East or West? Tel-Aviv in the 1920s and 1930s

Tel-Aviv of 1934 was still a city in flux, one that had evolved considerably from its founders' vision of a serene garden suburb adjoining the noisy and overcrowded Jaffa. Most of its population was European in origin - but were East Europeans to be considered "Western?" And what of Tel-Aviv's location in the heart of the Middle East - was this indeed felt only as a "faint palimpsest"? It may be more accurate to say that Tel- Aviv in the formative years of its growth was influenced by three different urban models, Western, East European and Levantine. During the 1920s and 1930s, these models coexisted and competed with each other, as the one-time suburb grew and was gradually transformed into a real city.