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Tel Aviv: center, periphery and the cultural geographies of an aspiring

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DOI: 10.1080/14649360801990512

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Tel Aviv: center, periphery and the cultural

geographies of an aspiring metropolis
a
Maoz Azaryahu
a
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies , University of Haifa, Mount Carmel ,
Haifa, 31905, Israel E-mail:
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To cite this article: Maoz Azaryahu (2008) Tel Aviv: center, periphery and the cultural geographies of an aspiring metropolis,
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 Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 9, No. 3, May 2008

Tel Aviv: center, periphery and the cultural

geographies of an aspiring metropolis
Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014

Maoz Azaryahu
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel,
Haifa 31905, Israel, azaryahu@geo.haifa.ac.il

The aspiration to make Tel Aviv a great metropolis of world-renown and the awareness of
its provincialism have figured prominently in the city’s public discourse and cultural
history. The paper explores the cultural positioning of Tel Aviv as a city of distinction and
fame in different scales of center –periphery dualisms and through successive phases of its
history. The analysis is divided into four parts. The first focuses on the ‘First Hebrew City’
phase, which lasted from its founding in 1909 through the 1950s, when the notion of
Tel Aviv as a unique Zionist creation reigned supreme. The second part deals with the
1960s and the 1970s, when Dizengoff Street epitomized the reputation of Tel Aviv as a
large and modern city. The third is devoted to the 1980s and the 1990s, when the
celebration of Tel Aviv as a ‘Nonstop City’, a vibrant cosmopolis on a par with New York.
The fourth addresses the ‘White City’ as a contemporary expression of the distinction of
Tel Aviv in terms of the built heritage of its International Style architecture.

Key words: Tel Aviv, aspiring metropolis, center – periphery, modernity, provincialism.

Introduction ‘to be like’ other cities of fame and distinction

Be a tail to the lions rather than head to the
foxes. (Rabbi Matya ben Charash, second
century ACE, The Ethics of the Fathers)
Since its founding in 1909, Tel Aviv’s
leaders, commentators, promoters, and
detractors have almost continually engaged
in the cultural positioning of the city as a
national center and in unraveling its standing
among and relationship with prominent
metropolitan centers such as Paris, London
and New York. Tel Aviv’s thirst for recognition
as a city of world renown and the desire
have been complementary aspects of the
attempt to overcome a sense of provincialism.
This article explores the cultural geogra-
phies of Tel Aviv’s attempts to be a city of
distinction and fame through successive
phases of the city’s history. Following the
dichotomy suggested in the epigraph, the
article expands on how notions about
Tel Aviv being ‘a head to the foxes’ and/or ‘a
tail to the lions’ figured in the public discourse
of the city during different historical periods
and cultural contexts. Embedded into the
city’s official ideology and articulated in terms

ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/08/030303-16 q 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14649360801990512
 304 Maoz Azaryahu
and patterns of popular culture, such notions
were formulated in terms of differences,
analogies and hierarchies, and pronounced in
reputations and metaphors, images and self-
images that permeated the public discourse of
the city. Of special significance for the analysis
is the issue of distinction, evident in attempts to
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make Tel Aviv distinctive from the local, Israeli
province and at the same time to distinguish it as
a city on a par with metropolises such as Paris or
New York or as a city that has a legitimate claim
to fame on a global scale.
In 1979 the prominent Israeli literary critic
Yoram Bronovsky (1979) referred to ‘The
uniqueness of Tel Aviv in regard to the issue of
the relations between center and province’.
Indeed, I believe that the notion of center –
periphery relationships as developed in politi-
cal geography and sociology is one way of
understanding not only Tel Aviv’s standing as a
national center, but also its equivocal defer-
ence to prominent Western metropolises.
Although other cities like Stockholm, Dublin,
Delhi, Melbourne, or Edinburgh have shared a
somewhat similar fare, Tel Aviv is an interest-
ing case because the relationships between the
city and the Israeli province, on the one hand,
and with specific world-renowned metropoli-
tan centers, on the other, has figured promi-
nently in the public discourse and cultural
constitution of Tel Aviv as an aspiring
metropolis.
The material upon which the investigation is
based includes references to the position of Tel
Aviv as an aspiring metropolis that belonged
to the public discourse of the city. Among
these are observations made by mayors as well
as commentaries by writers, poets, publicists,
pundits, reporters and cultural entrepreneurs,
which have appeared in the Hebrew press and
which document and offer perceptive insights
into prevailing notions about Tel Aviv’s
aspiration to become a large metropolis,
on the one hand, and its provincialism, on
the other.
This paper suggests that beyond official
policies and campaigns intended to promote,
market and sell the city and the economic and
political interests they represent (Ashworth
and Voogd 1990; Gold and Ward 1994; Ward
1998), the cultural positioning of a city takes
place within a wider discursive field of popular
culture where notions about the city and its
real or desirable standing in a given geography
of status and prestige are articulated and
possibly debated. The paper also suggests that
the cultural positioning of a city involves
different scales of center –periphery dualisms
and that these dualisms should be historically
contextualized. The historical approach offers
an opportunity to discern continuities that
transcend period-specific issues and concerns
and to recognize developments that reflect
changing circumstances and priorities. Finally,
the paper directs attention to the issue of
provincialism as a factor in the cultural
positioning of cities, the underlying idea
being that a sense of provincialism and a
thirst for recognition are often two sides of the
same coin.
Following a brief theoretical overview, this
analysis is divided into four parts, each
dealing with a particular phase in the
cultural history of Tel Aviv. The first focuses
on the ‘First Hebrew City’ phase, which
lasted from its foundation through the
1950s, when the notion of Tel Aviv as a
unique Zionist creation reigned supreme.
The second part deals with the 1960s and the
1970s, when Dizengoff Street epitomized the
reputation of Tel Aviv as a large and modern
city. The third is devoted to the 1980s and
the 1990s, when the celebration of Tel Aviv
as a ‘Nonstop City’ represented the hype
around the notion of the city as a vibrant
cosmopolis on a par with New York.

