Hint: Make more Tel Avivs

The fascinating protest cities that have sprung up in the centers of Israeli cities have brought me back to the original intent of this blog: How do we build value in cities? And some new questions: Can we build in too much value? Can the network effect of a dominant city harm its neighbors?

My working hypothesis has been that the sum total of real estate value in a city correlates with the investment in all aspects of that city's development. Build a new opera house? You should be able to see that investment reflected in the prices of houses and apartments. The same goes for a new system of bike paths, a new sewer main, or a commissioned report on future development.

When real estate prices take off, the investors are betting on the rightness and viability of the city, and its future prospects.

This dynamic tends to place cities in either an upward or downward spiral of development and prices. When things are going well, development taxes fill the city coffers and new public facilities are built, and old ones improved. Mayors beam with pride, cut ribbons, and demean the opposition. Young people flock to live there, and the prices rise more. Eventually young people, the lifeblood of the city can't afford to live there. We have seen this cycle in successful cities all over the world.

The downward spiral is less photogenic, but even more pervasive in its momentum. Landlords have trouble filling their buildings at a viable rent, projects are abandoned, leaving highly visible hulks, new development shies away, and whole areas of cities are shunned. Once these areas fall off our mental maps, they can remain under-used for generations.

Yesterday, a new project took me from the bustling center islands of Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv to the ghostly lower city of Haifa. I parked in the old business district of Haifa and continued on foot. The pedestrian traffic in the area was sparse, and I could easily imagine I was walking around alone at the bases of the huge new buildings for banks and national institutions.

Surrounding this recent attempt at revitalization, there are both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in various states of decline. Prices are low, certainly relatively to similar areas of Tel Aviv, but even at those prices, new residents have to wonder whether their investment can turn around years of momentum.

When the protesters do leave their tents, and in the years they are waiting for the clumsy efforts of city and national government to actually affect prices, it couldn't hurt for them to walk around some of the declining urban neighborhoods in the country and imagine life behind the empty windows.

The General's House Part 3: From Tzahala to Lashabiyyeh

I'll try to wrap up my thoughts about General Galant's house with today's post. Did I make it clear that its really not fair to judge a person based on the shape of his house? Maybe he had a young, fresh-out- of- school architect eager to carry out a misbegotten theory. Or perhaps an overbearing father-in-law, providing the funds and calling the shots. We don't know.

We do know that our citizen-soldiers in the Israeli Army inhabit an alternative aesthetic universe while they are on duty. Army bases are visually barren spaces, with an amalgam of functional structures more suited to housing equipment than people.

Maintenance of these spaces is either a form of punishment or a duty to be carried out before one is allowed to leave. The temporary nature of a

soldier's inhabitance of the space reflects back to the physical environment, making it hard, ugly, and anonymous. Constant reminders of rank are infused into the space, from the formal shape of review formations, to the classic T shaped table in the officer's headquarters where the ranking commander gets 8 times the desk space of his underlings along the upright of the "T".

No one who has served in these spaces can forget the feeling of distance and separation from their home environment, even when they are physically close and interwoven with the spaces of civilian Israel.

Israel also has a long history of providing homes and even special neighborhoods for its valued officers. These neighborhoods, once they move to the open market, become some of the most sought after and expensive residential areas of the country. Examples include Schunat Haktzinim in the Old North of Tel Aviv, and Tzahala in the New North End.

High ranking officers and former officers were provided with modest houses on half-dunam lots at highly subsidized prices. Architecturally, these houses were in the romantic modern style associated with kibbutz and rural housing.

This simple dwelling, near the city but connected to the land was seen to be the ideal for Israel's officer class, in line with the modesty of the 1950's and 1960's in the new country. While Chiefs of Staff such as Moshe Dayan and Tzvi Tzur lived in these neighborhoods, a new model was being attempted in the South of the country. Perhaps the most famous General's House in Israel is that of Ariel Sharon. His ranch in the Negev is one of the very few private land-holdings in an area that is given over to development towns, kibbutzim, nature preserves, and army bases.

His acquisition of the land is mysterious, but is accepted as the due of a well loved and heroic soldier. The architecture of the house, while idiosyncratic, remains rural and informal with a jump in scale and floor area commensurate with Sharon's outsized presence and proportions. High lookout rooms projecting above the main mass of the house recall both farm silos and army guard towers, while reminding us of Sharon's vaunted abilities to see the strategic and tactical potential of terrain with a single glance. The actual guarding is done, appropriately, from an ugly prefab caravan glommed on to the outside perimeter wall.

