A view of Jerusalem
By 2040, Israel is forecast to be the most densely populated country in the world with 610 residents per square kilometer. This figure was reported in a study of "A Scenario of Business-as-Usual" prepared by the Office of Environmental Protection. These studies should be taken with a big grain of salt as it joins a long list of doom-forecasting reports that have so far not materialized. Hashem still runs the world.
The study predicts a traffic density in Israel at three and a half times the average for the OECD. According to the Transportation Ministry, the impact of this runoff will only intensify with a steady hit to the National Gross Product of 25 billion shekel per year.
Even today, the necessity to reach one's workplace from one's home requires traveling on roads packed to the gills for at least 40 minutes through innumerable traffic bottlenecks. By the end of the next decade, this same route may take an hour-and-a-half of travel, despite the ongoing investment of many tens of billions of shekalim in highway expansion and addition of new roadways.
Alongside of this, cities will continue to spread out at the expense of open areas still extant in the central and northern parts of the country. This situation is expected to intensify since all of the open spaces between Gush Dan and Jerusalem will be developed within the next 30 years. Strategic plans for housing by the National Economic Administration indicate a 60% rise of housing units by 2040 and an expected shortage of land for 420,000 units needed by that time.
The amount of trash created per person in Israel has grown by 20% in relation to the OECD average, with Israel claiming an 80% figure above that of the OECD countries.