The fourth addresses the ‘White City’ as a
contemporary expression of the distinction of
Tel Aviv as formulated in terms of architec-
tural heritage.
A general framework
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The dyadic concept of center and periphery
represent a dynamic balance of power that
figures prominently in geographical and
sociological imagination. Either in a geo-
graphical sense of political-economic relations
as between cities, regions, or countries or in a
sociological sense of exercising authority
within society (Agnew 1981), the distinction
between a center and periphery implies an
uneven distribution of political and economic
power and cultural capital. Either defined in
geographical or sociological terms, the center
represents the locus of power and dominance
and importantly, the source of prestige, while
the periphery is sub-ordinate. Simply put, a
center – periphery relationship is about
hierarchy.
The center– periphery concept suggests a bi-
polar configuration. However, center– periph-
ery relationship may involve a dynamic set of
such bi-polar configurations that co-exist
simultaneously in relation to or independently
of each other. One possibility is that a center is
a periphery of another center: what is a center
in a local center is concurrently a periphery in
a global context such as Stockholm, Dublin
or Delhi. Another possibility is two centers
that compete over political and economic
control or cultural supremacy. A case in point
is the historic rivalry between Moscow and
St. Petersburg (Shevyrev 2003) or the symbolic
competition between Sydney and Melbourne
or Glasgow and Edinburgh for preeminence.
A third possibility combines the two: a center
that competes with another center in the local
Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 305
(national) level and represents a periphery on a
global level.
In connection with cities, the notion of
center should be differentiated. Mecca and
Canterbury are distinct religious centers, but
hardly political or economic ones. Milan is a
center of the global fashion industry, but not a
political center. Peter Hall analyzed world
cities that wield political, financial and
cultural power (1966, 1977, 1984). In the
era of globalization, world cities figure as
centers of international business (Friedman
1986; Knox and Taylor 1995). However, the
fascination with and the power of attraction of
large metropolitan centers such as New York,
London and Paris evinces not only their
financial, commercial and political power,
but also their perception as trend-setters and
as models worthy of emulation; paraphrasing
Paul Wheatley, the greatness of a city is what it
is said to be.
Beyond economic and political factors, the
supremacy of a metropolitan center is manifest
in terms of prestige. The sociologist Edward
Shils noted that
The connection with the metropolitan center
confers on an object or a symbol a quality of its
own quite independently of any inherent features,
so that much of what comes from the center, even
though it might be no better in itself than what
originates in the provinces, profits from the special
nature of its place of origin. (1988: 357)
The term province originated in the Roman
Empire, where the provinces were ruled by the
imperial center. In this sense, the province is an
administrative unit. But beyond being a
periphery in relation to the political and
administrative power located in the metropo-
litan center, the provinces became associated
with backwardness, lack of sophistication
and narrow-mindedness, where geographic
 306 Maoz Azaryahu
distance from the metropolitan center is
translated into terms of cultural inferiority
and diminishing prestige. In this sense of the
term, reference to provincialism is derogatory.
It articulates the perspective of the center and
its attitudes towards the provinces. However,
when the so-called provincials accept and
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internalize this perception, provincialism also
means focusing on the center as a setter of
trends and the source of that which is
culturally correct in terms of taste and life-
style. Provincialism is about a sense of a
cultural gap. As an indicator of perceived
inferiority, provincialism belongs to the con-
dition of marginality.
Phase I: the First Hebrew City
Writing about Tel Aviv in the early 1930s, poet
Nathan Alterman observed that
Despite all indications, Tel Aviv is not provincial; it
is not provincial in the common meaning of the
term. Tel Aviv has many signs of provincialism—
true indeed! Tel Aviv is small—true indeed! But
noise, multitudes and great deeds do not make a
town a metropolis. A big city means a center, and a
province means circumference, a point on the
perimeter. The more distant the point is from the
center—a distance of space and a distance of
negotiation—the smaller it is in value. Tel Aviv is far
from the ‘foci mundi’ . . . and nevertheless, it is a
center, a double center, to the country, and
especially to the people. (Alterman 1979: 19)
Alterman wrote this commentary a short while
after he returned from Paris to Tel Aviv.
Implicitly, the comparison between the great
European metropolis and the new city on the
shores of the Mediterranean underlay his
commentary. He acknowledged the ‘many
signs of provincialism’ in the city and its
distance from the ‘foci mundi’, but insisted on
its position as a double center—a center to
Jewish Palestine and a center to the Jewish
people.
Alterman’s commentary draws attention to
two issues that in this period became increas-
ingly pertinent. One issue concerns the
emergence of Tel Aviv as a center of Jewish
Palestine. Another involves notions of Tel Aviv
as either unique or, alternately, a city on a par
with world-renowned metropolises. Though
seemingly mutually exclusive, these notions
reflected concern about the position of Tel Aviv
in a global network of cities and a prevalent
urge to invest it with prestige. In particular,
calling attention to the ‘European’ character of
the city articulated deference to patterns of
European modernity.
In 1906, when he presented the idea of the
new city, Akiva Arieh Weiss, one of the city’s
founders, maintained that their intention was
to build the ‘first Hebrew city’ in the Land of
Israel. He also envisioned the projected city as
‘New York of the Land of Israel’ (Shkhori
1990). Tel Aviv was conceived as a Zionist city
and a modern city (Azaryahu 2006).
The Zionist aspect was in the idea that the
city was an expression of national redemption,
where the Hebrew character of the city and its
demographic composition as an exclusively
Jewish city attested to the restoration of
Jewish life in the ancient homeland.
The modern character of the city pertained
to urban planning and urban development that
applied European notions of modernity
(Mann 2006; Schlor 1996; Troen 2003).
Celebrating Tel Aviv as the First Hebrew
City cast its essence in the mold of its unique
position within Jewish national revival. For
Meir Dizengoff, mayor and an ardent promo-
ter of the city, Tel Aviv was ‘the seventh
wonder of the world’ (M.K. 1934: 302). There
were those who even maintained that Tel Aviv
 Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 307

