People 

Prof. Itzhak Omer

Itzhak Omer is the Head of the Urban Space Analysis Laboratory where he and his students work on the relationship between the urban environment and the spatial behavior of individuals and development of spatial analysis method and simulation models, modeling urban movement and spatial behavior and studying the formation of functional and social areas in the city. He is a full Professor in the Department of Geography and Human Environment at Tel Aviv University. The areas of his academic interest include: urban modeling, urban morphology, spatial behavior and cognition, urban movement, urban complex systems and social geography of the city. 

Dr. Orna Zafrir Reuven

Orna Zafrir Reuven is a lecturer in the Department of Geography and the Human Environment and a researcher at  the Urban Space Analysis Laboratory. Her research interests are urban morphology, urban morphogenetics, models of urban structure and their connection to planning approaches and socio-cultural processes. Her researches deals mainly with the morphology and structure of Israeli cities.

Adva Sahar

Adva Sahar is a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Human Environment at the School of Geosciences, Tel-Aviv University. She studies the cognitive and psychological aspects of human spatial behavior. Her research focuses on the role of body movement and vision in learning and memory processes of urban and built environments. Her interests also include physiology, ergonomics and human factor, environmental design and architecture.

Nir Kaplan

Nir Kaplan is a PhD student at the Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv University. In his dissertation, he examines the influence of urban planning approaches on the relationship between movement volume distribution (especially pedestrians) in the city, land use pattern and street network structure. The areas of his academic interest include: pedestrian movement, urban morphology, agent based models, GIS and spatial analysis methods.

Rina Magen

Rina Magen is a PhD student at the Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv University. The topic of her research is the location and characterization of open green spaces in the city's spatial system and their impact on urban vitality. The areas of her academic interest include: Urban sustainability, urban morphology and spatial behavior (especially pedestrian movement).

Shahar Sagi

Shahar Sagi is a PhD Student at the Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel Aviv University. His research field is Cognitive Geography. In his research he examines how attitudes influence cognitive distances, and focusing on how tolerance towards different ethnic groups affect cognitive maps.

Omer Ben-Nun

Omer Ben-Nun is an MA student at the Porter School of Environmental Studies in Tel-Aviv University. In his thesis, Omer investigates the Urban Heat Island phenomena (UHI) as a function of the city size, population and the urban morphology (especially the street network). This research will focus in about 40 Israeli cities in different climate zones.

Or Yatzkan

Or Yatzkan is a MA student at the Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv University. In his thesis, he examines the urban scaling study of the cities in Israel. The areas of his academic interest include:  environmental science, urban morphology, GIS and Mathematical & statistical models.

Amit Weinberger

Amit Weinberger is an undergraduate in an honors track at the department of Geography and the Human Environment and at the department of Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University. He is participating in a project that aims to construct a comprehensive Land use model of Israeli cities. His fields of interests include land use and urban functional areas research, GIS, urban morphology, urban Models, and the interplay between urban and labor studies.  

Yael Sapir

Yael Sapir is an undergraduate in the honors track at the department of Geography and the Human Environment and at the department of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University. She is participating in a research of pedestrian movement flow barriers in the city.  

Students – Completed

Dr. Hagar Spiro-Tal

Hagar Spiro-Tal has completed her Phd in 2013 at the Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel-Aviv University. The research examines the impact of urban morphology on the social residential distribution in Tel Aviv-Jaffa from the point of view which concentrates on the differential perception of the residential space from the perspective of various social groups. The research deals with the connection between the morphological form of 7 neighborhoods and the way they are perceived by the social groups inhabiting them. 

Dr. Ran Goldblatt 

Ran Goldblatt is a Post-Doctoral researcher and a lecturer at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego. He earned his B.A., M.A. and PhD degrees at Tel-Aviv University. In his PhD studies (adviser: Itzhak Omer), he investigated the relationship between the built environment and segregation of Arabs and Jews in Israeli mixed cities. Currently, his research focuses on remote sensing analysis and processing of multispectral satellite imagery at scale. Ran teaches an advanced GIS and Remote Sensing course at UCSD.

Dr. Yoav Lerman 

Yoav Lerman is a leader in analytical evidence-based planning, tackling the myriad facets of urban complexity.  Dr. Lerman is a geographer specializing in the connection between the built environment and urban mobility. Dr. Lerman has published several papers in international academic journals on urban planning, transport planning and space syntax. In addition, he taught urban planning at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Planet