Tel Aviv Topics

• Jaffa
• Red
• Israel
• Building
• Street
• Beach

Related Images

Source

del.icio.us Tags

• travel
• wiki
• israel
• articles
• tel-aviv
• remember-this
• tel
• aviv
• destinations

Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv

Sokolow took the name from the Book of Ezekiel: "Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel Aviv, that lived by the river Chebar, and to where they lived; and I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days." Book of Ezekiel 3:15 This name was found fitting as it embraced the idea of the renaissance of the ancient Jewish homeland.

Meir Dizengoff, who later became Tel Aviv's first mayor, was a member of Ahuzat Bayit.

The boundaries he worked within, the Yarkon River in the North and Ibn Gvirol Street in the East, are still regarded as Tel Aviv's real city limits although it has since grown beyond them.

On 9 September 1940, a bombing of Tel Aviv caused 137 deaths. Maya Zamir, The Day of The bombing , Tel Aviv Magazine, 7th of September 2007 (Hebrew) According to the 1947 UN Partition Plan that proposed dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Tel Aviv, by then a city of 230,000, was slated for inclusion in the Jewish state. Jaffa with, as of 1945, a population of 101,580 people, 53,930 of whom were Muslim and 16,800 Christian, making up the Arab population, and 30,820 Jewish, was designated as part of the Arab state.

Tel Aviv's population peaked in the early 1960s at 390,000, representing 16 percent of the country's total.

The most recent attack in the city occurred on April 17, 2006, when nine people were killed and at least 40 wounded in a suicide bombing near the old central bus station in Tel Aviv.

Immediately north of the ancient port of Jaffa, Tel Aviv lies on land that used to be sand dunes and as such has relatively poor soil fertility. The land has been flattened and has no important gradients; its most notable geographical features are bluffs above the Mediterranean coastline and the Yarkon River mouth.

South Tel Aviv is generally poor, with the exception of the Neve Tzedek neighborhood and some recent development by the Jaffa beach. It also includes the city's "downtown." Central Tel Aviv includes Tel Aviv's Azrieli Center and is also an important financial and commerce district that stretches along the part of Ramat Gan on the Ayalon Highway. The northern side of Tel Aviv is home to Tel Aviv University and some of Tel Aviv's most expensive upper class residential neighborhoods. The prosperity of the north stretches to neighboring Herzliya Pituah, Ramat HaSharon, and Kfar Shmaryahu.

The most notable of these is Jaffa, the ancient port city out of which Tel Aviv grew. This area is traditionally made up demographically of a greater percentage of Arabs, but recent gentrification is replacing them with a young professional population. Similar processes are occurring in nearby Neve Tzedek, the original Jewish neighborhood outside of Jaffa. Ramat Aviv, a district in the northern part of the city largely made up of luxury apartments and including the Tel Aviv University, is currently undergoing extensive expansion and is set to absorb the beachfront property of Sde Dov Airport after its decommissioning.

Tel Aviv's White City, around the city center, contains more than 5,000 Modernist-style buildings inspired by the Bauhaus school and Le Corbusier.

The Azrieli Center, composed of three buildings— one square, one triangular, and one circular—usurped that title. Since 2001, Israel's tallest building is the City Gate Tower, which is located in the neighboring city of Ramat Gan, although the country's tallest wholly residential building, the Neve Tzedek Tower, is in Tel Aviv. New neighborhoods such as the Park Tzameret are being constructed to house luxury apartment towers including YOO Tel Aviv towers designed by Philippe Starck, while zones such as The southern Kirya are being developed with office towers. Other recent additions to Tel Aviv's skyline are the 1 Rothschild Tower, Be'eri Nahardea Tower and First International Bank Tower.

Since Tel Aviv was built on sand dunes, farming was not profitable and maritime commerce was centered in Haifa and Ashdod. Instead, the city gradually developed as a center for scientific and technical research. Tel Aviv emerged as a high-tech center in the 1990s.

Since then, high-tech industry in the Tel Aviv area has developed even more.

Industries in Tel Aviv include chemical processing, textile plants and food manufacturers.

