Early 20th Century & the Modern Movement (1900–1945)

Tel Aviv Geddes Plan

1925 · Israel · Middle East & Turkey · Garden city, decentralization, and the town-country synthesis · Planned by Patrick Geddes

Geddes' 1925 town plan for Tel Aviv, defining the hierarchy of main and minor streets and the network of garden blocks north of the existing settlement. · public-domain

Core idea

Garden-suburb logic on modern grid

Why it matters

Blends ecological thinking with urban design

Description

Patrick Geddes's 1925 plan for Tel Aviv applied garden-city principles to the new Jewish city: a hierarchy of main boulevards and quiet residential streets, generous greenery, and small public gardens, creating low-rise, walkable neighbourhoods later filled with Bauhaus 'White City' architecture.

Significance

The Geddes Plan shaped one of the most fully realized garden-city-influenced urban cores, and its human-scaled grid became the frame for the world's largest concentration of International Style architecture.

What shaped it

Cities in Evolution (1915)
Garden Cities of To-Morrow (1898 / 1902)
The garden suburb (1903)
Survey-before-plan (1915)

Plans it influenced

Tel Aviv–Yafo 5000 Master Plan (2016)

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →

hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.