Returning north to Galant's house, we can write the next chapter of "Housing for Generals". His house includes elements of formality and rank taken from the military reviewing stand. The proportions and bastioned solidity elevate this house above its neighbors, and the needlessly winding approach road adds to the suspense of approaching the house.

But what about those pointed arch windows? Why the reversion to a local Palestinian style? One answer may be found in another Israeli Army environment, the artificial Palestinian villages built to serve as training grounds for urban warfare. These installations are known collectively as "Lashabiyyeh" a name comprised of the Hebrew initials for urban warfare, and the "iyyeh" suffix common to many Palestinian small towns. The simulacra include winding alleys, market streets, houses, squares, and often the house of the mukhtar or village elder, complete with the characteristic formal second floor reception room. Successful infantry maneuvers within the Lashabiyyeh conclude with the capture of this elevated and commanding house.

The General's House Part 2: Fortification

It has always been difficult to pick out the advances in architectural style from the advances in structures built for military defense. When people say that General Galant's house looks like a castle or a fortress, they are probably reacting to the way the corner masses of the house project outwards from the connecting wings. These structures, known as bastions, were an important advance in the defensibility of walled cities about 2000 years ago. With a bastion, a defender along the top of the wall could step out from the perimeter and shoot an arrow at the back of an attacker trying to breach the wall. The shape of bastions has changed over the years, from the simple square bastions of the ancient Middle East through to the rounded ones of Scotland and the Loire Valley, and, with the development of accurate gunfire, on to the star-shaped fortresses of Renaissance Italy. The walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, as rebuilt with square bastions by Sulieman between 1537 and 1540, were obsolete at the time of their construction, due to the vulnerability of square bastions to battering rams.

The vast resources used in times of war to construct adequate fortifications were free in times of peace to produce the houses of the rich and powerful. Not coincidentally, these powerful individuals were often the same leaders who had commissioned the fortifications, and their architects freely and poetically used the architectural language of war to create their glorious homes.

To be continued...

The General's House

The dominant image in Israel's weekend newspapers is an unusual house that belongs to Israel's next Chief of Staff, Yoav Galant. Finally, instead of judging a man's fitness for high military office on the basis of his heroism, his political maneuvering, or his honesty, we can judge based on his taste in architecture.

Yes, its an unusual house for Israel, and one that arouses some emotion in those who see it. It is larger than most people's houses and the lot is a comfortable exurban 5 dunams (1-1/4 acre), 10 times the size of the standard Israeli residential lot. General Galant reminds us that he acquired the land when he was a lowly Lieutenant Colonel, dismissing any suspicions of undue influence.

But that's not what people are upset about. The case against him revolves around adjoining lots that he seems to have fenced off and, um, occupied. One of these is a large extension to his garden, and another is described as an "escape route". A neighbor's dispute is being played out at national political levels.

All of this seemed pretty dry to the average reader until the moment that aerial photos of the

house were published. Suddenly, the picture locked into place. This was a grandiose man, concerned with appearances, status, dominance. One could imagine General Galant conducting a "Sound of Music" style roll call for his children in the formal courtyard. The pointed arch openings recall Palestinian mukhtar houses, but the square, rigid formalism of the house is reminiscent of the British military fortresses that staked out the land during the Mandate.

As elements of style, both arched windows and formal symmetry are out of the mainstream in Israeli architecture. If they appear at all, they are associated with public buildings of a certain age, or nouveau riche or kitsch. When these styles adorn the house of a young striving officer, they raise questions of appropriateness in the minds of the public.

To be continued...

New House Pictures from Ra'anana

Here's a house I just finished with my partner Shari Mendes, AIA. The contractor was Judah Richman of Cornerstone. We had a great day shooting the house with Photographer Uzi Porat, courtesy of Marvin Windows. A big thanks to the clients for their cooperation, both on the shoot and throughout the construction of the house.

View all the pictures of the house.

18 Years Later

One of the few places in Tel Aviv with the strange ambiance of a Hollywood back lot, this neoclassical assemblage at 7-9 Mazeh Street was the focus of an urban public action in 1992 by the nascent Amutat Lev Tel Aviv.

18 years later, following a painstaking and creative exterior renovation by Architect Orly Shram, the building remains empty and its magical courtyard, shown here, is unused and desolate.

