Business Innovation from Israel's Masters of Espionage

Chapter 10. Spy Company

Diamond District, Ramat Gan, 2003…

If the streets of a city reveal its stories, then the story of Tel Aviv is one of reinvention. The faÇades of once-elegant villas with crumbling plaster share space with trendy coffeehouses on the tree-lined streets of the once-graceful boulevards. Evidence of the formerly dominant Ottoman presence of crenellated balconies and square domes gives way to the squat, dun-colored functionalism left over from the British Mandate period, which in turn has been taken over by the weathered white Bauhaus buildings and the ubiquitous cement apartment blocks on raised columns. The skeletal reminder of a new era is found in the pervasive rebar frames of construction in various stages of completion ...