Tel Aviv 2025: Catering to the top 10th percentile - Haaretz

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Mon., December 24, 2007 Tevet 15, 5768

Israel Time: 11:40 (EST+7)

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Tel Aviv 2025: Catering to the top 10th percentile

By Ziva Sternhell

Tags: civic planning, social class

There is a well-known saying that architecture reflects the face of the society and culture of the period in which it was created. And, in fact, early 21st-century Israeli architecture places before us an amazingly accurate mirror that enables us to examine the reality concealed behind the economic prosperity and cultural creativity.

On the one hand, towers are cropping up on all sides and an improvement in the level of design, mainly in the big cities and affluent neighborhoods, reflect the advantages of globalization, the flourishing of the stock markets and successes like that of Israeli high-tech.

On the other hand, those same buildings also expose the fact that Israeli planners and architects have internalized the values that dominate the Finance Ministry, mainly the idea that a "hidden hand" will somehow find a solution for the homeless and for the disintegrating housing projects at the edges of the cities and in the development towns. They can continue to celebrate the policy of unbridled privatization.

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On the cultural plane as well, where high-quality creative work is forced to compete with ratings charts, to conduct humiliating public-relations campaigns and to deal with an aggressive society that panders to the nouveaux riches, the dependence of architecture on the forces operating in public life emphasizes clandestine connections between phenomena: If the HOT satellite company doesn't hesitate to remove CNN and permits itself to explain to us that Fox News constitutes a worthy replacement, why should the mayor of Tel Aviv not demand the "renovation" of rare jewels like the Mann Auditorium and Gan Yaakov?

And when every negligible Hollywood actor is ceremoniously received here by the president of Israel and other senior politicians, it is no wonder that the Jerusalem municipality is convinced monuments by architects Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava, which are being duplicated endlessly in every corner of the world, are the correct solution for saving the city center.

A provincial town

These and other instances prove that the provincial tendency toward a belated and superficial imitation of ideas that arose in the major cultural centers is, once again, in evidence. This seems true even in the era of globalization and high-speed communications. The differences between the center and the periphery have been erased. We can understand how, in many of the municipal planning departments in Israel, there are professionals who hold opinions which were deemed problematic at the end of the last century, just as treasury officials continue to repeat old-fashioned economic theories.

This tendency can also be found in a brochure issued recently by the Tel Aviv municipality: "2025 - the Future Now." From a brief perusal, one might be convinced the future of the city has never been brighter: alongside glittering commercial centers, main streets will be upgraded; cultural institutions will receive new buildings; plans for preservation will be implemented and historical areas, such as Sharona and the Templer farming community, will be developed; light rail and bicycle paths will improve traffic and will help to create an ecological balance.

The problem is not only in the simplicity of beautifying photographs of future models which bear little resemblance to reality or in the promises of public-relations publications of this kind (the elections to the municipal councils will be held in a year from now), although such images often exist only in PR fodder of this type. It seems that, in their enthusiasm over the vision which in itself is worthy of admiration as an attempt at long-term planning, the authorities have forgotten most of the city's residents.

In effect, the mayor and the planning authorities are aligning themselves with the treasury. Tel Aviv 2025 will adapt itself to best serve the city's top 10th percentile: It will provide them with housing, culture, places of entertainment and jobs. All others will have to be evacuated to other places.

The brochure contains not a single word about distressed neighborhoods, nor is there evidence that the slightest attempt has been made to integrate various social classes in the spic-and-span city. Rumors that this subject has for years been occupying the world's city planners has apparently not yet trickled down to Tel Aviv's planning staff.

The brochure's attempt to present high-level architectural design merits careful scrutiny. Ostensibly, the projects that will change the city's image represent outstanding improvement in Israeli design in recent years: In architecture, the improvement is evident mainly in refinement and attention paid to details, in facades, interiors and environmental development. However, when one tours the city centers or examines the bnei beitkha ("build your own house") neighborhoods, one still discovers the familiar provincial tendency toward superficial and kitschy imitation and a surfeit of design elements.

Moreover, in spite of a flourishing real-estate industry, too few buildings have joined the list of Israeli architectural masterpieces. In the field of high-rise building, for example, there are as yet no rivals to the Azrieli Towers. Even the extravagant tower designed by Ilan Pivko next to the Ayalon Highway has not been joined by other buildings with exceptional presence.

It is no coincidence that Tel Aviv 2025 is portrayed in the brochure like every medium-sized provincial city in Europe or the United States. In this small country in the eastern Mediterranean, they fail to grasp how the U.S.'s economic model, which it tried to force on the entire world, created quite a few economic and social crises, or that global capitalism leads to urban chaos and to a dearth of unique features in big cities.

A sense of proportion

Therefore, all the fine declarations about preservation plans will be of no avail if the mayors and the planning establishment in Israel do not recognize that preserving cities' individual identity does not mean only the renovation of isolated buildings, nor even the creation of enclaves of streets that will be cared for by "decoration committees." The unique nature of cities such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa was first and foremost a product of the connection between the blocs of buildings and the topographical structure, a subject that guided their planners in the early 20th century.

It is true that, 100 years later, the criteria must change. However, even the need for dense construction does not necessarily mean unbridled high-rise construction on every vacant lot. If, in Jerusalem, the residential monster that was planned on Holyland Hill (by Ram Carmi and the firm of Spector-Amisar Architects) has not taught the municipal authorities a lesson, apparently the gigantic new monuments by Gehry and Calatrava won't help either. Their connection to Jerusalem is entirely coincidental and they will destabilize the delicate proportions of the historic city.

The powerlessness of the Jerusalem municipal planning department, which is allowing the continued demolition of historical areas, it exceptional even on the Israeli landscape. But even in Tel Aviv, where they have finally internalized the value of preservation in economic terms, the enthusiasm demonstrated recently by Mayor Ron Huldai is liable to destroy the unique character of the city. What gives the city its unique character is a network of small residential streets and green boulevards in which human dimensions are preserved. If the mayor does not understand basic principles of planning and the significance of the intended damage to the original design of Gan Yaakov, he will be unable to deal with the need for a rational plan to make the city more dense without turning it into another symbol of alienated provinciality in the global era.

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