A bridge I have never used

The grievance is a combination, I think, of this bizarre fixation on projects that could be described as trying to turn Jerusalem into a Jewish Disneyland.

Tourism projects. There was an elaborate bridge constructed to the Old City to make access easier. There are hotels, there is construction. All of these are, I suppose, nice to have. But from a strategic standpoint they strike me as really, really bad policy.

Why I think it is bad policy, not just unappealing

You are basically banking on tourism, which is already showing itself to be risky at best. It is undiversified.

And most importantly, it is creating infrastructure whose benefit will be experienced only by a transitory population. It will not directly benefit local residents. People might visit the tourist sites in the Old City, but very occasionally. So the marginal benefit of a project like a walkway to the Old City, per resident per year, is very minor. I have lived in this city for ten years and I have never even used it.

The right economic frame here is opportunity cost. The missed investments — the ones that would actually measurably improve the daily life of the majority of citizens — are much, much higher in value. So what you have is an allocation of resources that disproportionately directs capital towards what you could call vanity projects. The ones that put Jerusalem on the map.

The municipality trumpets these around the world as a great success, and as evidence of Jerusalem’s centrality to the Jewish narrative.