was ‘a model and paragon, which the rest of

the cities in the world should observe and
emulate’ (Gorlik 1934: 2). The praises poured
on the city expressed a tremendous sense of
pride over the achievement of building a new,
modern Jewish city in a backward country. For
patriots of Tel Aviv, the city was a pinnacle of
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Jewish national revival, where Jews could

prove their abilities when given the opportu-
nity (Ha’Aretz 1929). In this context, recog-
nizing the city as a success story also seemed to
confirm the redemptive vision that underlay its
building (Figure 1).
In the twentieth century the comparative
evaluation of the three urban centers of Jewish
Palestine—Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa—
belonged to the Zionist discourse of national
revival. The comparative evaluation high-
lighted a notion of hierarchy and a symbolic
rivalry over supremacy. According to cliché,
‘Jerusalem is the city of the past, Haifa is the
city of the future and Tel Aviv is the city of
the present’ (Berlin 1934: 262). Haifa was the
center of heavy industry and since the early
1930s the main port of British Mandate
Palestine. Jerusalem, in addition to its promi-
nent role in Jewish imagination and liturgy,
was also a holy city for Christianity and Islam
and the capital of British Palestine. Jerusalem
and Haifa were demographically mixed,
Jewish– Arab cities. Tel Aviv was a Hebrew
city. In 1924 Menachem Ussishkin, the
president of the Jewish National Fund, noted
that Tel Aviv was ‘the most modern town’ in Figure 1 The local context.
the Land of Israel (Ussishkin 1924: 2). Ten
years later he positioned the three cities in the keep a distance between itself and the rest of
‘hierarchy of sentiment’. In this hierarchy, the country, but would rather play a major
Jerusalem occupied the first place, ‘And in this role in the country’s ‘spiritual negotiation’
respect was beyond competition’ (Ussishkin with the world. Tel Aviv would be a ‘capital of
1934: 4). Tel Aviv was in second place, since it pleasure’ for the country.
was ‘a 100 percent Hebrew city’. Haifa was in As the poetess Hava Pinhas-Cohen put it,
the third place. In 1933 Nathan Alterman ‘the tension between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as
(1933: 20) assessed that Tel Aviv would symbolic entities . . . is the inner tension at the
 308 Maoz Azaryahu
heart of Zionism. This is the dialectic of
modern Jewish existence in the Land of Israel’
(1999: 20). In the Zionist discourse of the
period the two cities have come to be associated
with and representative of rival Zionist visions
of national redemption. The tension was
between the promise of a new beginning
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offered by Tel Aviv and the insistence on
historical continuity and commitment to
Jewish tradition connected with Jerusalem.
As poet Yehuda Karni observed in 1929,
‘The veteran patriots of our city say: Tel Aviv
will be our new Jerusalem’ (Karni 1929: 1).
In the 1930s Tel Aviv became the center
of Zionist society and Hebrew culture.
The British ruling class and the academic
aristocracy of the Hebrew University resided
in Jerusalem but Tel Aviv prided itself for being
the metropolitan center of Jewish Palestine.
In 1939 an essayist compared the residents
of Tel Aviv with those of Haifa (Azai 1938: 14).
According to his observation, the people of
Haifa were ‘provincial, less vigilant and
modern, simpler and slower . . . tedious,
narrow minded and lacking in social graces’.
The people of Tel Aviv were ‘sociable and
accessible, enthusiastic and carried away by
capricious public opinion and its ever-chan-
ging heroes, its popular cafes . . . ’. Tel Avivians
had a reputation of being ‘arrogant’ (M.K.
1934: 302). In retrospective poet David
Avidan, who grew up in Tel Aviv, wrote that
‘[t]he First Hebrew City endowed its natives
with a sense of nobility’ (Avidan 1992: 15).
For those who maintained that Tel Aviv was
‘a gracious creation of the Zionist spirit’
(Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 1934 –1936: 393), the
city warranted special care and devotion.
Critics of Tel Aviv scorned what they
considered groundless vanity. Avraham
Sharon (Shvedron), the ‘notorious prosecutor’
of Tel Aviv (and a patriot of Jerusalem),
ridiculed the provincialism of Tel Aviv’s
residents who were confident that their city
was well-known all over the world (Davar
1936). He was especially delighted at the
humility inflicted on Tel Aviv when, in a
response to a query of a Tel Aviv resident, the
Royal Astronomical Observatory in Green-
wich maintained that no one there knew the
location of Tel Aviv.
In Meir Dizengoff’s vision, Tel Aviv was
destined to be ‘The center of the Mediterra-
nean, one of the metropolitan cities of the
world—Paris, London, New York, Tel Aviv’
(Ben-Yishai 1959: 156 – 157). The analogy to
big and famous cities, most prominently Paris,
was a recurrent motif in the public discourse of
the city. In 1932 journalist Uri Keisari
observed that ‘There are people who believe
that Tel Aviv is Paris. No more and no less:
Paris’ (Keisari 1932: 6). According to a report
from 1934, when Tel Aviv celebrated its Silver
Jubilee, ‘Tel Aviv is now a small Paris, and
perhaps even more beautiful than Paris’ (M.K.
1934: 302).
Paris was a prestigious city of reference. In
the late nineteenth century Buenos Aires was
known as ‘the Paris of America’ (Keeling
1996: 1; Schavelzon 2000: 62). At the
beginning of the twentieth century Rio de
Janeiro looked up to Paris as a model of
modern urbanity (Robinson 2006: 74).
The notion that Tel Aviv was on a par with
Paris did neither articulate with the visual
features of the city nor was it expressed in
conscious attempts to cast Parisian urban
patterns in a local mold. Rather it expressed a
sense of pride in the modern character of
Tel Aviv and also articulated a yearning to
invest Tel Aviv with the reputed greatness of
the world-renowned metropolis.
In the Zionist and pro-Zionist discourse,
Tel Aviv represented the triumph of European
modernity over Mid-eastern backwardness.
European modernity was a model to be

