Centenary of Tel Aviv

In 1909, a group of 60 Jews got together and decided to found a Jewish town next to Jaffa. Jaffa was an ancient city that was predominantly Arab, and the Jews living there in crowded and sometimes squalid conditions wanted something better. They founded a cooperative to build houses in the dunes north of Jaffa called Ahuzat Bayit ("spacious home"). At the time noone knew if this little "settlement" would succeed, and certainly noone would have believed that their puny effort would grow into the city of Tel Aviv ("hill of spring") with ca. 500,000 people, the greatest Jewish city in the world.
There were a few other initiatives to settle Jews outside Jaffa, for example, Neveh Tzedek ("abode of justice"), that was founded in 1887 as the first Jewish suburb of Jaffa. It was largely developed by cosmopolitan immigrants and eventually became a fashionable and arty neighborhood of Tel Aviv. There was also the Shalom quarter that was founded as a farm by a non-Jewish American immigrant who wanted to help the Jews return to their land.
Gradually the city grew until during the British period in the 1930s it became the center for Bauhaus architecture ("international style") that was imported by Jewish architects from Germany. Since these buildings were usually painted white because of the heat, that gave rise to the nickname for Tel Aviv, "The White City." Many of these buildings fell into disrepair during later years, but now many have been restored and Tel Aviv has the biggest concentration of "modernist" Bauhaus style buildings in the world.
Ultimately Tel Aviv swallowed up Jaffa and it is still known as Tel Aviv-Jaffa. As the city developed northwards, some of the more modern and more affluent neighborhoods are in North Tel Aviv, such as Ramat Aviv, where the University of Tel Aviv is found.
For its centenary year, Tel Aviv is holding many celebrations, including shows, exhibits, parades, etc. It is a thriving city, with a reputation for secularism (quite contrasted to Jerusalem) and a 24 hour lifestyle. Many foreigners who come from abroad are struck by the fact that Tel Aviv does not seem to be typical of Israel, with its bars, clubs and nightlife In fact it is far more left-wing/liberal and less religious and has a reputation for being more fun-loving than any other city in Israel. Yet, Tel Aviv is the quintessential Hebrew-speaking city where the Zionist motto, a country like all others, came true.