דיפוזיה של רעיון אורבני: שכונת "תל-אביב" כמודל לתוכניות להקמת פרברים מודרניים בארץ-ישראל בסוף העשור הראשון של המאה ועד מלחמת העולם ה- 1

In 1906 the "Ahuzat Bayit" company was founded with a view to establising Jaffa as a modern Jewish neighborhood in the European style. Three years later, in Spring, 1909, building began. Because of the large demand for housing, more land was purchased and public institutions and businesses were established. On the eve of the outbreak of World War I, Tel Aviv was in a transition period, from a residential neighborhood to a nascent city. The success of "Ahuzat Bayit" led to the formation of other companies whose purpose was the establishment of Jewish neighborhoods along the same lines. The success of "Ahuzat Bayit" in establishing the modern suburb of Tel Aviv led to the development of similar suburbs not only in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, but throughout Israel. Tel Aviv, with its urban plans and regulations, served as the model for a country-wide movement to establish Jewish suburbs near cities containing Jewish communities (such as Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, Jerusalem, Gaza, Hebron, Ramle and others). In this manner, a local idea became universal throughout the country. The "transfer agents" of the urban idea who initiated the establishment of modern neighborhoods were private investors, chiefly the "Palestine Real Estate" company (founded by Otto Warburg, one of the heads of the Zionist Organization) and the Anglo-Palestine Company A.P.C. - the Zionist Organization's Bank of Israel). The two financial bodies expressed the positivie attitude of the Zionist movement toward urban settlement at that time. The outbreak of World War I interrupted the endeavors of the movement to establish modern suburbs; nonetheless, it can be shown that several urban developments, generally attributed to the British Mandate period, had their beginnings in the pre-World War I period.