emulated, and the comparison with Paris
signified the success of the new city to implant
the prestigious model in the local setting. In
1912 literary critic and historian Yosef
Klausner expressed enthusiasm ‘[f]or the
neighborhood of Tel Aviv . . . where you can
find whatever you will find in the greater
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European cities’ (Vardi 1928: 22). Another
observer noted that Tel Aviv was a ‘splinter of
Europe [that] had been flown away and found
its way here’ (Vardi 1928: 42).
From another perspective, Tel Aviv was
destined to become ‘a window unto Europe’
(Ussishkin 1924: 2). This metaphor had first
been applied to St Petersburg, the city founded
by Czar Peter the Great on the banks of the
Neva River (Brodsky 1986: 72). The ‘window’
meant the opening through which European
and Western influence was to enter into a
backward country on the periphery of the
civilized world. Applied to Tel Aviv, the notion
of a ‘window’ meant that Tel Aviv should and
could become a crucial link in the cultural and
economic relations between Europe and the
Levant in general and Palestine in particular.
Phase II: Dizengoff Street
On the occasion of Tel Aviv’s Golden Jubilee in
1959 a commentator asserted that ‘There is
nothing parochial or provincial about Tel
Aviv’. He further claimed that Tel Aviv had
become a ‘cosmopolitan city’ (Eitan 1959).
After Israeli independence (1948) the relation-
ship(s) between Tel Aviv and the Israeli
periphery were formulated anew. Jerusalem
was declared the national capital in December
1949 and became the seat of the Knesset and
the national government. Yet until 1967
Jerusalem was a divided city, with the Jewish
holy places in the Jordanian-ruled part of the
city (Cohen 1977). Disconnected from the
Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 309
oilfields of Iraq and no more an imperial port,
Haifa failed to realize the vision of the ‘city of
the future’. Tel Aviv was the unequivocal
Israeli metropolis, the center of culture, art,
media, commerce and party politics (Gamzu
1959: 4).
When Tel Aviv celebrated its Golden Jubilee
in 1959 the vision of the Hebrew city had
already become everyday reality. Its hegemo-
nic position in Israeli culture was uncontested.
At a stage where the mythic aura of the Zionist
vision of the Hebrew city was waning and the
ideological fervor that had accompanied its
development was rapidly declining, the dis-
tinction of the city was not measured in terms
of the realization of a Zionist vision but in
terms of its characterization as the cultural
center of national life and as a modern city.
In the 1950s the notion of Tel Aviv as ‘a
window unto the West’ became especially
prominent in the self-image of the city in
relation to the Israeli periphery—practically
the rest of the country—and to the West as the
model to be emulated. The role of the city as
an interface between the center—namely the
West, and the periphery, namely the rest of
Israel, was manifested in the metaphors
applied to characterize Dizengoff Street.
In the 1950s Dizengoff Street became not
only Tel Aviv’s central thoroughfare but
Israel’s undisputed main street (Samet 1958).
The locale of Tel Aviv’s bohemia and the city’s
main commercial street, Dizengoff Street was
identified with urban sophistication expressed
in modern shops and pastime establishments.
The combination of fancy shop windows and
famous cafes infused Dizengoff Street with
glamor and fame. Dizengoff Street was a
major contribution to the reputation of
Tel Aviv as a dynamic and effervescent city.
In the local imagination, Dizengoff Street
was perceived as the local extension of the big
world. The street was referred to as ‘Fifth
 310 Maoz Azaryahu
Avenue’, ‘Tel Aviv’s Broadway’ and ‘West
End’. These metaphors invested the street with
glamour. ‘Fifth Avenue’ alluded to the soph-
isticated shops that offered imported mer-
chandise. ‘Broadway’ and ‘West End’ alluded
to New York and London, respectively. These
analogies underscored the leisure opportu-
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nities offered by theaters and coffee shops.
Notably, these analogies reflected the notion
that the center consisted of New York and
London.
These metaphoric references evinced a
cultural re-orientation. In the 1920s and the
1930s the city of reference was Paris. In the
1950s New York and London became also a
model for emulation. The reference to
‘Broadway’ and ‘Fifth Avenue’ signified that
from the perspective of Tel Aviv, the center
moved elsewhere. In 1957, when the City
Engineer presented the plan for building
Tel Aviv’s town square, he mentioned that
this would be ‘Tel Aviv’s Trafalgar Square’
(Rimon 1957: 10).
As a prestigious shopping, leisure and
entertainment center, Dizengoff Street was
unique in the cultural geography of Israel. One
commentator observed that ‘Dizengoff Street
was more elegant than the peripheral neigh-
borhoods’ (Dunewitz 1959: 165). Another
noted that ‘[r]esidents of the province define it
as a street that never sleeps’ (Samet 1958: 5).
In a stage in Israeli history that witnessed the
gradual erosion of the officially promoted
pioneering ethos, Dizengoff Street represented
the quest to be associated with the wide world
(Azaryahu 2000). It was the place where new
fashion was introduced into the Israeli scene.
The observation that ‘as always the “Dizen-
goffian girl” follows in the footsteps of its
foreign comrades’ (Ha’Olam Ha’Ze 1964:
24 –25) made clear the extent to which the
trendy street was emblematic of the yearning
to be in line with the centers of fashion abroad.
Dizengoff Street, ‘Tel Aviv’s stately showcase’,
was also ‘a small window unto affluence and
the wide world’ (Sarna 2000: 66).
At the height of its fame Dizengoff Street
served as an interface between the global
center and the Israeli province. This position
made clear the superiority of Tel Aviv in
relation to the rest of Israel, but also
emphasized the peripheral position of the
city in relation to the world cities that figured
so prominently in the local imagination of the
wide world. Emulating and introducing con-
temporary trends and importing the latest
fashions, Dizengoff Street always lagged
behind London, Paris, or New York (Ha’Olam
Ha’Ze 1964: 24 – 25). Yet the main issue was
of course that the rest of Israel always lagged
behind Dizengoff Street.
The awareness that Tel Aviv belonged to a
minor league of cities was expressed in the
question posed by a journalist in 1972: ‘What
could Tel Aviv offer the denizens of the wide
world? In what could it compete with the great
metropolises of the world?’ (Ha’Olam Ha’Ze
1973: 20 –21). The answer given was that
what Tel Aviv had to offer was effervescent
nightlife, ‘something small, limited, but cer-
tainly original’. In a situation when prestige
was measured in comparison to the ‘great
metropolises’, originality and the distinction
associated with it was a consolation. However,
since in the case of Tel Aviv originality did not
translate into terms of reciprocal influence on
the large metropolises, this alleged distinction
actually made clear that the real center was
somewhere else.
Phase III: Nonstop City
In an essay he wrote in 1979 literary critic
Yoram Bronovsky asserted that Tel Aviv was
not a provincial city. Notably, he referred

