psychological disconnection Water & Electricity Informal/shared supply Infrastructure insecurity Cultural Facilities One small mosque Limited community - building infrastructure Community Representation No formal governance or delegate Weak municipal linkage, political invisibility While this study focuses on the Palestine neighborhood, it is important to clarify that the spatial and service-related challenges documented here are not unique or exceptional. Field observations and prior research (Aghayari Hir, 2021; Hajipour & Zanganeh, 2016) confirm that over 80% of Zanjan’s informal settlements, including neighborhoods such as Fatemieh, Mahdieh, and Vahdat, suffer from similar infrastructural deficits and planning exclusions. In particular, access to healthcare services remains a systemic challenge. Across these neighborhoods, residents typically must travel at least one kilometer to reach the nearest formal clinic or health post—far exceeding recommended accessibility standards. Therefore, Palestine has been selected not as an anomaly, but as a “modal case”—a representative spatial condition through which broader patterns of informal exclusion and design absence in Iranian cities can be critically analyzed. 2.3 Applying Lefebvre’s Spatial Triad Figure 2 maps the triadic spatial relations based on coded field data:  Conceived Space: Palestine is absent from Zanjan’s official master plan (PlanVision 1404). Its exclusion from formal maps reinforces infrastructural neglect and administrative erasure.  Lived Space: Residents construct their own urban logic through mutual practices—such as cooperative water sharing, informal childcare, and alley-making—highlighting resilience and spatial agency.  Perceived Space: Residents describe their neighborhood as “neglected but united,” while authorities label it “illegal” or “unplanned,” reflecting symbolic marginalization. Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 5 of 14 Figure 2. Spatial Triad Diagram for Palestine Neighborhood This typology challenges simplistic notions of “unplanned equals disorder” and highlights everyday practices of informal design and spatial justice. 2.4.Clarifying the Socio-Political Nature of the Site Although informally named “Palestine,” the neighborhood is not a refugee camp, nor is it politically or ethnically exceptional. Residents are Iranian citizens and internal migrants, and the name was chosen symbolically by early settlers. Interviews and planning records confirm that the site’s exclusion stems from planning neglect, not political resistance. Misinterpretations in public discourse have added symbolic stigma, but the core issue is the absence of urban design and recognition, not deviance or dissent. This clarification corrects misconceptions and supports a more ethically accurate engagement with spatial justice discourse. 2.5.Ethical Considerations and Epistemic Challenges Research in informal Iranian neighborhoods presents serious challenges:  Epistemic challenge: There is a lack of public access to planning data, and informal areas are excluded from many state surveys (Ghaderi Hajat & Hfeznia, 2020);  Institutional distrust: Residents fear surveillance or expropriation and may hesitate to speak about government interactions;  Gender access: Women, especially heads of household, face additional vulnerability in participating. Spatial and Infrastructural Indicators of Palestine Neighborhood  Informed oral consent;  Anonymization of all data;  Gender-sensitive engagement;  Consultation with local intermediaries. These efforts align with international research ethics for working in vulnerable urban contexts (Corburn, 2009; Manouchehri & Burns, 2021). 2.6.Study Limitations and Epistemic Challenges As with any critical qualitative study rooted in a specific urban context, this research is subject to important methodological and epistemological limitations. First, the sample size—twenty semi-structured interviews—and the geographic scale of the study—three hectares of an informal settlement—limit the statistical generalizability of the findings. The research does not aim to provide representative data across all of Zanjan or Iran, but rather to engage in analytical generalization through the use of a modal case (Yin, 2014). Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 6 of 14 Second, access to official data, particularly detailed spatial information such as GIS layers, municipal budget allocations, or facility coverage maps, was highly constrained. Informal neighborhoods like Palestine are frequently excluded from formal datasets and absent from master plans (Ghaderi Hajat & Hfeznia, 2020). This exclusion is not merely logistical but epistemic—a form of structural invisibility that renders the spatial realities of marginalized communities illegible to urban policy frameworks. Third, the research process was shaped by context-specific constraints related to political sensitivity, resident mistrust, and gendered access. While most participants were cooperative, some hesitated to speak openly about their interactions with municipal authorities. In particular, female-headed