Tel Aviv

• 1. Founding And Early Growth

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  On the 11th of April 1909, sixty-six Jewish families gathered on a desolate sand dune north of Jaffa to parcel out land by lottery using seashells. Akiva Aryeh Weiss organized the event with 120 sea shells, half white and half grey, where names were written on one set and plot numbers on the other. A photographer named Abraham Soskin documented this gathering which marked the official establishment of Tel Aviv as Ahuzat Bayit. Within a year, six streets including Herzl Street and Rothschild Boulevard were built alongside a water system and 66 houses. The town was originally named Ahuzat Bayit before its name changed to Tel Aviv in May 1910 following Nahum Sokolow's translation of Theodor Herzl's novel Altneuland. By 1914 the population had grown to more than 5,000 residents despite wartime disruptions that halted growth temporarily during World War I.

• 2. Mandate Era And Independence

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  Tel Aviv received township status within the Jaffa Municipality in 1921 but struggled for full municipal independence throughout the 1920s. British authorities delayed granting autonomy until publishing the new Municipalities Order in 1934 when Tel Aviv finally became an independent municipality separate from Jaffa. During the 1936, 39 Arab revolt, friction between Arabs and Jews led to the opening of a local Jewish port called Tel Aviv Port in 1938 which closed on the 25th of October 1965. On the 14th of May 1948 Israel declared Independence in Tel Aviv making it the temporary government center until December 1949 when the Israeli government relocated to Jerusalem. Following the 1947, 1949 Palestine war, Tel Aviv began annexing parts of Jaffa including the Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Kabir and the Arab village of Salama. The unified city was officially renamed Tel Aviv-Yafo in August 1950 after being voted upon by the government on the 4th of October 1949.

• 3. White City Architecture

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  More than 5,000 Modernist-style buildings inspired by the Bauhaus school and Le Corbusier now form Tel Aviv's White City designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. German Jewish architects trained at the Bauhaus arrived in Palestine during the 1930s adapting their architectural outlook to local conditions while creating what is recognized as the largest concentration of International Style buildings globally. Between 1931 and 1939 alone some 3,000 buildings were created in this style around Rothschild Boulevard before construction continued until the 1950s. Some 3,000 buildings were created in this style between 1931 and 1939 alone. Construction of these buildings later declared protected landmarks and collectively a UNESCO World Heritage Site continued until the 1950s in the area around Rothschild Boulevard. In the mid-1990s the construction of skyscrapers began throughout the entire city altering its skyline from generally low-rise to include towers like the Shalom Meir Tower completed in 1965 which remained Israel's tallest building until 1999.

• 4. Conflict And Resilience

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  On the 9th of September 1940 Italian airstrikes killed 137 people in the city during World War II when Tel Aviv was hit by bombing raids. During the Gulf War in 1991 Iraqi Scud missiles struck the city causing extensive property damage and leaving approximately 230 Israelis injured while 74 died mostly from suffocation or heart attacks. The first suicide attack in Tel Aviv occurred on the 19th of October 1994 on Line 5 bus killing 22 civilians and injuring 50 as part of a Hamas campaign. On the 1st of June 2001 a suicide bomber exploded at the entrance to the Dolphinarium discothèque killing 21 mostly teenagers and injuring 132 during the Second Intifada. Another Hamas suicide bomber killed six civilians and injured 70 in the Allenby Street bus bombing while twenty-three civilians were killed and over 100 injured in the Tel Aviv central bus station massacre. Despite these attacks the city maintained economic activity with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange remaining higher on the last day of both the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2009 Operation in Gaza than on the first day of fighting.

• 5. High Tech Economy

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  Baruch Yoscovitz began reworking old British plans for the Florentin neighborhood in 2001 adding green areas pedestrian malls and housing to transform it into what became known as the Soho of Tel Aviv. The municipality invested two million shekels in this project aiming to attract artists and young professionals to the area which now features coffeehouses markets bars galleries and parties. By 2012 twenty-eight percent of the city's population was aged between 20 and 34 years old while population growth averaged 6.29 percent annually between 2007 and 2012. Former industrial areas like the derelict Northern Tel Aviv Port and Jaffa railway station were upgraded and transformed into leisure areas including Gan HaHashmal Electricity Park created from an abandoned power station. In 2010 the design of the renovated Tel Aviv Port won the award for outstanding landscape architecture at the European Biennial for Landscape Architecture in Barcelona while Sarona Market Complex opened following an eight-year renovation project starting in 2006.