Winner of the 2006 Institute Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design, American Institute of Architects. Creating a successful Palestinian state poses a wide range of political, economic, social, and environmental challenges. In the July eBook of the Month, researchers from the RAND Corporation provide an in-depth and comprehensive nation-building plan to overcome these obstacles, as well as a design to meet the population's infrastructure needs.
The proposals outlined in The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State include a landmark infrastructure corridor that runs up the spine of the West Bank and also links the West Bank and Gaza. The proposal would promote dramatic new development in Palestine and would give Palestinians new access to jobs, food, water, education, health care, housing and public services and would help improve the lives of Palestinians and begin laying the groundwork to sustain long-term development in a future state.