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Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 on the outskirts of the ancient port city of Jaffa ( , Yafo; , Yaffa). The growth of Tel Aviv soon outpaced Jaffa, which was largely Arab at the time . Tel Aviv and Jaffa were 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 Bauhaus buildings. Tel Aviv is classified as a beta+ world city, alongside cities such as Barcelona and San Francisco. The city is an economic hub, home to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, corporate offices and research and development centers. Its beaches, parks, bars, cafés, restaurants, shopping, cosmopolitan lifestyle and 24-hour culture have made it a popular tourist destination for overseas and domestic visitors alike, contributing to its reputation as "the city that never sleeps" with over 1.5 million foreign tourists annually. Tel Aviv is the country's financial capital and a major performing arts and business center. The economy of Tel Aviv was ranked second in the Middle East in 2005. In 2010, Foreign Policys Global Cities Index ranked it 50th globally, a step above Manila and behind Dubai (27th), Istanbul (41st) and Cairo (43rd). That same year, Tel Aviv was ranked as the 19th most expensive city in the world. In 2007, New York City-based David Kaufman named it the "Mediterranean's New Capital of Cool". Tel Aviv has been named the third "hottest city for 2011" (behind New York City and Tangier) by Lonely Planet, third-best in the Middle East & Africa (behind Jerusalem and Cape Town) by Travel + Leisure magazine, and the ninth-best beach city in the world by National Geographic. |
