Rural ethos and urban development.docVIP

Rural ethos and urban development: the emergence of the first Hebrew town in modern Palestine Tal Alon-Mozes* Landscape Architecture Program, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel Since the late nineteenth century, the Zionist movement emphasized ruralism not only for the pastoral areas of Palestine, but also for its urban centres. This paper explores the emergence of Tel Aviv, the first Hebrew town, in the light of the Zionist rural/pastoral ideology and within the late nineteenth century discourse on city planning. It discusses early Tel Aviv’s rural images and the various means that were implemented by local and international planners, Zionist cultural agents, volunteer organizations and residents in order to materialize the green vision for the first Hebrew town. This paper argues that till the mid-1930s, the development of Tel Aviv discarded the common modern dichotomy of nature/culture or pastoral/urban, proving that the development of the rural, agricultural landscape and the construction of the urban metropolis were complementary facets of the Zionist dream. Keywords: rural/urban; town planning; Geddes; Palestine; Tel Aviv (It is self evident) that the national existence of a nation in a country depends upon the question whether it is successful in the cultivation of its soil. The city orients itself by the country. (Hantke, 1923) 1 Introduction By the late nineteenth century, as the Zionist movement emerged, its leaders placed great emphasis on the development of the rural areas of Palestine. The priority of the rural, agricultural sector over the urban was rooted in Zionist ideology, which aspired to return the urbanized Jews to their homeland and invert their accepted occupational pyramid.2While earlier immigration to Palestine had been based on religious communities subsisting mainly on charity, these modern immigrants aspired to establish a progressive rural society that would als