to the observations made by poet Nathan
Alterman in the early 1930s:
Indeed, Alterman succeeded in capturing the
uniqueness of Tel Aviv in regard to the issue of the
relations between center and province. Also today Tel
Aviv is not a provincial city even though it has ‘many
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signs of provincialism’ . . . However, it has the power
and essence of the center. (Bronovsky 1979: 130)
According to Bronovsky, it was not the
measure of the city that determined whether
it was a center. In his judgment,
Tel Aviv preserves a measure of agitation, of energy,
which is characteristic of only a small number of
cities in the world that are true foci of the center and
according to them all other cities are defined as
provincial. (Bronovsky 1979: 131)
This ‘measure of agitation, of energy’ was
mainly associated with Tel Aviv’s nightlife.
In 1983 poet David Avidan observed that
‘[Tel Aviv] is the only city in the country that can
be considered an equal member in the exclusive
club of the best cities of the world. A small tiger,
but a real tiger’ (Avidan 1983: 27).
The 1980s and the 1990s witnessed a
substantial upgrading of the position of
Tel Aviv as a center in the Israeli context and
as an aspiring center in the periphery in the
global context (Shavit and Biger 2002). In 1989
the city was officially branded a Nonstop City.
The popularity of the slogan ‘Tel Aviv a
Nonstop City’ indicated that it accorded with
prevalent notions about Tel Aviv and the
aspiration to mold its image as a dynamic and
effervescent city with the cultural character-
istics of a world city (Azaryahu 2006).
Common knowledge had it that ‘Tel Aviv
was the only city in Israel’ (Nizan 1988: 37).
Fed on the energy of immigrants from the
Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 311
periphery coming to Tel Aviv to realize their
fantasy of the big city, Tel Aviv offered
opportunities which the provinces could not
provide. Avidan noted that being a Tel Avivian
meant ‘awareness about the essential differ-
ence between Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel
and adherence to this difference . . . ’ (Avidan
1986: 35). This awareness was evident in
condescending attitudes towards the periph-
ery, which virtually included everything that
was not Tel Aviv ‘proper’. From a Tel Avivian
perspective, the residents of the periphery were
‘primitives representative of bad taste and
ignorance . . . ’ (Ben-Yosef 1986: 13).
In the 1980s the symbolic rivalry between
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was rekindled. At this
stage, the two cities represented two mutually
exclusive options of Israel’s cultural identity.
From the perspective of Tel Aviv’s proponents
as representative of an enlightened, liberal
Israel, Jerusalem represented a backward and
fanatic Israel. From this perspective, Jerusalem
was ‘the antithesis of the metropolis of the
coastal plain . . . a disturbed, retarded place
that is culturally out, the place of the obscure
and unenlightened . . . ’ (Shay 2001: 14).
The contempt felt towards Jerusalem
reflected fear of a rival center. The comparison
with world cities and the hierarchy of prestige
thus implied positioned Tel Aviv in the
periphery of Western modernity. In 1985
publicist Doron Rosenblum wrote ironically
about Tel Aviv as a ‘Manhattanite, Parisian
city’ (Rosenblum 1985). The reference to Paris
notwithstanding, in the 1980s New York
represented the ultimate city of reference and a
model to emulate: ‘New York is such a desired
model’ (Gros 1989: 18).
For patriots of Tel Aviv, the city was an
extension of New York: ‘When I was young
Tel Aviv seemed to be like New York . . . But