The original building by Architect Joseph Berlin was built as an unusually grandiose apartment building in the early days of Tel Aviv. It was adjacent to the rear entrance of Tel Aviv's Rokach hospital, referenced in a local curse, "May you go in on Balfour Street (the hospital's reception area), and go out on Mazeh Street (the morgue pickup)". This unfortunate location may have contributed to the continuing deterioration of the building as a residential property, and when the hospital parcel was bought for residential redevelopment in the early 1990's, the building was crumbling and practically uninhabited.

Amutat Lev Tel Aviv, the neighborhood residents association, recognized the potential for the building to fill a need for public institutional space. In negotiations with the developer and the city planning commission, they succeeded in re-writing the proposed zoning plan to include acquisition and renovation of the structure as a public library, to be funded by the developer.

It is now 2010. The building, despite its expensive facelift, has not been inhabited since the re-zoning, and no public institutions have opened there. The spacious glass enclosed floors are empty, and the city seems intent on renting the spaces to the highest bidder, hoping that its promises are faded and forgotten.

This post in memory of Gad Gerzon, Attorney, Amutat Lev Tel Aviv's legal counsel from 1991 through 1996.

Rotary Square, Rehovot approved

Here's the latest incarnation of our project in Rehovot, now called Rotary Square. On May 24th it was approved at a meeting of the Rehovot planning council, and now moves on to approval at the regional planning board level. I am designing this with my partner Shimon Piltzer.

The plan incorporates 2 historic buildings, including the first store in town, that corner building with the red tile roof. The tower component has leveled out at 18 stories above retail, and we have retained the street wall components along Herzl Street with 5 stories above a retail floor and a shared entry courtyard behind the second renovated historic building.

Rebuilding Herzl Street

Well, the verdict is in on the landmark buildings on the Rehovot site. We presented our review of the architectural, social, and historical value of each of the four buildings on the site, and the preservation committee accepted three of our four recommendations. We recommended tearing down three of the buildings and preserving the northernmost building which was, by all accounts the first store in the young city. In its current state, its not much to look at (right), but the new development planned for the four lots will generate enough profit to restore it, either as a functioning store, or as an exhibit dedicated to the early history of Rehovot.

We recommended demolition of the remaining three buildings on the site, having failed to find either historical or architectural distinction that merited preservation. The committee disagreed, however and decided to preserve a second building, this one dating from the 1930's.

Perhaps it was because of this dramatic photograph (left) that we submitted as part of our official report. This is definitely the structure's "good side" and after a short discussion, it was decided to give this building the benefit of the doubt.

Now the decisions are official, and our design of the development around, beneath, and possibly above these landmarks can begin.

Lets hope they clean up well.

The Divided Apartment Problem - Some Attention from Above

In February, I wrote about the damage that subdivided apartments do to the urban fabric. I advocate directing the tax authorities to deal with the phenomenon, taking the task away from overburdened municipalities wielding the week reed of the Planning and Building Statute. In this article (subscription needed), Globes describes similar steps taken by the income tax authorities. While the emphasis seems to be on unreported rent being collected on legal apartments, this could, with proper direction, begin to solve the wider problems that cause peripheral neighborhoods to deteriorate.

What Are We Wasting Today?

In competitive spheres, sometimes the best way to get an edge is by wasting profligate amounts of a resource. This behavior, once reserved for the life-or-death struggle of war, is now fully domesticated in the business world. And does it affect our cities and their planning? Hold on to your hats, we've got examples.

First the warfare model:

The Strategic Defense Initiative. This vast boondoggle was conceived near the end of the Cold War, and is considered by some to be the move that ended it. As outlined to the public and to the Russians, the United States set out to outspend the USSR in developing technology that would build a protective shield around the country. What are we wasting? Money! Can we waste more, and faster than the Russians? Yes! Will the other side bankrupt themselves or expose deeper weaknesses trying to keep up? Well, you could say it worked.

This example is just the most recent and familiar of this strategy in war. Other examples include Iranian junior suicide troops in the Iran-Iraq war, reserve industrial capacity in WWII, and so on back to battles in which reserves of animal power are decisive. The key factor becomes the ability to waste, and the clearly signaled intention to waste more and more.

In business, this strategy is used at the top end of the scale of corporate volume, to grab or maintain dominance in a market. Was Netscape a problem for Microsoft in the late 1990's? Microsoft had plenty of programmer hours to waste, and forced the margin cost of a browser down past zero where it remains to this day. Google today maintains much of its competitive advantage by outspending all comers on servers, RAM, processing power, and bandwidth, effectively closing off all but the largest competitors.