households were more difficult to access due to cultural norms and security concerns. Despite these limitations, the study was able to gather rich qualitative data and spatial insights that support grounded theorization of spatial injustice. Moreover, while the empirical focus is on Palestine, complementary field observations and document reviews confirm that other informal neighborhoods in Zanjan—such as Kuy-e Fatemieh, Kuy-e Mahdieh, and Kuy-e Vahdat—also experience significant service deficiencies, especially in areas of healthcare access, sanitation, and public education (Aghayari Hir, 2021; Hajipour & Zanganeh, 2016). This supports the argument that Palestine is not an outlier, but a representative node within a broader pattern of neglect. In this sense, the study’s findings are contextually anchored and theoretically transferable. By focusing on lived spatial practices and resident narratives, and by applying Lefebvre’s conceptual triad as both a methodological and political tool, The study resists speculative abstraction by anchoring its theoretical approach in the empirical realities of marginalized spatial practices and everyday urban experiences.Rather than overextending theory, the study seeks to ground it in the everyday urban experience of those excluded from formal planning systems. Ultimately, the limitations themselves reinforce the central arguments of the study: that spatial injustice in informal settlements is not only a material condition but also an epistemological one—a form of invisibility that requires critical, reflexive, and participatory modes of urban inquiry. 3. Theoretical Framework: The Right to the City and Informal Spatial Justice This section establishes the theoretical basis through which the study explores the intersection of spatial injustice, informal urbanism, and the absence of formal urban design in Zanjan’s Palestine neighborhood. By grounding the analysis in Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the Right to the City, enriched with theories of informality, urban squatting, and epistemic marginality, the article develops a context-sensitive framework for understanding how spatial justice is practiced, denied, and reclaimed in informal urban settings. 3.1.Lefebvre’s Right to the City and the Spatial Triad Henri Lefebvre’s (1968/ 1991) notion of the Right to the City critiques the commodification and bureaucratization of urban space. For Lefebvre, the city is not merely a container of infrastructure and services, but a collective “œuvre”—a space produced through symbolic, political, and everyday practices. The right to the city, then, entails not only access but the right to participate in spatial production and to reimagine urban life as a space of encounter, resistance, and emancipation. At the core of Lefebvre’s spatial theory lies the spatial triad:  Conceived space: space as imagined, represented, and planned by institutions— through maps, zoning codes, and official discourse;  Perceived space: space as practiced and navigated—via bodily routines, spatial movement, and material interaction;  Lived space: space as symbolically and emotionally experienced, embedding cultural memory, affect, and social belonging. In informal contexts, where conceived space often omits entire neighborhoods from official recognition, the triad offers an essential tool to understand how urban life continues despite institutional erasure. Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 7 of 14 3.2.Spatial Justice and the Politics of Design Absence Following Soja (2010), spatial justice is understood here as a multi-dimensional condition involving not only the equitable distribution of infrastructure but also the symbolic and epistemic politics of space. This includes questions of visibility, voice, legitimacy, and the politics of absence. In cities of the Global South, the absence of formal urban design in informal settlements is often viewed as a passive gap. However, such design absences are politically charged: they reflect systemic neglect, reinforce socio-spatial inequality, and produce structural invisibility. This study reframes design not merely as the presence of built form, but as a political instrument—an indicator of who is considered plan-worthy and who is not. Rethinking urban design from a justice-centered perspective aligns with emerging calls for context-sensitive and ethically engaged planning that foregrounds marginal voices (Watson, 2009; Roulier, 2022). In this framework, the absence of design is not an accident but a condition that reflects and reproduces urban injustice. 