עיר גנים עפולה - חזון ומציאות: חזון ומציאות

Among the Zionist companies which were active in the purchase of lands and the establishment of settlements in Palestine during the 1920s was an American company, the American Zion Commonwealth Inc. (AMZIC). Starting in 1919 the company acquired 80,000 dunams in three areas of Palestine: in the Jezreel Valley, in the central coastal plain and in the Galilee, north of Haifa. In Jezreel Valley the company established Balfourya, an agriculture village named after James Balfour, and in 1924 the company started to develop an urban center, Afula, which was conceived as a garden city. Afula was meant to become an urban center serving the agricultural population of Jezreel Valley; however, it failed to develop and until the 1990's it remained merely a small town. The purpose of this article is to analyze the reasons of this failure.