Present Futures: Mechanics of Ethnocratic Colonial Urbanism Part 2 Project 2020 Rula Zuhour School of the Art Institute of Chicago | USA Within Jerusalem’s city boundary but outside the Separation Wall, the neighborhood of Kafr Aqab is a ledge where Palestinian Jerusalemites resort to live. Behind them is a concrete wall sealing off a city that constantly pushes them out, and ahead of them is a downfall that renders them stateless. With the goal of achieving a 70% Jewish majority in Jerusalem, this lawless place emerges as another tool in the Israeli colonial project, which strategically expropriates as much land with as few Palestinians as possible.In Kafr Aqab, time becomes irrelevant as Palestinians live in a state of limbo. Its temporariness is served by permanent structures of informal high-rise buildings, rising higher every day, with little infrastructure and no services. The future of this vertically growing density - like its emergence - is shaped by Israeli policies and practices.This thesis investigates Israeli colonization tactics that have created the Kafr Aqab phenomenon, where architecture and urban planning are instruments of dispossession, displacement, and control. Based on this investigation, the thesis speculates about possible futures for Kafr Aqab and its inhabitants, revealing the method in which territorial tools operate in tandem with oppressive policies and examining the stakes of each possible future. Rula Zuhour Tutor(s) Linda Keane