The Jerusalem Municipality will increase its secular and national religious population, Mayor Moshe Lion said Sunday.
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Speaking at an urban renewal conference of the Israel Construction Center attended by local authority heads, entrepreneurs, and leading professionals in the real estate field, Lion asserted that "Jerusalem is the State of Israel's capital of opportunity. Now is the time to invest and believe in the city, through relatively small investments, a lot of money can be made here."
He said that "ultimately, my goal is to get to a strong Jerusalem. I want to grow, and for that, it [the city] needs more and more residents. I want to get to 10,000 housing units a year. We're talking about a huge city. A lot of urban renewal, construction on empty lots, and a lot of employment."
Some 950,000 people reside in Jerusalem, more than twice the population of Tel Aviv. Just one-third of Jerusalem's population belongs to the secular or national-religious sector.
"We want to grow the city, and the number of secular and national religious residents in particular because that is the most productive sector," Lion explained.
"To that end, we are making every effort to cut bureaucracy to zero. Last year, we noticed there weren't enough construction permits. Up until now, the average stood at 2,000 new construction [projects] a year, and this year, we will cross the 4,000 threshold," he said.
According to Lion, buildings 30-stories high will be built along the route of the Jerusalem light rail.
"Jerusalem is going to grow, and for that, it needs more and more residents," he concluded.
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