3.3.Informality and Urban Squatting: Between Necessity and Agency Urban informality has often been treated as a deficit—characterized by illegality, disorder, or transition. Yet more recent critical literature, including Roy (2005) and Yiftachel (2009), emphasizes that informality is not a peripheral exception but a central mode of urbanization, especially in the Global South. Economists such as JK Brueckner (2009) further demonstrate that informal housing markets arise rationally, in response to regulatory exclusion and land price barriers. Informal settlements reflect rational survival behavior, especially where state-led planning fails to meet housing demand. Brueckner argues that squatter settlements are often efficient, adaptive responses to institutional failures, and should be viewed not merely as problems but as part of the urban system. In parallel, the literature on urban squatting (Pruijt, 2013) recognizes such acts as both material responses to housing exclusion and symbolic challenges to urban governance. Informal residents assert not only their presence but their right to shape space, resist eviction, and articulate alternative spatial imaginaries. In this study, we approach informality as a mode of spatial production—rooted in necessity but suffused with agency. In neighborhoods like Palestine, residents organize their own spatial systems: building streets, sharing services, managing utilities, and fostering communal networks. These actions challenge the assumption that planning and design are exclusive domains of state authority, and instead assert a bottom-up logic of urban production. 3.4.Urban Uncertainty and Epistemic Marginality Urban uncertainty is not limited to unstable infrastructure or ambiguous tenure. As Roy (2016) notes, uncertainty in the Global South often reflects an epistemology of ignorance—a situation where informal spaces are uncounted, unmapped, and thus illegible to urban policy. This epistemic marginality becomes both a cause and effect of planning neglect, used to justify exclusion by citing data absence. In the Iranian context, this epistemic condition is exacerbated by centralized planning, opaque governance, and limited civic participation (Ghaderi Hajat & Hfeznia, 2020). Settlements such as Palestine in Zanjan remain excluded from city master plans, with no formal land registry, unclear service entitlement, and ambiguous legal status. Yiftachel (2009) captures this liminal condition with the concept of “gray spacing”—where communities are neither fully legal nor illegal, but exist in a state of tolerated abandonment. Lefebvre’s emphasis on lived space and symbolic production provides a critical epistemological intervention here. It challenges technocratic notions of what counts as knowledge and opens space for counter-cartographies, resident narratives, and spatial storytelling. In doing so, it reframes uncertainty not as a vacuum, but as a political condition that reflects deeper structures of exclusion. 3.5.Toward a Situated Theory of Informal Spatial Justice Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 8 of 14 From the above, we derive a contextualized framework of informal spatial justice—a conceptual and political tool to interpret how justice is claimed and contested in spaces marked by informality and design omission. This framework is built around three interlinked dimensions:  Material justice: access to infrastructure, housing, services, and spatial security;  Symbolic justice: recognition of identity, community, memory, and cultural narratives;  Political justice: inclusion in planning dialogues, representation, and the right to shape urban futures. In the Palestine neighborhood, these dimensions are enacted through everyday spatial practices: sharing electricity, co-maintaining water lines, informally widening streets, organizing mosque gatherings, and mobilizing social capital to gain basic rights. Such acts are not simply responses to state failure—they are affirmative spatial claims, embedded in place and struggle. Through this framework, informal settlements are reinterpreted: not as failed or exceptional spaces, but as legitimate terrains of spatial agency and knowledge production. Urban design, in turn, is reframed not just as a formal profession but as an ethical and political process—one that must listen, adapt, and co-create with the very residents whose urban lives have long been ignored. 4. Findings: Spatial Injustice and Everyday Urbanism in the Absence of Design This section presents the core empirical findings from the fieldwork conducted in the Palestine neighborhood of Zanjan. Structured through Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad— conceived, lived, and perceived space—the analysis unpacks how spatial injustice materializes in conditions of design absence and planning neglect. Drawing on 20 resident interviews, structured observations, and document analysis, the findings reveal the layered dynamics of exclusion, resilience, and informal spatial agency. 