Stage 3
Following World War II and into the 1990's, all urban planning in Tel
Aviv was concentrated on locating the hundreds of thousands of immigrants
arriving in Israel. This kept planners from being able to form a definitive
map of how they wanted the city to be structured. Instead, the national
focus was on "new towns".
"New Towns" were established throughout Israel as residential settlements under Zionist ideals to house arriving immigrants.
However, as Tel Aviv continued to expand, each additional settlement was swallowed up into the conurbation. Also, there were no plans to control land allocation in the city center (besides a minor attempt in 1970 with the first Master Plan). Tel Aviv is lucky that much of the activities of the central city remained organized on their own.
Hence, current planners are faced with a barrage of urban problems:
1) Transportation. Tel Aviv has no major public transportation system
and many of the roads are still very small and not fit to accommodate
city traffic. City roads experience gridlock often. As well, more networks
are needed to Jerusalem and Haifa. Tel Aviv uses Haifa for its port and
many people who work in Jerusalem live in Tel Aviv and commute the two hours
to work.
2) Sprawl. One of Tel Aviv's most valuable national assets these days in land. The country is very small and densely populated, with the population continually increasing. Thus, the city is constantly expanding into the sparse open land of Israel. Planners have recognized that this presents a huge environmental and economic problem for Israel and Tel Aviv.
3) Water. With the ground water of the city drained and the rivers polluted,
Tel Aviv has very little clean water available. In addition, industry has
polluted the coast along the entire length of Tel Aviv. Until 1998, not
a single beach in that area was considered fit for recreation.
These problems and others are being addressed by the extremely recent
plans instated by the Israeli government called the Israel
2020 Plan and National Master Plan (NMP 31).