Tel Aviv (Hebrew: תֵּל אָבִיב, [tel aˈviv], Arabic: تل أَبيب) is the second most populous city in Israel – after Jerusalem – and the most populous city in the conurbation of Gush Dan, Israel’s largest metropolitan area. Located on the country’s Mediterranean coastline and with a population of 438,818, it is the financial and technological center of the country. Silicon Wadi is another name for Gush Dan, in comparison to Silicon Valley in the U.S. state of California.
Tel Aviv is governed by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, headed by Ron Huldai, and is home to many foreign embassies. It is a global city and is ranked 34th in the Global Financial Centres Index. Tel Aviv has the third-largest economy in the Middle East after Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City. [not in citation given] The city has the 31st highest cost of living in the world. Tel Aviv receives over 2.5 million international visitors annually. A “party capital” in the Middle East, it has a lively nightlife and 24-hour culture. Tel Aviv is home to Tel Aviv University, the largest university in the country with more than 30,000 students.
The city was founded in 1909 by Jews on the outskirts of the ancient port city of Jaffa (Hebrew: יָפוֹ Yafo), then an area belonging to Ottoman Palestine. Its name means Spring Hill, though the hill was mostly sand. The modern city’s first neighborhoods had already been established in 1886, the first of which was Neve Tzedek.
Immigration by mostly Jewish refugees meant that the growth of Tel Aviv soon outpaced that of Jaffa, which had a majority Arab population at the time. Tel Aviv and Jaffa were later merged into a single municipality in 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of Israel. Tel Aviv’s White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, comprises the world’s largest concentration of International Style buildings, including Bauhaus and other related modernist architectural styles.
Jaffa, now a part of Tel Aviv, was an important port city in the region for many centuries. Archaeological evidence shows signs of human settlement there starting in roughly 7,500 BC. Its natural harbor has been used since the Bronze Age. By the time Tel Aviv was founded as a separate city during Ottoman rule of the region, Jaffa had been ruled by the Canaanites, Egyptians, Israelites, Philistines, Babylonians, Persians, Phonecians, Seleucids, Hasmonean Jews, Romans, Byzantines, Rashiduns, Crusaders, Ayyubids, and Mamluks before coming under Ottoman rule in 1515. It had been fought over numerous times. The city is mentioned in ancient Egyptian documents, as well as the Hebrew Bible.
Ben Gurion House was built in 1930–31, part of a new workers’ housing development. At the same time, Jewish cultural life was given a boost by the establishment of the Ohel Theatre and the decision of Habima Theatre to make Tel Aviv its permanent base in 1931.
Tel Aviv was granted municipal status in 1934. The Jewish population rose dramatically during the Fifth Aliyah after the Nazis came to power in Germany. By 1937 the Jewish population of Tel Aviv had risen to 150,000, compared to Jaffa’s mainly Arab 69,000 residents. Within two years, it had reached 160,000, which was over a third of Palestine’s total Jewish population. Many new Jewish immigrants to Palestine disembarked in Jaffa, and remained in Tel Aviv, turning the city into a center of urban life. Friction during the 1936–39 Arab revolt led to the opening of a local Jewish port, Tel Aviv Port, independent of Jaffa, in 1938. It closed on 25 October 1965. Lydda Airport (later Ben Gurion Airport) and Sde Dov Airport opened between 1937 and 1938.
In the 1960s, some of the older buildings were demolished, making way for the country’s first high-rises. The Shalom Meir Tower, which was completed in 1965. was Israel’s tallest building until 1999. Tel Aviv’s population peaked in the early 1960s at 390,000, representing 16 percent of the country’s total. A long period of steady decline followed, however, and by the late 1980s the city had an aging population of 317,000. High property prices pushed families out and deterred young people from moving in. At this time, gentrification began in the poor neighborhoods of southern Tel Aviv, and the old port in the north was renewed. New laws were introduced to protect Modernist buildings, and efforts to preserve them were aided by UNESCO recognition of the Tel Aviv’s White City as a world heritage site. In the early 1990s, the decline in population was reversed, partly due to the large wave of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Tel Aviv also began to emerge as a high-tech center. The construction of many skyscrapers and high-tech office buildings followed. In 1993, Tel Aviv was categorized as a world city. The city is regarded as a strong candidate for global city status.
In the Gulf War in 1991, Tel Aviv was attacked by Scud missiles from Iraq. Iraq hoped to provoke an Israeli military response, which could have destroyed the US–Arab alliance. The United States pressured Israel not to retaliate, and after Israel acquiesced, the US and Netherlands rushed Patriot missiles to defend against the attacks, but they proved largely ineffective. Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities continued to be hit by Scuds throughout the war, and every city in the Tel Aviv area except for Bnei Brak was hit. A total of 74 Israelis died as a result of the Iraqi attacks, mostly from suffocation and heart attacks, while approximately 230 Israelis were injured. Extensive property damage was also caused, and some 4,000 Israelis were left homeless. It was feared that Iraq would fire missiles filled with nerve agents or sarin. As a result, the Israeli government issued gas masks to its citizens. When the first Iraqi missiles hit Israel, some people injected themselves with an antidote for nerve gas. The inhabitants of the southeastern suburb of HaTikva erected an angel-monument as a sign of their gratitude that “it was through a great miracle, that many people were preserved from being killed by a direct hit of a Scud rocket.”
Autumns and springs are characterized by sharp temperature changes, with heat waves that might be created due to hot and dry air masses that arrive from the nearby deserts. During heatwaves in autumn and springs, temperatures usually climb up to 35 °C (95 °F) and even up to 40 °C (104 °F), accompanied with exceptionally low humidity. An average day during autumn and spring has a high of 23 °C (73 °F) to 25 °C (77 °F), and a low of 15 °C (59 °F) to 18 °C (64 °F).
The highest recorded temperature in Tel Aviv was 46.5 °C (115.7 °F) on 17 May 1916, and the lowest is −1.9 °C (28.6 °F) on 7 February 1950, during a cold wave that brought the only recorded snowfall in Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv has a population of 438,818 spread over a land area of 52,000 dunams (52.0 km2) (20 mi²), yielding a population density of 7,606 people per square km (19,699 per square mile). According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), as of 2009 Tel Aviv’s population is growing at an annual rate of 0.5 percent. Jews of all backgrounds form 91.8 percent of the population, Muslims and Arab Christians make up 4.2 percent, and the remainder belong to other groups (including various Christian and Asian communities). As Tel Aviv is a multicultural city, many languages are spoken in addition to Hebrew. According to some estimates, about 50,000 unregistered African and Asian foreign workers live in the city. Compared with Westernised cities, crime in Tel Aviv is relatively low.
According to Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, the average income in the city, which has an Unemployment Rate of 4.6%, is 20% above the national average.[9] The city’s education standards are above the national average: of its 12th-grade students, 64.4 percent are eligible for matriculation certificates.[9] The age profile is relatively even, with 22.2 percent aged under 20, 18.5 percent aged 20–29, 24 percent aged 30–44, 16.2 percent aged between 45 and 59, and 19.1 percent older than 60.
Tel Aviv’s population reached a peak in the early 1960s at around 390,000, falling to 317,000 in the late 1980s as high property prices forced families out and deterred young couples from moving in. Since the 1990s, population has steadily grown. Today, the city’s population is young and growing. In 2006, 22,000 people moved to the city, while only 18,500 left, and many of the new families had young children. The population is expected to reach 450,000 by 2025; meanwhile, the average age of residents fell from 35.8 in 1983 to 34 in 2008. The population over age 65 stands at 14.6 percent compared with 19% in 1983.