Deciphering Geddes urban masterplan for Tel Aviv. Nearly a century of urban magic

Defining our personal meaning of urban magic is what leads us while investigating our own home city of Tel Aviv. Growing up in Tel Aviv and experiencing the ambiguity of the city is what conceived the idea of deciphering the city’s original masterplan and examining, as architects, what of the original plan could have introduced this ambiguity into the city. Through this research we aspire to communicate a specific feeling that we shared as long-time users of the city of Tel Aviv. This feeling we are discussing is the easiness of living in small quiet neighborhoods within few steps from Israel’s cultural capital’s busiest streets of commerce. It was clear for us that this characteristic has to do with the smaller size of the city in comparison to others but through this research we analyze which factors in the city’s plan allowed Tel Aviv to maintain this character throughout its development. To specify, the main goal of this study is to present the Geddes plan for Tel Aviv and summarize its tangible achievements, specifically observing the urban life he created in Tel Aviv, which is extremely different in comparison to other Israeli cities and maintains its uniqueness throughout all of the changes in the city in the past 80 years. Our method is to present an urban planning model as a summary of all the possibilities that arose from the original sketch prepared by Sir Patrick Geddes for the city of Tel Aviv, and to identify that same area in today’s Tel Aviv as an historical system, examining if it is worthy of overall preservation or maybe even reproduction in other cities. From a historical point of view, we are also interested in investigating the theoretical confusion associated with the Geddes plan for Tel Aviv and understanding the wide variety of factors involved in bringing this initial plan to reality. This theme caught our attention while investigating the original plan due to lack of evidence and information on Geddes’s real approach towards Tel Aviv other than the evidence of rapidly prepared drawings that not very arguably led to what is considered a successful city of the 20th century, vital and vibrant cultural and civic life, and the only cosmopolitan city in Israel. We structured our study through a chronological timeline, beginning with an overview of Sir Patrick Geddes’s history and work all over the world, including the new movements of urbanism he took part of. In later chapters we provide an overview on the general history of the development of the city of Tel Aviv followed by a deeper study of the local condition that led to the development of Tel Aviv in the light of Geddes’s masterplan, an analysis of the plan and a study that examines what are the traces and remains of Geddes’s plan till today with a point of view towards the future.