Critics call it capitalism with a vengeance. Supporters see it as the only sensible answer in a land-starved country with a roaring economic engine and booming population.
Tel Aviv, Israel's congested economic and cultural center, is entering the era of the skyscraper - and not everyone sees that as a sign of progress.Dozens of office and apartment towers between 20 and 50 stories tall are under construction or in the works. Deputy Mayor Dan Darin terms it "a construction revolution."
"If we don't build high, we'll have to build wide, and there won't be a single patch of green left in Israel," he told The Associated Press.
The construction will turn the bustling but low-rise Mediterranean metropolis into something akin to Manhattan or Hong Kong, visiting French architect Jean Nobel told the Tel Aviv weekly.
Conservationists fear the ambitious plans will stamp out the human scale lent by unassuming buildings that rise, boxlike, four stories above narrow, tree-lined streets. Thousands of them, despite often-crumbling facades, are considered classics of the spare, functional style pioneered by Germany's Bauhaus school in the 1920s and brought to the then-new city by immigrant architects.
Critics also say central Israel is already on its way to becoming one of the most congested areas in the industrialized world.
Through a relatively high birthrate of about 19 per 1,000 and a huge influx of immigrants - nearly 700,000, most former Soviets, since 1990 - Israel's population now pushes 6 million.
More than a third live in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and some two-thirds in the narrow coastal strip stretching 90 miles from the northern port of Haifa to Ashdod south of Tel Aviv.
The economy, meanwhile, has swelled dramatically as a result of the immigration and peacemaking with the Arabs. Economic growth, disproportionately focused on Tel Aviv, was almost 40 percent in the past six years.
According to estimates, almost half the office space in Israel is in Tel Aviv, and the demand is constantly rising, especially as multinational firms attracted by the end of the Arab boycott on trade with Israel move in.
Housing prices nearly doubled in the past several years as demand outstripped supply. A three-bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv averages $250,000 - at least as expensive as New York City.
John Ross, an options trader who moved to Tel Aviv from Chicago four years ago, said the new towers are needed to make the city appropriate "for an upscale, Western style, service-based economy, which is where the country is headed."
"I'm all for the changing of building style away from these ugly, homogeneous three-story walkups," said Ross, 31.
But author Yitzhak Lior, a long-suffering dweller of downtown Tel Aviv, said the sudden construction boom reflected "Israel's uncontrolled capitalism."
He warned it would make life even tougher for residents already struggling with a dearth of parking spots and congested streets.
Darin said the city could avoid gridlock if commuters abandon private cars for mass transit. Plans are being drawn up for a new subway and commuter rail system, and Darin said the new trains should be running by the year 2000.
In addition, most of the new towers will be concentrated either in existing business districts or in a new one along the Ayalon Expressway cutting through the city.
The first massive project along the Ayalon is already being built: a shopping center topped by three towers of around 40 stories each - one round, one square and the third triangular - called "Merkaz Hashalom" - Hebrew for "Peace Center."