In 1925 Patrick Geddes was invited to Israel to plan the first Hebrew city – what's left of it today?
Tel Aviv's leafy boulevards were built on the vision of Scottish town planner Patrick Geddes. To mark the 100th anniversary of the plan, an exhibition asks how Geddes would feel about the metropolis today
City planner Patrick Geddes at age 77 in 1931. Credit: Photographs Collection, National Portrait Gallery, London
Tel Aviv's leafy boulevards were built on the vision of Scottish town planner Patrick Geddes. To mark the 100th anniversary of the plan, an exhibition asks how Geddes would feel about the metropolis today
05:03 PM • January 01 2026 IST
"How many people think twice about a leaf? Yet the leaf is the chief product and phenomenon of life; this is a green world, with animals comparatively few and small, and all dependent upon the leaves. By leaves we live," town planner Patrick Geddes told his students in 1919 in his final lecture at the University of Dundee in Scotland. "Some people have strange ideas … they think energy is generated by the circulation of coins. But the world is mainly a vast leaf-colony, growing on and forming a leafy soil … and we live not by the jingling of our coins, but by the fullness of our harvests."
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