4.1. Conceived Space: The Logic of Omission in Planning Representations Conceived space, in Lefebvre’s framework, refers to the rationalized and abstract domain of planning, where urban space is represented through official maps, codes, and institutional logics (Lefebvre, 1991). In the case of the Palestine neighborhood, this space is characterized less by what is planned and more by what is absent. The neighborhood is entirely excluded from Zanjan’s master plan (PlanVision 1404) and appears only as a vague gray area labeled “pending regulation.” Municipal documents refer to it as an “unauthorized” or “irregular” area, lacking residential zoning, despite over two decades of permanent settlement. This categorization allows the state to justify infrastructural disinvestment, avoid long-term service commitments, and defer decisionmaking under the guise of future formalization (Kamyar Rad et al., 2022; Pourahmad et al., 2016). The broader planning paradigm in Iran is marked by centralized technocratic control and a growth-oriented logic that privileges commercial zones, real estate developments, and state-sponsored mega-projects (Ebrahimzadeh et al., 2023). Informal settlements such as the Palestine neighborhood, which fall outside these priority geographies, are treated not as urban communities but as temporary errors to be eventually resolved. In the absence of official infrastructure budgets, residents have extended water pipes, electricity cables, and drainage channels from adjacent formal neighborhoods—without permits, without design, and often without safety oversight. The result is a hybrid infrastructural ecology: legally invisible, physically fragile, and socially indispensable. Table 2. Urban Planning and Design Exclusion in Palestine Neighborhood Policy Domain Observed Status Institutional Impact Zoning Not included in official land - use plans No legal recognition of residential function Infrastructure No state - funded sewage, roads, or parks Residents responsible for service provision Public Services No clinics, schools, or transit lines Exclusion from urban resource allocation Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 9 of 14 Representation No local delegate or council presence Absence from participatory planning mechanisms This “non-design” condition reflects not technical failure, but an ideological strategy of erasure (Roy, 2005). Informal areas are positioned outside the “designed” city, which enables their long-term neglect and symbolic devaluation. As one official noted in an internal planning memo: “The neighborhood may be integrated if it complies with environmental and security standards.” However, such integration remains bureaucratically frozen, reinforcing Palestine’s spatial liminality . 4.2.Lived Space: Everyday Practices and the Embodiment of Injustice Lived space, according to Lefebvre, is the realm of daily experience, where space is encountered through the body, emotion, habit, and community (Lefebvre, 1991). In the neighborhood of Palestine, this lived experience is shaped by a pervasive sense of material deprivation and institutional abandonment. Interviews revealed a common refrain: “We are not part of the city.” Residents detailed daily struggles with flooding from open drains, respiratory problems due to smoke and sewage, and the risk of walking children across unlit roads to reach schools located over a kilometer away. “We have no clinic. When someone is sick, we pay for a taxi. There’s no bus, and the roads are dangerous for children.”(Female resident, 39) These physical conditions translate into mental health stressors. Many interviewees, especially elderly women and mothers, described symptoms of chronic anxiety, insomnia, and feelings of entrapment. “At night, it smells so bad I can’t sleep. I feel like we’re punished for being poor.”(Male resident, 58) Environmental psychology literature confirms that prolonged exposure to degraded built environments correlates with psychological distress and reduced self-efficacy (Evans, 2003; Corburn, 2009). In Palestine, the lack of design becomes a source of both material harm and symbolic disempowerment. Table 3. Lived Spatial Conditions in Palestine Neighborhood Indicator Observed Condition Resident Impact Sanitation Open drains, no sewage network Illness risk, odor - related discomfort Education Access Nearest school ~1.2 km away, no safe pathway Dropout risk, parental anxiety Health Access No local clinic, costly emergency transportation Delayed treatment, financial strain Public Space Only one mosque; no parks or playgrounds Social isolation, limited mobility for women Housing Safety Informal structures, narrow alleys Fire risk, difficult emergency access Despite these challenges, residents engage in localized infrastructural improvisation. For example, groups of men fix broken pipes, mothers coordinate childcare, and young people create informal study groups at the mosque. These practices constitute a form of spatial agency under constraint—a counter-design grounded in necessity. 4.3 Perceived Space: Moral Belonging and Counter-Imaginaries Perceived space, in Lefebvre’s triad, refers to the way space is interpreted, narrated, and emotionally constructed. In the Palestine neighborhood, this dimension reveals a powerful disconnect between external categorization and internal belonging. Residents repeatedly articulated a moral claim to space: “They say we don’t belong, but we built this place. It’s ours.”(Female resident, 46) Despite lacking land deeds or legal recognition, residents speak of “my neighborhood” or “our land” with pride. This symbolic ownership reflects years of labor, investment, and community-building. Residents also draw comparisons with other areas: