ABSTRACT
Tel Aviv is recognized as an exemplar of modern urban planning, declared by UNESCO as a world heritage site for its 1925 urban plan by Sir Patrick Geddes, and for its dense fabric of buildings in the ‘international style’, comprising a modern built environment.1 Self-proclaimed as ‘first Hebrew city’, Tel Aviv is often discussed within the framework of modern nation-building projects like Brasilia and Chandigarh, as well as of modern projects of colonialism and Westernization of the Orient (NitzanShiftan, 2000; LeVine, 2005). Nevertheless, Tel Aviv’s initial (1909) and Geddes’s (1925) modern planning diverged from such top-down schemes by powerful institutions, as well as from well-known landmarks of its period, Letchworth (1903), Welwyn (1920), Burnham’s Chicago plan (1909) or the Canberra town planning competition (1912).