What are the parallels in city planning? Part 2 of "What Are We Wasting Today" will try to answer

Preserving Herzl Street

Can urban renewal work? For Americans of the late twentieth century, there are few words more discredited than "urban renewal". This phrase, once innocent and hopeful, was battered to death by years of generously funded, well-intentioned government programs. The mistakes and unfortunate guesses inherent in the plan were discovered and made public only after years of implementation, first by the clarion voice of Jane Jacobs, and eventually by wide consensus. It is safe to say that many years will pass before planners in the U.S. will again dare to present plans that raze city blocks and streets in order to replace them with evenly spaced residential towers.

Strangely, this unfortunate history did not stop Israel's Housing Ministry from naming their flagship urban densification program "Urban Renewal" or in Hebrew, התחדשות עירונית.

Championed for the past 10 years by planner Sophia Aldor of the Ministry, this program seeks to renew built areas in Israel's cities by radically increasing the density of residential units on specific sites. For each apartment vacated by the current owners or tenants, 3 to 6 expanded units will be built, this time with parking, elevators, and obligatory safe rooms. When the towers are in place, the original tenants will be invited back in, and the remaining apartments will provide profit for the builders.

This process - evacuating tenants and rebuilding - gives these projects their more popular name "Pinuy-Binuy" or "Empty and Build". Seen in a larger context, these projects preserve the open green spaces beyond cities, by adding value to the "grey" space within the city and making it possible for developers to add more housing without breaking new ground.

Our office is now working on an urban renewal project in the center of Rehovot, on the corner of Binyamin and Herzl. This project is funded by the Ministry of Housing and administered by the City of Rehovot, and their engineering department. Our goal is to create useful and beautiful urban space within the confines of a technically oriented program of densification. We have the strong advantage of proximity to open spaces at the heart of the city, and the mandate to integrate some of the nearby cultural institutions of the city.

On the other hand, the prevailing design approach of the Rehovot engineering department is decidedly non-urban. A plan for isolated tower blocks would sail through the bureaucracy smoothly, while we struggle to define street walls, hierarchies, and urban spaces.

I'll be documenting our progress here as we continue to design.

Weirdest Map of Israel on the Internet

OMG, what happened to the country? Looks like someone has been punching it again.

This time, the culprit is the new and mostly gorgeous site for research mathematical and general, Wolfram Alpha. Maybe Stephen Wolfram and his team hadn't heard that we Israelis are particularly picky about maps, and that the shape of the country is not to be trifled with.  

And, to be fair, they just started.  The site went up to great fanfare last week, and, while not a Google-killer, does promise a great deal of information and some unexpected tools for analysis.  They dig deep into databases and provide graphical representations of most of the kinds of knowledge they proffer, in addition to the written facts and figures.

Still, you have to give some credit for their suggestions for the New Israel. That land reclamation project that stretches from Netanya to Haifa Bay is damned impressive.  So is the new improved curvy road through the Arava.  I always thought that Etzba HaGalil should just taper to a nice sharp point instead of wandering up towards Metulla. I am a little concerned, though, that Israel's famous wasp waist seems to have gone totally anorexic. 

Getting technical for a minute, It seems that Wolfram bought a pretty rough grid of points - maybe one every 10 km or so - to define international boundaries, and decided to complete the rest of the borders by generating spline curves. This probably works well with most countries since they are, for the most part, large and self-assured.  

But what about the tiny, fussy countries?  Waiting to hear from you, Stephen.

Now I'm authentic

How could I be a real blogger without a post about why I haven't been posting for a while? Well I've been busy working on my first facebook application, and this morning I released it.  It has very little to do with urban planning, although some day there may be enough geographical data in my database to do studies on which cities are most prone to which moods.  In any case, if you're interested, try it out and invite your friends.

Now its time to get back to my real profession. Recently, Shimon Piltzer and I have gotten the green light to advance our town plan in the center of Rehovot.  We're working on an urban intervention there that includes housing, stores, and a new public square along Herzl Street.  Watch for developments. 

The Divided Apartment Problem - Solutions

In the last post I gave myself a difficult assignment, and now I am bravely returning to deal with the widespread phenomenon of subdivided apartments.  This destructive practice overcrowds buildings and neighborhoods, introduces serious fire hazards, and inflates real estate prices beyond the reach of many sectors of the population. 