I grew up and realized that Tel Aviv is
New York’ (Shoshan 1997). The yearning for
 312 Maoz Azaryahu
New York, London or Paris reflected an
aspiration to belong to and be part of the big
world. Journalist Ron Meiberg, a prominent
marketer of American popular culture in his
journalistic writing, admitted: ‘We all walk in
Tel Aviv and feel at heart that it is too small for
us, that our natural place is in New York,
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London or Paris’ (Meiberg 1998: 12).
The feeling that real life takes place elsewhere
is what motivates and constitutes the provin-
cial predicament. The move to the center and
an attempt to assimilate there is one kind of a
response. Another is the attempt to mold the
periphery in the likeness of the center.
The conscious attempt to mold Tel Aviv in
the likeness of New York was clearly evident
in the ‘rebirth’ of Sheinkin Street as the new
bohemian center of Tel Aviv in the 1980s
(Azaryahu 2006). The popular notion of
Sheinkin Street as a local version of Greenwich
Village or SoHo was associated with the
attempt to bolster the image of Tel Aviv as a
city on a par with New York or London, which
in its turn reflected an interest to recast Tel Aviv
in the mold of a world city. Dani Dothan, a
cultural entrepreneur, later explained that his
intention was to establish Sheinkin Street as ‘a
place of art galleries and cafes . . . according to
the Village model’ (Gros 1989: 18). Journalist
Yair Lapid explained: ‘Sheinkin consciously
mimics similar streets in the world:
The Greenwich Village in New York, Chelsea
in London, the Latin Quarter in Paris’ (Lapid
1993: 58) (Figure 2).
Deference to New York was expressed in the
different nicknames given to Tel Aviv. In an
effort to liken Tel Aviv to New York, Tel Aviv
was nicknamed ‘the little apple’ (Cohen and
Peled 1989: 20). According to Journalist
Thomas O’Dwyer, the suggestion to nickname
Tel Aviv ‘the Big Orange’ was a pathetic
expression of provincial vanity (O’Dwyer
2000: B5). The 1992 issue of the Lonely
Planet tourist guide commented that ‘Unfor-
tunately, the inhabitants of Tel Aviv have a
habit of comparing their city to New York:
some call it even the Big Orange . . . ’ (Tilbury
1992: 221).
In actual terms the relationship between
Tel Aviv and New York is the one-sided
relationship between a cultural center and a
periphery that considers the center as a model
for emulation. Meant as self-irony, Tel Aviv
was a ‘province of New York’ (Bar’am 2002:
46), where emulated patterns only empha-
sized the gap between the original and the
copy (Raveh 2000: 84). Emulating and
mimicking patterns of urban modernity
associated with world-renown reflect the
desire to be in line with the center that at
any given moment exists elsewhere. However,
by necessity emulation and mimicking tend to
emphasize the superiority of the center as the
ultimate measure of what is culturally
correct.
The Nonstop City represented a yearning to
become ‘A world city in one leap’ (Ma’ariv
2005: 31) by means of conscious emulation of
and mimicking New York. The assertion in a
local weekly that in the 1990s Tel Aviv has
become one of ‘the big nightlife cities of the
world’ since ‘the night scene in Tel Aviv is
bigger than the night scene in Paris in absolute
terms, of Amsterdam in relative terms’ (Sarig
1999: 65) was more than a statement of facts.
It evinced a self-congratulatory sense of local
pride.
Phase IV: White City
Beside the desire to be like and even on a par with
world cities, a thirst for recognition based on the
sense that Tel Aviv was unique prevailed. On the
occasion of Tel Aviv’s Golden Jubilee in 1959, a
commentator projected that ‘[Tel Aviv] will

