Just as Tel Aviv began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the city jumped headfirst into the largest transportation infrastructure works since its inception. The simultaneous construction of three light rail lines traversing the city created a “big dig” across Tel Aviv’s central urban streets.
It was within this context that we approached the Tel Aviv Municipality to launch ‘ResponCity,’ a behavioral city lab assessing the impact of the citywide infrastructure works on street life and offering commensurate urban responses. We began by measuring changes in commercial activity, pedestrian and micro-mobility patterns, and user sentiment along streets negatively impacted by construction, while working with the LRT administrative division to identify opportunities for ameliorating spatial interventions.
Purple Sand, Ben Yehuda Pop Up is an 8,000 sqm temporary public space born out of this work. A 12-month delay in infrastructure handover between development phases along Ben Yehuda Street opened up a six-block, ~9-meter-wide strip on the street’s eastern flank. The first step was temporarily reclaiming the worksite by removing construction fencing and repaving the open construction areas with asphalt for public use. A large-scale pattern of purple sand dunes, referencing the site’s historic geography, was then painted onto the asphalt — the purple hues color-coding the future path of the Purple LRT line. This spatial branding reframes the experience of a city built on sand, exposed across construction sites, as seen both at street level and from rooftops. Chairs, picnic tables, a dedicated bike path, and service areas offer interim uses for walking, sitting, and cycling.
Heightened accessibility and movement on the street: Visitors marked a significant improvement with the temporary cessation of construction, and an increase in walking, biking, and time spent on Pop Up Ben Yehuda.
Community engagement: Local pop-up events, including summer programming for kids, brought the community out for weekly street-breaks, increasing visitors to the site by 233–333%.
Business sentiment: 50% of businesses surveyed on Ben Yehuda Pop Up are new — established within the past 1–5 years, anticipating or during the LRT works. These new, younger businesses leveraged the Pop Up space to build patronage across the community, including local frequenters of cafés, eateries, ceramic studios, clothing stores, and beauty and pilates/yoga studios.
Pop Up Ben Yehuda’s makeshift public space introduces color and urban repose, ushering in a new chapter in Ben Yehuda’s emergent street life and supporting the pedestrianization and revitalization of one of Tel Aviv’s historic mixed-use urban streets. The installation’s lifespan was cut short when a Hamas rocket and resulting debris struck a residential building at the intersection of Ben Yehuda and Mendele Mokher Sfarim streets.
Design: Rebecca Sternberg, Keren Avni
Project Management: Gila Ginsberg-Hebron, Iris Bar On, Ergat Tzadok, Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality
Street Art Production: Bar Medini, Sergio Daniel Chertoff
Survey: Alona Tsirulnikov, Sharon Brand-Martin
