The street as urban icon? Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard

In this article, I analyze Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard as an example of an urban symbol and suggest that while main streets, avenues and boulevards are usually perceived as integral parts of the urban symbolic ecology, they are rarely considered as exclusive urban icons in their own right. Although prestige of “privileged” streets influences reputations of cities and constitutes an important part of their imaginary, their complicated physical structure and multifunctional character conflict with their iconic status. The physical nature of streets resists configuration and articulation as exclusive, durable urban icons because symbols are generally conspicuous physical objects that can be directly interpreted and rendered as iconic.