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Figure 2 The global context.
serve as a magnet to visitors from abroad, for
the history of Tel Aviv and its development is
very nearly unique—and certainly of far more
than merely local concern’ (Eitan 1959). In line
with conventional rhetoric of an earlier period in
the city’s history, the argument was that as the
first Hebrew city, Tel Aviv was a unique
phenomenon. However, when in the 1990s
Tel Aviv’s claim to global fame re-emerged, it
was in connection with the celebration of
Tel Aviv’s International Style architecture of
the 1930s and the 1940s, also known locally as
Bauhaus, as a unique phenomenon on a world
scale.
Mostly designed by architects who had
been trained in Europe, the Bauhaus buildings
represented the architecture of the Modern
Movement in Tel Aviv (Cohen 2003; Kamp-
Bandau 1994; Yavin 2007). According to
architectural historian Michael Levin
(1994: 31):
From the perspective of sixty years, it is only
recently that we have discovered that this often
Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 313
ridiculed Tel Aviv . . . wrote an important chapter
of early modern architecture of the twentieth
century . . . : the phenomenon of an entire city in a
distinguished style . . . was unique.
Initially the concern of small cultural elite, the
notion that Tel Aviv’s International Style
architecture could bolster the city’s standing
as a city of world fame and encourage tourism
was recognized only later by the municipality.
In 1994, an international conference entitled
‘Bauhaus in Tel Aviv’ was held under the
auspices of Tel Aviv municipality and
UNESCO. Publicist Doron Rosenblum noted
with irony that Tel Aviv was crowned the
‘world capital of Bauhaus’ (1994: 12). Labeled
as the White City of Tel Aviv, the built heritage
of the International Style in Tel Aviv was more
than a local heritage that should be conserved.
The recognition of Tel Aviv’s architectural
distinction by world famous architects lent the
city international prestige. In July 2003
UNESCO announced the listing of Tel Aviv,
or more precisely, ‘The White City of Tel Aviv’,
 314 Maoz Azaryahu