According to Mercer, a human resources consulting firm based in New York, as of 2008 Tel Aviv is the most expensive city in the Middle East and the 14th most expensive in the world. It falls just behind Singapore and Paris and just ahead of Sydney and Dublin in this respect. By comparison, New York City is 22nd.

Tel Aviv has branches of some of the world's leading hotels, among them the Crowne Plaza, Sheraton, Dan, Isrotel and Hilton. It is home to many museums, architectural and cultural sites, with city tours available in different languages.

In Jaffa, the Simta and Notzar theaters specialize in fringe style.thumb|left|Suzanne Dellal Centre for Dance and Theatre in Tzedek ]Tel Aviv is home to a number of established dance centers and companies. The Batsheva Dance Company, a contemporary dance troupe, as well as Bat Dor and the Israel Ballet are also headquartered in Tel Aviv.

Housed on the campus of Tel Aviv University is the Beth Hatefutsoth, a museum of the international Jewish diaspora that tells the story of Jewish prosperity and persecution throughout the centuries of exile. Batey Haosef Museum specializes in Israel Defense Forces' military history. The Palmach Museum near Tel Aviv University offers a multimedia experience of the history of the Palmach as well as archives depicting the lives of Jewish soldiers who became Israel's first defenders. Near Charles Clore's garden in north Jaffa is a small museum of the Etzel Jewish militant organization, which conquered Jaffa in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Israel Trade Fairs & Convention Center, located in the northern part of the city, hosts more than 60 major events annually. Many offbeat museums and galleries operate in the city's southern areas, including the Tel Aviv Raw Art contemporary art gallery.

It is the only city with three clubs in Israeli Premier League, the country's top football league. Maccabi Tel Aviv Sports Club was founded in 1906 and competes in more than 10 sports. Its basketball team holds 47 Israeli titles, has won 36 editions of the Israel cup, and has five European Championships, and its football team has won Israeli league titles and has won 22 State Cups, two Toto Cups and two Asian Club Championships. Yael Arad, an athlete in Maccabi's judo club, won a silver medal in the 1992 Olympic Games.

Shimshon Tel Aviv and Beitar Tel Aviv both formerly played in the top division, but dropped into the lower leagues, and merged in 2000, the new club now playing in Liga Artzit, the third tier. Another former first division team, Maccabi Jaffa, is now defunct, as are Maccabi HaTzefon Tel Aviv, Hapoel HaTzefon Tel Aviv and Hakoah Tel Aviv, who merged with Maccabi Ramat Gan and moved to Ramat Gan in 1959.

As of 2008, Ron Huldai is mayor of Tel Aviv, having held that office since 1998.

As of 2006, 51,359 children attended school in Tel Aviv, of whom 8,977 were in municipal kindergartens, 23,573 in municipal elementary schools, and 18,809 in high schools.

A new elementary school is planned north of Sde Dov as well as a new high school in north Tel Aviv.

The main highway leading to the city is the Ayalon Highway , which runs along the eastern side of the city from north to south along the Ayalon River riverbed, dividing for the most part Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan. Driving south on the Ayalon gives access to Highway 1, leading to Ben Gurion International Airport and Jerusalem. Within the city, the main routes are King George Street, Allenby Street, Ibn Gabirol Street, Dizengoff Street, Rothschild Boulevard, and in Jaffa the main route is Jerusalem Boulevard. Namir Road connects the city to Highway 2, Israel's main northsouth highway, and Begin/Jabotinsky Road, which provides access from the east through Ramat Gan, Bnei Brak and Petah Tikva. Tel Aviv, accommodating about 500,000 commuter cars daily, suffers from increasing congestion. In 2007, the Sadan Report recommended the introduction of a congestion charge similar to that of London in Tel Aviv as well as other Israeli cities. Under this plan, road users traveling into the city would pay a fixed fee.

It is estimated that over a million people travel by train from the surrounding cities to Tel Aviv each month.

The main bus network in Tel Aviv is operated by Dan Bus Company; the Egged Bus Cooperative, the world's second-largest bus company, provides intercity transportation.

Source: Wikipedia > Tel Aviv