This art icle was downloaded by: [ Universit y of Haifa Library] On: 06 February 2014, At : 06: 34 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Social & Cultural Geography Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions f or aut hors and subscript ion inf ormat ion: ht t p: / / www. t andf online. com/ loi/ rscg20 Tel Aviv: center, periphery and the cultural geographies of an aspiring metropolis Maoz Azaryahu a a Depart ment of Geography and Environment al St udies , Universit y of Haif a, Mount Carmel , Haif a, 31905, Israel E-mail: Published online: 28 Mar 2008. 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Term s & Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- and- condit ions Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 9, No. 3, May 2008 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 Tel Aviv: center, periphery and the cultural geographies of an aspiring metropolis 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 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 ‘to be like’ other cities of fame and distinction have been complementary aspects of the attempt to overcome a sense of provincialism. This article explores the cultural geographies 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 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 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 selfimages that permeated the public discourse of the city. Of special significance for the analysis is the issue of distinction, evident in attempts to 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 political geography and sociology is one way of understanding not only Tel Aviv’s standing as a national center, but also its equivocal deference to prominent Western metropolises. Although other cities like Stockholm, Dublin, Delhi, Melbourne, or Edinburgh have shared a somewhat similar fare, Tel Aviv is an interesting case because the relationships between the city and the Israeli province, on the one hand, and with specific world-renowned metropolitan centers, on the other, has figured prominently 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. Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis The fourth addresses the ‘White City’ as a contemporary expression of the distinction of Tel Aviv as formulated in terms of architectural heritage. Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 A general framework The dyadic concept of center and periphery represent a dynamic balance of power that figures prominently in geographical and sociological imagination. Either in a geographical 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 bipolar configuration. However, center– periphery 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 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 metropolitan center, the provinces became associated with backwardness, lack of sophistication and narrow-mindedness, where geographic Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 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 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 lifestyle. Provincialism is about a sense of a cultural gap. As an indicator of perceived inferiority, provincialism belongs to the condition 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 increasingly 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 promoter 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 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 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 Jewish national revival, where Jews could prove their abilities when given the opportunity (Ha’Aretz 1929). In this context, recognizing 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 highlighted 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 prominent 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 the Land of Israel (Ussishkin 1924: 2). Ten years later he positioned the three cities in the ‘hierarchy of sentiment’. In this hierarchy, Jerusalem occupied the first place, ‘And in this respect was beyond competition’ (Ussishkin 1934: 4). Tel Aviv was in second place, since it was ‘a 100 percent Hebrew city’. Haifa was in the third place. In 1933 Nathan Alterman (1933: 20) assessed that Tel Aviv would 307 Figure 1 The local context. keep a distance between itself and the rest of the country, but would rather play a major role in the country’s ‘spiritual negotiation’ with the world. Tel Aviv would be a ‘capital of pleasure’ for the country. As the poetess Hava Pinhas-Cohen put it, ‘the tension between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as symbolic entities . . . is the inner tension at the Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 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 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-changing 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 Greenwich 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 Mediterranean, 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 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 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 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 relationship(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 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 hegemonic 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 distinction 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 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 310 Maoz Azaryahu Avenue’, ‘Tel Aviv’s Broadway’ and ‘West End’. These metaphors invested the street with glamour. ‘Fifth Avenue’ alluded to the sophisticated shops that offered imported merchandise. ‘Broadway’ and ‘West End’ alluded to New York and London, respectively. These analogies underscored the leisure opportunities 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 neighborhoods’ (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 “Dizengoffian 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 contemporary 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 certainly 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 Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 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 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 characteristics 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 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 difference 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 periphery, 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 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 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, London or Paris’ (Meiberg 1998: 12). The feeling that real life takes place elsewhere is what motivates and constitutes the provincial 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 ‘Unfortunately, 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 emphasized 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 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 313 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; KampBandau 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 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 member of the prestigious club of worldfamed cities (Figure 3). On 7 June 2004 Tel Aviv celebrated the first anniversary of its listing as a world heritage Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 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 Figure 3 White City—Poster 2004. Courtesy of the Bauhaus Center, Tel Aviv. Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 Tel Aviv: an aspiring metropolis 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 asserted that ‘with this the world has recognized the architectural and urban qualities of Tel Aviv, including its buildings, boulevards and squares’. The title of the public announcement made by the municipality 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 articulate with the cultural positioning of the city in a web of historically contextualized relationships between centers and peripheries. Pronounced in the discursive field of the city and potentially debated, such relationships and the hierarchies of status and prestige they represent correspond to local perspectives and imaginations. Importantly, they resonate with desires, aspirations and concerns that predominated 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 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 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 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 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. 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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 centrepériphérie 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 Downloaded by [University of Haifa Library] at 06:34 06 February 2014 Tel Aviv devenir une «ville en continu», cosmopolite 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’architecture internationale de Tel Aviv. Mots-clefs: Tel Aviv, métropole en devenir, centrepériphérie, modernité, provincialisme. 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 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.