The lands registry will not allow sub-units to be sold and registered in a new name, but rental is common, and probably not illegal (lawyers may weigh in on this).  When Tel Aviv attacks the problem, they prosecute the building owner not for the rental itself, but for the physical changes made in the building.  The Design and Building Law prohibits all changes to buildings once they are licensed and built.  However the physical difference between a whole apartment and a subdivided one are elusive and subtle.  Do we prohibit lock-able doors within apartments?  Most apartments have 3 or more of these already!  Are we counting kitchens and bathrooms?  The most common legitimate apartment renovation adds a second bathroom and often a kitchenette.

 

In any case prosecution under the Design and Building law is complicated and protracted.  Judges often rule in favor of the municipality, only to give an 18-month grace period to fix the violation or license the change. Architects in Israel, embarrasingly enough, are proud experts in the evasive tactics available to them to get around their own law.  I have often been asked to design apartments and houses that are "ready" for subdivision, or include tricks to steal extra area or limit prosecution. Contractors routinely refer to "Phase One", the construction as per the building permit needed to get a Certificate of Occupancy, and "Phase Two", the planned violations carried out after the Certificate is in hand. 

In any case, it is not the physical arrangement of the subdivided flats that is the problem; it is their use, and the business arrangements surrounding their use.  I propose dealing directly with these arrangements using the authority most suited to gather information on business dealings: the tax authorities.

The income tax authority can act quickly to reclassify a particular deal and remove exemptions.  In the case of privately owned rental apartments, the tax exemption is substantial.  Are owners of subdivided apartments really entitled to this generosity on the part of the state?

Overcrowding the residential environment lowers health standards, increases the risk of catastrophic fires, and burdens the infrastructures of streets, sewers, and utilities.  The land use in these areas has been transformed from residential to more of a hotel or hostel use.  Luckily, the legal structures already exist to regulate, tax, and control these sorts of businesses for the public good.

I recommend reclassification of these properties within the regulatory structure of hotels and hostels.  Rezoning of the neighborhoods could lag by years or even decades, but the immediate benefits are apparent.  First and most importantly, the existing laws regulating hotels would insure standards of health and fire safety before lives are lost. Taxing owners as regular business operators would be a truer representation of their activity and provide tax revenue that is now lost.  A third benefit would accrue when the newly regulated and taxed hostel industry drives out the worst of the profiteers.

Subdividing Apartments - Plague or Pestilence?

I am saddened and appalled after a walk around the south end of Tel Aviv.  My stations on this sad sojourn were the small real estate offices peppered through the older poorer neighborhoods south of Lev Tel Aviv.  A picture emerged that was by turns, hopeful, then frustrating, and, in the end, tragic and nearly intractable.  The good news is that the property values in these neighborhoods are rising.  The bad news is that this rise is fueled by subdivision of any and all legal shelter into warrens of tiny rooms for maximum rent. 

Behind any door in the areas near the old Central Bus Station, Shapira, and Neve Sha'anan, you will likely find a corridor with 3, 4, or 5 more steel doors.  Each of these new apartments, even if its only 15 square meters, will bring a market rate of 2000 to 2500 shekel per month.  

According to one real estate agent, the most common size of micro-apartment is around 18 to 20 square meters (about 160 square feet), but he also knew of smaller ones, down to about 9 square meters.  This is the size of a jail cell.

As with any tolerated illegal activity, this use of the built environment drives out all legitimate uses.  Its like growing corn when your neighbor is growing opium poppies.  Eventually, you will join him or sell the land at the inflated price.  Thus large areas of South Tel Aviv are undergoing a seemingly irreversible decline along a number of axes simultaneously.  At the same time these areas are getting more overcrowded, more rundown, and, most critically, more expensive.  

These areas are now unaffordable for their longtime demographic: families of modest means.  When families cannot move in to a neighborhood, the diversity declines and the level of services usually declines along with it.  Should we write off this whole area of town?

In my next post, I'll talk about some possible solutions.

"Improving" Carrot Fields

Adding building rights to a lot is known as improving the lot, even if nothing besides the legal status of the lot is touched. On the books, or on the city maps, the lot is now available for building, and this has an immediate effect on the value of the land. 

If there are enough rights for a profitable building project on the lot, the land will increase in value by about the amount of the expected profits.  The owner will be assessed for this higher value, and the city will benefit from higher taxes, before the first foundations are laid. 

There are some paradoxes, though... If a city decides to "improve" all of its lots, it leaves nothing for the public sphere - parks, recreation, public buildings, even roads and paths.  Not much of an improvement.  The first goal of city planning is to set aside a percentage of the land for public use.

