We Deserve Cities that Work

I have a confession. As someone deeply patriotic and Zionistic, I’ve fallen hopelessly in love — with European cities. And I hate Israeli ones. Even though I live in the nation’s capital.

To be fair, Jerusalem has its own rugged, breathtaking beauty. The hills. The Jerusalem stone. A kind of ancient gravity. It’s relatively clean and organized, and in many ways, a wonderful place to live. But still — sometimes I hate living here with a passion and find myself dreaming of a high-ceilinged apartment in Prague, where snow falls gently in winter, and in summer, people take leisurely strolls through green parks without a second thought.

Why? Because Prague — like Budapest, Paris, or Madrid — is what a city should be. It breathes. It has a rhythm, a heartbeat. Most importantly, it functions. You can get from point A to point B without stress. You don’t need to calculate complex transport equations: Should I take the car to the light rail and then switch to a bus? Should I walk because it’s somehow faster than public transit? In those cities, you just move. You get on the metro, open a book, and go.

Why can’t our cities be like that?

Jerusalem and Tel Aviv — our capital and cultural heart — are a mess. Endless construction. Torn-up roads. Red lights that loop forever. Buses that jerk forward, then sit still again. Honking. Drilling. Nothing moves.

This afternoon, my husband went to Tel Aviv. I urged him to leave early, but surely, two hours is enough to travel 55 kilometers? That’s a distance you could bike in three hours if you’re fit.

Evidently not. He waited at the bus stop in Jerusalem for an hour and then gave up and came home.

Going from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv in the afternoon feels more like flying to New York. And the exhaustion afterward feels like jet lag.

Tel Aviv is an amazing city — full of energy, color, and culture we don’t have in Jerusalem. I was supposed to see Crime and Punishment there with a friend. We arranged to meet at 6:00. I was an hour late. Moovit felt more like a polite suggestion than an actual guide. All that technology? It tricks you. I was lucky not to miss the production entirely — though I did have to wolf down my dinner at record speed.

Think about it. Any Jerusalemite trying to enjoy a night out in Tel Aviv is looking at a round trip of eight hours. That’s not inconvenient. That’s insane.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the parable of the frog in the pot — how if you raise the temperature slowly enough, the frog never realizes it’s boiling. That’s us. Living in boiling cities and pretending this is normal.

I try to stay positive. I try not to rant. I don’t want to spend my life dreaming of Prague or Madrid. But we’ve taken a seriously wrong turn.

We pay high taxes. We sit in traffic, wrapped in the illusion of our electric cars, telling ourselves we have a high standard of living. But we don’t. Because good public transportation isn’t a luxury. It’s a basic right.

Yes, train lines and tram systems are being built — but at an alarming pace, and without holistic planning. By the time they’re complete, the reality on the ground will have already shifted.

The Jerusalem railway is a brilliant idea in theory — but it takes me 40 minutes to get there from my home in South Jerusalem, a major city artery. Not from some distant suburb. And once there, there’s no proper drop-off spot for my elderly parents. They have to take taxis. It takes another 10 minutes to get from street level to the platform. So this time-saving train? It’s no faster than the bus.

And this summer, the city’s entire tram system is shutting down. We are the frogs, friends.

So thank you, Israel, for all the incredible things you’ve given the Jewish people. But if those in charge would just pause, take a deep breath, and rethink — not for optics, not for flashy headlines, but for the people — we could create something better. Not just equal to Europe. Better. We have the ingenuity. We have the passion. We just need leadership that wants to serve, not swerve.

Because we deserve cities that move. That breathe. That live.