A cultural and architectural symposium entitled Tel Aviv-Yafo: Old-New Metropolis, was hosted by the Embassy of the Czech Republic, cultural representatives of the European Union and the Department of Interior - Building and Environment Design, headed by Prof. Architect  Shraga Kirshner and the Israel association of United Architects.
 

The symposium embraced the multi-layered complexity particular to Tel Aviv-Yafo with great enthusiasm. It aimed to inspire a new dialogue by convening a select yet diverse group of international and local architects, intellectuals, and artists, whose individual expertise will serve as the foundations for reexamining the cultural-spatial dynamics of this city with an eye toward the next 100 years. Tel Aviv-Yafo, as home to multiple and distinct communities representing a wide array of ethnic, religious, social, and political backgrounds, is a unique metropolis. Typically, the modern metropolis has been the vortex of both progressive and reactionary forces responding to the varied developments faced by modern societies.

One central theme of urban transformation in the modern era is the putative democratization of the city and the dissolution of traditional patterns of social, economic, and cultural segregation that went hand in hand with the modernization and improvement of sanitary conditions in densely populated urban cores of large European cities. Drawing on the theme of Jewish ghetto space and the encounter with modernity as demonstrated by numerous urban modernization projects from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—Josefov in Prague, the Jüdenstrasse in Frankfurt a/Main, the ghetto in Rome, among others—the symposium built on this historical model as a means of exploring contemporary spatial practices and issues of cultural identity in the existing urban context of Tel Aviv-Yafo.
 

A close multicultural research, seen as a contemporary interpretation of Theodor Herzl's neologism "Altneuland" served as an affirmative homage and point of critical embarkation in this centennial anniversary year, aiming to better categorize existing problems and explore future strategies for promoting both cultural diversity and a coherent urban identity in the Tel Aviv-Yafo metropolitan region.