Building liveable major urban streets: Begin Road, Tel-Aviv

This paper reports on the struggle to create a major urban street that will help liveability and sustainability in the city of Tel-Aviv, Israel. Begin Road used to be a major inter-urban road linking the centre of Tel-Aviv with its eastern and northern suburbs. With the construction of the Ayalon Freeway running parallel to it, the new suburban rail system and the planned light rail subway that will run underneath, Begin Road is in the process of being transformed into the future main street of the Tel-Aviv central business district. The paper follows the development of the design from a criticism of an auto-oriented artery proposed for the street, through the development of alternatives based on different types of boulevard, to the design development of a multi-way boulevard. While the boulevard vision was generally accepted, existing difficulties with the current regulatory and professional context, as well as an auto-oriented city policy and lack of coordination of land use and transportation planning, still hinder the realisation of a great street.