In Israel, were boundaries changed several times in the last 70 years, with many and each time different problems of defending the borders from outside, defining the identity of the nation inside, mediating between the different populations and steams, planning a fast and sprawl territorial development, with very strong social, religious, territorial tensions, the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa represents kind of a bubble, where the urban problems are really similar to the ones that the main western cities have been facing in the last decades, just on a more dramatical scale and frenzy.
Tel-Aviv Jaffa is one municipal identity in the formal way, but when you look closely the inner border between the two is strong, physically and mentally. While Jaffa conserves strong in its old city the historical traces of its past, modern Tel Aviv is a city that has been build in the last 70 years, in a fast and destructive process that erased almost every trace of its previous history: just few old Jewish settlements have survived, even if in the last years have suffer a strong alienating process of gentrification, like “Neve Tzedek”, or have been converted in a mono-functional commercial districts, like “Sarona”.
In the first years after the foundation of Israel this process was caused by the strong migrations from all over the world after WWII and had the architectural shape of 3-4 floors apartments block that represent the main typology until nowadays. In the last decades the process is erasing also its first creations in terms of urban and architectural shapes, with an explosion of high rising buildings, both residential and offices, often detached from the urban fabric and owned by foreign people that use them just during the holiday periods or as a future investment, with increasing gap between the central rich neighbourhoods and the poorest ones, that nowadays are represented by many migrants from Africa.
In this urban jungle where the ugliness and alienation seem to be ordinary, it happens often to discover, with a weird sense of mystery, a corner in which things seems to go in another direction, and the beauty assumes the shape of a small park full of ancient trees, silent witnesses of the transformation, of an old building surprisingly well preserved or a new building well designed and the hope gains the upper hand.