as a world heritage site. From a Tel Avivian
perspective, UNESCO’s acknowledgment of
Tel Aviv as a city of architectural distinction
fulfilled a long standing desire to be recognized
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as a member of the prestigious club of world-
famed cities (Figure 3).
On 7 June 2004 Tel Aviv celebrated the first
anniversary of its listing as a world heritage

Figure 3 White City—Poster 2004. Courtesy of the Bauhaus Center, Tel Aviv.

site in a plethora of public events (Goldfine
2004). Notably, in an ‘invitation’ letter sent to
the citizens, Mayor Ron Huldai encouraged
Tel Avivians to attend the festive events
sponsored by the municipality. The text
praised the White City as a ‘historical and
unique urban texture’. Notably, the mayor
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asserted that ‘with this the world has
recognized the architectural and urban qual-
ities of Tel Aviv, including its buildings,
boulevards and squares’. The title of the
public announcement made by the munici-
pality in the Hebrew newspapers left no room
for doubt about what the issue was about:
‘The Tel Avivians raise their heads up . . . and
now the whole world knows why!’ This
assertion was intended to boost local pride
and garner support for municipal efforts to
preserve architectural landmarks. Yet it also
evinced a deep-rooted thirst for recognition—
a clear marker of the provincial predicament—
that was barely hidden under the veneer of
self-assured vindication.
Concluding remarks
As the case of Tel Aviv shows, the cultural
geographies of an aspiring metropolis articu-
late with the cultural positioning of the city in
a web of historically contextualized relation-
ships between centers and peripheries. Pro-
nounced in the discursive field of the city and
potentially debated, such relationships and the
hierarchies of status and prestige they rep-
resent correspond to local perspectives and
imaginations. Importantly, they resonate with
desires, aspirations and concerns that pre-
dominated in the discourse of the city in
different historical periods.
Tel Aviv’s ambition to be more than a mere
ordinary city is captured in the observation
made by the protagonist of a play about the
Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 315
city’s early history: ‘In Tel Aviv they will
always talk about the day when the city will
become a really big city’ (Avidan 1983: 21).
A variation on the dichotomy suggested in the
epigraph, what characterized Tel Aviv as an
aspiring metropolis, is that though being ‘a
head to the foxes’ on a local scale was
imperative, being ‘a tail to the lions’ on a
global scale was not enough. The thirst for
recognition as a world-renowned city and
deference to Western metropolitan centers
were two complementary responses to the
equivocal, sometimes marginal position Tel
Aviv held with respect to the center(s) of world
politics, economy, and culture.
The desire to be like or on a par with
metropolitan centers such as Paris and later
New York represents a deep-rooted and
practically unchallenged idea that persisted
through the history of Tel Aviv, namely that
belonging to the center was about being
modern (or post-modern)—and that the
relevant version of urban modernity was in
the West and accordingly should be imported
from or inspired by the West. Variations on
this theme are to be found in different cities
and periods—from St Petersburg, the founding
of which, like Tel Aviv two centuries later, was
inspired by West European modernity, to
Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, where a
century ago local elites regarded Paris as a
paragon of urban modernity.
The creation of urban modernity in Latin
America also involved imaginations that recast
modernity as appropriation rather than a mere
mimicry of Western modernity (Robinson
2006: 77). Underlying its founding and
development, Tel Aviv’s aspiration to be a
modern city coincided with a desire to world
renown. Imitation of Western urban modernity
was considered ideologically and culturally
correct, even imperative for maintaining the
reputation of the city as a modern, up-to-date
 316 Maoz Azaryahu
city. However, imitation entailed adjustment to
the local context and the emergence of hybrid
forms. And importantly for the subject-matter
of this investigation, it was also laced with the
yearning to outdo the center.
Though the cities of reference have changed,
deference to Western metropolises considered
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to epitomize the currently fashionable in
urban modernity and a thirst for world
recognition have persisted throughout Tel
Aviv history. Underlying is the desire to
shake off a sense that Tel Aviv, despite claims
to the contrary, is a province. An irony of
provincialism is that the conscious attempt to
rise above provincialism is in itself a powerful
indication of provincialism.
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Abstract translations
Tel Aviv: le centre, la périphérie et les géographies
culturelles d’une métropole en devenir
Le désir de faire de Tel Aviv une grande métropole
de renommée mondiale et la prise de conscience de
son provincialisme, tels sont les points forts du
discours public et de l’histoire culturelle de la ville.
Il est question dans cet article de voir comment Tel
Aviv se positionne sur le plan culturel en tant que
ville de distinction et de renommée dans les
différentes échelles relatives au dualisme centre-
périphérie et à travers toutes les phases de son
histoire. L’analyse est présentée en quatre parties.
La première porte sur la phase de la «première ville
juive», qui s’est étendue de sa fondation en 1909
jusqu’au années 1950, à l’époque où l’idée de Tel
Aviv comme une créature sioniste unique primait.
La deuxième partie traite des années 1960 et 1970
quand la rue Dizengoff faisait la réputation de Tel
Aviv comme une grande ville moderne. La troisième
est consacrée aux années 1980 et 1990 qui ont vu
 318 Maoz Azaryahu
Tel Aviv devenir une «ville en continu», cosmopo-
lite et trépidante qui pouvait rivaliser avec New
York. La quatrième partie s’intéresse à la «ville
blanche» qui est une expression contemporaine
utilisée pour décrire le patrimoine bâti de l’archi-
tecture internationale de Tel Aviv.
Mots-clefs: Tel Aviv, métropole en devenir, centre-
périphérie, modernité, provincialisme.
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Tel Aviv: centro, periferia, y las geografı́as
culturales de una metrópolis ambiciosa
La aspiración de hacer de Tel Aviv una gran
metrópolis conocida en todo el mundo y la
conciencia de su carácter provincial se destacan en
el discurso público de la ciudad y en su historia
cultural. En este papel exploro el posicionamiento de
Tel Aviv como una ciudad de distinción y de fama en
diferentes escalas de los dualismos centro-periférico
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y a lo largo de etapas consecutivas de su historia. El
análisis se divide en cuatro partes. La primera se basa
en la etapa conocida como ‘la primera ciudad
hebrea’, que duró desde su fundación en 1909 hasta
los años 50, cuando imperaba la noción de Tel Aviv
como una creación sionista única. La segunda parte
trata los años 60 y 70 cuando la calle Dizengoff
Street tipificaba la fama de Tel Aviv de ser una ciudad
grande y moderna. La tercera parte se dedica a los
años 80 y 90, cuando Tel Aviv era celebrada por ser
una ‘Ciudad Sin Parar’, una cosmópolis tan vibrante
como Nueva York. La cuarta parte trata la ‘Ciudad
Blanca’ como una expresión contemporánea de la
distinción de Tel Aviv con respecto al patrimonio
construido de su arquitectura Estilo Internacional.
Palabras claves: Tel Aviv, metrópolis ambiciosa,
centro-periférico, modernidad, provincialismo.