ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the planners' picnics as a local Breakfast at Tiffany's experience, in which young urban residents assert their 'right' to use expensive spaces. It discusses a group of young architects and planners who 'Occupied' a few open, privately owned public spaces (POPS) near towers in Tel Aviv–Jaffa. According to Israeli planning law, such spaces are defined as part of private lots where public uses are allowed, and in Tel Aviv their planning adds small open gardens and squares near overly expensive and rather alienated projects. By conducting a series of on-site weekend picnics and aligning them with lively online correspondence, the group mobilised against the market-led practice of their more established peers working for the municipality. These professionals, they claimed, settled on serving the public interest by obtaining 'side benefits', such as POPS, as development gains.
