Why we love it 01 Tel Aviv’s creative energy emanates on the city’s streets and in conversation with locals. 02 Some of the continent’s finest Baroque architecture sits next to modernist masters. 03 Café culture is a happy blend of Middle Eastern and European traditions. 04 Few other Middle Eastern cities can top Tel Aviv’s progressive attitude to gay culture. 05 Sun and sea: the lively coastline is still one of its strongest selling points.
tel aviv Preface As club culture gives way to café culture and more technology start-ups take root, Tel Avivians are beginning to take a new pride in their city and its unique place as a vibrant, open and tolerant oasis in the Middle East.
When Tel Aviv got its reputation as a sundrenched party city on the Mediterranean, Israel was a much different country. Political violence flavoured how Israelis interacted with their urban environments. Instead of a relaxed engagement with the city, one that breeds quaint restaurants and demands leisurely walks, Tel Aviv was moulded into a comfortable bubble ideal for sustained outbursts of brittle hedonism. For the visitor, the city’s pace and corresponding vibrancy was intoxicating. But it wasn’t sustainable for the city’s residents. Today, Tel Aviv is coming into its own as a serious business city with an unusually casual outlook. As if maturing from earlier adolescent years, locals spend more time in cafés than nightclubs. Endless conversation about conflict has been replaced with some optimism. Small restaurants and cafés, which can feel like incubators for technology entrepreneurs, dot the alleyways between derelict masterpieces of Bauhaus architecture. Fuelling Tel Aviv’s urban transformation is a burgeoning technology sector and smart city leaders who seek to encourage entrepreneurship through international partnership. While the old vibrancy is still evident, the city has moved beyond its sun-and-sex brand. As Israel’s international reputation has taken a beating in recent years, Tel Aviv’s stock as an attractive destination for business and tourism has been steadily rising. Nestled on the edge of a leafy park in central Tel Aviv amidst a jumble of Bauhaus buildings, a tiny café named after the 19th-century French lawyer Adolphe Cremieux embodies Tel Aviv’s increasingly
refined outlook on life. While the regional staple of salad for breakfast remains a favourite, the café’s coffee quality has moved to previously unimaginable levels. Pavement tables are draped with the afternoon shade from large oak trees lining the street. A feeling of intimacy pervades the ambiance. People take an interest in the business of their neighbour and it is not uncommon to hear their perspective on the day’s political events before your coffee has arrived. Reflecting Israel’s tight-knit social composition; the city’s layout is open. Intimate public squares are lined with flats featuring large windows that often open to balconies, providing much needed respite from the humidity. The roots of this style of architecture can be traced to Tel Aviv’s initial design, which envisioned an inclusive urban plan, a refuge for waves of immigrants pouring into the city from around the world at the time of Israel’s founding. One unforeseen consequence of this inclusive city planning is the success of the city’s recent start ups. “Tel Aviv feels a lot like Silicon Valley these days. Everyone knows everyone in a close way which, of course, is a good ingredient for creative evolution,” says Israeli tech pioneer Guy Rosen. With the newfound prosperity, rents have skyrocketed, forcing residents on gentrifying treks to neglected corners of the city. A stroll through south Tel Aviv, once a dystopic collection of textile buildings, reveals some of the city’s most vibrant areas. In the Florentine neighbourhood, which Tel Avivians like to compare to Brooklyn, tiny boutiques are popping up next to wholesale furniture warehouses and hummus restaurants now share walls with establishments set up by Israel’s most talented chefs. Just a few years ago, Tel Avivians would have been uncomfortable with any description of their city as the nexus of two cultures but a new attitude, proud of the city’s provenance, has taken hold. It is in the mix of European and Middle Eastern culture that the city’s impossible pedigree as a liberal enclave in an increasingly radical Middle East is most readily observed. Fuelled by a prosperous property market and rising capital investment,
Tel Avivians exude a quiet satisfaction at the security of their bubble, as many still like to refer to the city. “There is an air of creativity, freedom and culture infusing all aspects of life in Tel Aviv now,” says Jacob Peres, the founder of the Tel Aviv-based creative direction agency Jacob Peres Office. “We don’t know where the changes are leading but positive change is in the air.” Tel Aviv, like Berlin, is a city that has a tense relationship with history. It can be felt on Tel Aviv’s young streets, built less than 100 years ago on what used to be sand dunes surrounding the ancient seaport of Jaffa. Many of the city’s residents are just out of the military or still struggling to find their own life path.Yet the air of possibility to start a company, the near constant sound of new construction and electric café culture, which spurs innovation, certainly adds to the unlikely bonds between the two cities. Regional events and the gravity of Israeli politics still lurk under the surface of life. Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets of Tel Aviv in protest over the country’s economic direction. The movement, which saw physical encampments pop up throughout the city, ironically reflected Israelis’ new relationship with their city. Rothschild Boulevard, a trendy street lined with trees imported by the British during the Mandate period, was the epicentre of this uniquely Tel Aviv movement. Instead of violent standoffs between police and citizens, like those that happened in Spain or Greece, Tel Aviv’s economic protest was a celebration of the communal bonds that have long united the city. “The younger generation in Israel have long felt powerless but the protests, which could have only started in Tel Aviv, show that the positive changes happening in the city are starting to take hold in the country,” says Stav Shaffir, one of the first Tel Aviv residents to take to the streets and now Israel’s youngest Member of Parliament. Tel Aviv is in the process of evolution. The city has opened a new chapter, confident in its contradictions and ready to protect an identity that is firmly anchored in the Middle East and Europe. — (m)
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01 Yana Odnoposov, 32, in her interior design store 02 New construction in ancient Jaffa 3 A sundown dinner in the old port, Jaffa 04 Carmel food market 05 A game of cards in Jaffa’s flea market 06 Michael, 27, on Shenkin Street 07 Noa, 26, staff at the Shenkin hotel 08 Taizu Asian restaurant 09 Ultra Orthodox young Israeli Jews walk through Jaffa’s flea market 10 Apartment building on King George Street 11 Friendly old man at Carmel food market 12 Conservative Palestinian Women in Jaffa’s old port walking along a public photo exhibition 13 Eyal de Leeuw, 39, head of external relations of Design Museum Holon 14 Montifiores’ well known “pagoda-house” and downtown Neve Tzedek 15 View from Tel Aviv’s first
modern high rise, the Shalom Tower, towards southwestern Jaffa 16 Mario, 25, Spanish dancer with Batsheva dance company, hard at work on his suntan 17 Moshe Leon, 64, surfer and life saver since 1975, at Banana Beach 18 Maor, 25 and Maya, 24, on Banana Beach 19 Freshly renovated art deco building in Montifiore Street 20 One of Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus Buildings that made the city into a Unesco World Heritage Site 21 The Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv’s first neighbourhood 22 An Ultra-Orthodox man strolls past a Bauhaus building 23 Tamir, 28 and Ortal, 24, in Montifiores’ Ben-Ami café 24 The beach
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