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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Shuk HaCarmel to be renovated...eventually

Haaretz reported today that the Tel Aviv municipality approved a plan to renovate Shuk HaCarmel and the surrounding area, which has not been renovated since it was first established in the 1920's! However, like any good Israeli public works project the plan is years away from actual implementation. Objections will be raised, revisions will be made, and even the municipality itself envisions a two year process before any work is actually started. I'll put my money on double that amount of time...at least.

In any case, its nice that there are plans in the works, as the shuk badly needs some renovations. The stalls are old and rundown, there is only partial cover from rain, and the surrounding neighborhood (the Yemenite Quarter) is in bad shape. The Yemenite Quarter is home to Irit, one of my favorite places to eat in all of Israel, which I highly recommend to everyone. Many of the quarter's residents are poor, and I worry that the renovation plan will gentrify the area and lead to an exodus by the few original inhabitants of the neighborhood. We'll see...



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2 comments:

  1. nah...i don't think the renovations will gentrify it..it won't be long till all the nastiness of old fish and rotted vegetables will reclaim their rightful place. Nobody wants to live next to that. It is about time, though. The jerusalem shuk puts ours to shame.

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  2. It really is a shame that the Tel Aviv shuk can't compete at all with Jerusalem's. There's so much potential to have an ongoing farmer's market, food exhibitions, etc... in Tel Aviv, and instead things are spread out, and definitely not as well attended as they could be. It would also be nice to put Jerusalem's shuk to shame one day.

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