In new neighborhoods in Israel, 50% of the land is set aside at the beginning for public uses. This usually results in a sparse semi-urban environment with wide roads, ample parking and green space. Tel Avivians know it as Ramat Aviv.  

Older areas of the city are denser, with only 25% to 35% apportioned to public use.  These are the areas that have the most recognizable urban character.

Attempting to Add Value with Building Rights

Carrot Field: Tel Aviv Developer slang for a lot with no building rights. At least theoretically, all the land started that way. The default state of land under the National Law of Planning and Building is land with no building rights. The act of transforming this land - also known as green land - into buildable land is known as הפשרה - thawing.

In monetary value, a carrot field is considered to be at its minimum level. It usually provides little use to the inhabitants of the city, especially if it is privately held.  Possible uses include parking lots, junkyards, or simply overgrown vacant lots.  When the public owns land with no building rights in or near cities, they are often allocated as parkland. 

Some private and public lots in Tel Aviv are stuck in the process of planning, making them practically unbuildable for the time being. In the urban landscape, these lots are indistinguishable from carrot fields.  One famous example is Kikar HaMedina, the 50 dunam circus in the northeast of the city. 

 This land is held jointly by a large numbers of owners who have only been able to agree on one thing for the last 50 years: the land does not have enough building rights.  Successive plans have been proposed for the lot over the years, all intended to add to the original 150 housing units and reach a point where the owners and their inheritors will be able to agree and build.  Some of these plans have even passed the full gauntlet of local and regional planning boards.  The most recent plan builds 453 luxury apartments in 3 missile-shaped towers.  Luckily for the people of Tel Aviv, this is evidently not enough for the owners groups, and the site remains a large green dog-walking expanse for the time being.  Our largest carrot field.

This phenomenon suggests a new paradigm for establishing protected land reserves and green space in Israel: Divide and distribute the land to a group of citizens with the caveat that they must cooperate in order to build.

Building Height 4

Once the Shalom Tower had pioneered the method of re-purposing public land for high rise development, the landscape of Tel Aviv began to sprout modest skyscrapers every time a large lot became available.  One of the first followers was the Clal building on the site of the former "Silicat" brick factory.  Though this was not public land, it was an unusually large parcel in the midst of a residential neighborhood, and the owners, the Histadrut Labor Federation, were able to close down an offending industrial use and win extra building rights for a mixed use development that included parking, offices and a gas station.  

The location of the Clal Center was random at best.  Access was poor and routed through residential streets.  As a business function, it was disconnected from the commercial section of town and has remained an anomaly in its neighborhood.  Since there are no other oversized lots nearby, it will likely remain as a lone office building in an otherwise residential area.  

The Basis for Urban Value

If we count all the money ever put into a city, both public and private funds, would it be close to the total real estate value of the properties in that city? This should weight the scales towards older cities which have enjoyed centuries of continuous development. This question comes up when we peel away the building and development costs of a project and arrive at the pure land costs of the property beneath the building.

In declining cities, the land costs can actually shrink and go negative. In this case, complete houses are available for less than they would cost to build. The old housing stock actually drives away new construction in those areas.

Meanwhile,in healthy cities, the value of underlying real estate can far outstrip the building cost component of the price. In these places, the building budgets are high since the developer runs nearly no risk of putting too much money into construction (overcapitalizing). Land value in such areas springs from years of intelligent investment in infrastructure, services, and development of the surrounding natural resources.

Maybe its not the amount of money invested in a city, but the wisdom with which it is invested.

Building Height 3

Are tall buildings bad? The structure of Tel Aviv, a wide field of low apartment houses with intermittent 30-story spikes, makes the towers stand out more than they would in a gradual plan. The Shalom Tower (left) by Architects Gidon and Tova Ziv, Pearlstein Architects, and others, began this pattern in the early 1960's. The surrounding fabric was between 2 and 4 stories at the time.

In recent years, the construction of towers in the midst of low neighborhoods has drawn opposition from nearby residents, whose complaints rapidly escalate from questions of traffic and socioeconomic friction, to aesthetic and moral confrontation with the proposed projects. The future inhabitants of the towers are seen as rich intruders to quiet middle-class neighborhoods.

Some candidates in the recent municipal elections in Tel Aviv took stands against agressive development of the city, with new tower projects functioning as lightning rods for their arguments. The latest heir of the Shalom Tower tradition is a proposed project in the Old North End of Tel Aviv on the grounds of Assuta Hospital. More than 40 years after the Gymnasium was torn down to build the Shalom Tower, little has changed. Are the towers bad?