Residential and nonresidential construction initiations in Tel Aviv-Yafo: autocorrelation analysis of urban structure evolution

Construction initiation (CI) of floor area is an important socioeconomic and physical characteristic of urban structure and its evolution. Despite its importance and the availability of CI data, it has not attracted significant attention until now. Since the 1970s, the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality and Israel Central Bureau of Statistics have collected annual CI data pertaining to residential and nonresidential categories for subquarters. This paper presents an analysis of the spatial evolution of the city of Tel Aviv in the years 1976-2003, from the CI perspective. Novel aspects of this research are related to autocorrelation analysis CI patterns in individual years versus annually accumulated construction and in core versus noncore build up categories. It is shown that floor-area additions form relatively complex spatiotemporal patterns that are not referred to explicitly in existing urban studies of Tel Aviv. Autocorrelation results suggest the superimposition of current almost homogeneous or random spread over earlier phases of core area domination: the formation of uniform choice space. These random patterns represent primarily spontaneous residential regeneration processes since 1990, and major diffusion of the commercial and public activities beyond the central business district areas.