Gaza Reconstruction Plans — An Interactive Atlas

Rebuilding Gaza, thirty-four ways

An interactive reading of the visions, financing architectures and governance models proposed for the Strip's reconstruction. Every position, score and map below is drawn from the report's own figures.

SOURCE The Portland Trust, “Gaza Reconstruction Plans” · 34 plans · 33 sector-scored · presented without endorsement of any individual plan

01 — The Territory

The plans disagree first about geography: what Gaza should physically become.

The same 365 square kilometres carry a sea port in one plan, an airport in another, a light-rail spine along the length and a power plant on the coast — and, in a third, the camp reality any plan must reckon with. The overlays below are drawn from the report's own maps and georeferenced to real Gaza, so any combination can be compared on a single basemap.

Orientation

The Gaza Strip · five governorates

Overlay the plans

Satellite imagery largely predates October 2023

02 — The Landscape

One set of plans, read through three different lenses.

The report sorts the plans three ways: by spatial approach, by financing architecture and by governance model. Switch lens and watch each plan migrate. A plan can be radical in space yet conventional in money, or locally rooted in delivery yet externally controlled in governance.

Solid = holistic plan Dashed ring = governance-only plan

03 — Sector Engagement

What each plan actually addresses, and what it leaves blank.

The report scores every plan against seven sectors plus regional connectivity. Read down a column to see which sectors are systematically neglected. Click any column header to sort by it; click a plan to open its full profile.

Engagement is the report's own four-point scale. The Marshall Plan-style framing aside, MERI (28) is shown in the matrix but is not sector-scored in the report and is omitted here.

04 — Evolution

A trickle before October 2023, a flood after.

Three plans pre-date the current war: a corridor concept from 2005, a connectivity study from 2016 and an economic framework from 2020. Everything else arrived in the twenty-six months since. Each mark is a plan, placed by publication date and grouped into coalition lanes.

05 — Findings & Gaps

Four families of plan, and five things almost none of them resolve.

Beneath the spectrum, the report groups the plans into four archetypes by their underlying logic. Select one to see which plans belong to it across the other views. The recurring silences, shown below as negative space, are where the report locates the real difficulty.

Four archetypes

Analytical grouping derived from the report's matrix. Select an archetype to highlight its plans on the matrix, heatmap and timeline.

The recurring gaps

Synthesised from the report's analysis. Where plans cluster thinly — several map directly onto the heatmap's coldest columns.

What the report recommends

Six principles for any credible reconstruction framework, as stated in the report (paraphrased).

Where to go from here

Method & sources

This atlas is a visual companion to the report's analysis of reconstruction plans for Gaza. It is comparative and descriptive rather than predictive: it maps competing reconstruction logics and their material sector pathways; it does not model costs, timelines, or implementation probability.

What is included

All available plans relating to Gaza, regardless of origin, were considered in order to map the landscape currently circulating. A plan is included where it engages substantively with material reconstruction, carries enough technical, spatial or programmatic detail to allow sectoral comparison, and was either produced since October 2023 or remains structurally relevant to current debates. The set covers known plans up to a May 2026 cutoff; several continue to evolve, as do the political and access conditions that shape feasibility.

Four authorship categories

Plans are grouped by authorship and institutional origin; grouping does not imply agreement on the substance of reconstruction.

Multilateral & international institutions. UN agencies or internationally-recognised policy institutions, typically emphasising early recovery, institutional coordination and sector-based programming.

Professional & technocratic coalitions. Planners, architects, economists and policy or private-sector actors, tending to emphasise spatial redesign, economic restructuring, infrastructure modernisation or catalytic development.

Palestinian-led. Palestinian institutions, civil-society groups, municipalities and policy thinkers, frequently prioritising local institutional recovery, service restoration and community-based rebuilding.

State & regional bloc. State actors, regional blocs, foreign-policy institutes and politically affiliated centres, generally integrating reconstruction with broader regional, security or diplomatic frameworks.

How the map is placed

The transport network is traced from the report's Figure 3 and georeferenced to real Gaza, accurate to within about 1.5 km. The energy elements are placed at their real-world Gaza locations because Figure 4 is a schematic without survey coordinates. The housing layer shows the eight UNRWA refugee camps the scenarios concern (Figure 2) — existing reality, not a proposal. Solid map glyphs mark the georeferenced network; hollow glyphs mark indicatively placed features.

The basemap

The interactive map draws on two open basemaps. Vector cartography is © OpenStreetMap contributors, rendered from a self-hosted Protomaps extract of the area. Satellite imagery is © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics; available imagery largely predates October 2023 and is shown for orientation rather than as a record of current conditions.

Indicative plan-source overlays

Four further overlays are traced from the plans' own published figures rather than from the report: the Arc corridor (RAND, MG-327, Figures 13 and 17, 2005); the GREAT Trust's ring, highway and coastal projects (investor deck as published by The Washington Post, 2025); the Peace to Prosperity tunnel link and expansion zones (conceptual map, 2020); and the Arab League framework's temporary housing sites (Egyptian plan, Figure B-2, March 2025). Corridors and zones are generalised by design: positions are approximate, drawn at the scale of the source figures, and every such feature is dashed and labelled 'indicative' on the map.