Tel Avson

Tel Avson
City
City of Tel Avson
The center of downtown Tel Avson. The center of downtown Tel Avson.
Nickname:  "The Desert City"
Country	Belhavia
Territory (Belhavia)	Shelvay Protectorate
Jointly-held Territory	Ayton-Shelvay
Founded	1774
Founded by	Yossi Levy
Territorial capital	Ayton-Shelvay (joint capital) Shelvay Protectorate (Belhavia)
Government
• Type	Strong Mayor-Council Form
• Body	City Council
• Mayor	Moti Sifran (Libertarian)
• City Council President	Azriella Jaffa (Liberal Democrat)
• Minority Leader	Itan Halevi (Conservative)
Population  (2015)
• City	234,786
• Metro	234,786
Demonym	Avsoner
Ethnic groups
• Belhavian Jews	56.4%
• Western Jews	24.7%
• Tippercommoners	11.9%
Time zone	UTC-2 (CPT)

The City of Tel Avson, commonly referred to as Tel Avson, is a large metropolitan city in Ayton-Shelvay. It serves as both the joint capital for the jointly-held Belhavian-Tippercommoner territory as well as the seat of government for the Belhavian portion of Ayton-Shelvay, the Crown Territory of the Shelvay Protectorate.

It was founded as a trading post in the late 18th-century colonization push into what is now Ayton-Shelvay. It has transformed over the centuries into a prosperous mid-sized city and a center for both advanced economic activities such as scientific research as well as its famous sweet wines and fruits. It is also a major transportation hub for the region.

Demographics

While it is the largest city in the Belhavian-administered territory, demographically it is largely homogenous. The vast majority of the population are Akkadiyan Jews of Canaanite heritage who immigrated to Belhavia between the 1870s and the 1930s. Socioculturally and religiously, the city and the region reflects this; Jewish shuls practice Canaanite Jewish rites and customs and general society has a more aggressive, and at times lazy, attitude compared to the more polite and industrious Anglo Jews who left Canaan during the Jewish Exile in antiquity.

The next two most populous minority groups are Western Jews, who immigrated to Belhavia from the Western states between the 18th and 20th centuries, and Tippercommers. The Western Jews resemble their ethnic Belhavian Jewish kin socially and culturally but differ in that they are generally more relaxed in their religious practice and politically skew towards libertarianism, as well as disproportionately make up the financial and corporate business class.

The Tippercommoners are either expatriates who serve in the Joint Council or its bureaucracy, or are Belhavian citizens who chose to live on Belhavian side after the creation of the joint territory in 1893.

Since the 1990s and early 2000s, the city has seem an influx of new residents as its metropolitan economy has taken off, and has been characterized by an injection of new minority populations.

Economy

The Tel Avson economy is equal parts so-called "knowledge economy" professions, government and public sector, and agricultural. This creates an unusual paradox for city worker incomes being above-average by Belhavian standards with a large gap in earnings between the top and bottom of the income bracket.

The city hosts three industrial office parks that are home to over twenty small- and mid-sized science, research, entrepreneurial, information technology, and telecommunication firms. Roth Industries maintains a weapon production plant on the city outskirts that employs over 2,000 workers.

The Joint Administrative Council, provincial, and municipal governments all maintain large workforces, though a vast majority of these are not direct government workers but paid private contractors and vendors.

At the outskirts of the city are numerous, multi-hectare parcels of farmland and vineyards. Blush and light red wine from Tel Avson is world-renown, and three vineyards compete in global wine-tasting competitions. Crops produced include dates, grapes, and avocados.

Culture

Culturally, the residents of Tel Avson are known as aggressive, loud, boisterous, industrious, and sometimes even violent. This is associated with the dominant Canaanite Jewish majority, whose sociocultural practices and attitudes still largely reflect the Near East.

Extroversion, strength, masculinity, honor, and respect are afforded high social esteem. Nonetheless, hospitality is a particularly venerated tradition and custom, as is respect and deference to parents, elders, and figures of authority.

Personal space is often less in public areas than it may often be in Belhavia proper. City and local regional culture is strongly traditional and conservative.

Media

The local newspaper of record is the Avsoner Hamodia. The city has over a dozen radio stations, including several home-grown ones as well as from satellite, Belhavian, and Tippercomoner proper. The most influential and highest-rated radio station is STR 98.7.

Satellite television dominates cable television in the city, with a 2013 survey by the Avsoner Hamodia finding that satellite TV commands 73% of the market compared to cable TV's 18% and network TV's 7%.

Government & Politics

Ayton-Shelvay

The governing political body of Ayton-Shelvay, the Joint Administrative Council, rotates between Tel Avson and Evermore, the territorial capital of the Tippercommoner portion of the joint territory. When it resides in the city, it sits in the Kasdoff Building in the downtown business and government district.

Besides the city acts as a joint capital, there exists a large expatriate Tippercommoner population to service the Council, as well as a number of law firms, lobbying offices, government vendors, and others that have set up shop in the city to provide services to the Council and the Joint Territory's administration, or to employ such contractors.

Shelvay Protectorate

The city, as the largest metropolitan area in the Shelvay Protectorate, has long since been the Belhavian territory's seat of government. The territorial governor and legislature both reside in the city. The 18th-century Governor's Palace is two blocks from the Kasdoff Building, and the legislature sits in Territorial Capitol Building several blocks further west in the downtown.

Municipal

Form

Tel Avson has a Strong Mayor-Council form of government. The current mayor is Moti Sifran (Libertarian).

The City Council has 12 seats. Two are elected at-large and ten are "ward district" council members. Because of the current population, the ward council-members now represent about 23,000 city residents a piece.

The current City Council President is Azriella Jaffa (Liberal Democrat). The current Minority Leader is Itan Halevi (Conservative).

Politics

As the largest city in the territory, as well as overseeing a third of the territory's total population within its borders, in addition to the city core annexing the suburbs and exurbs at the city's outskirts, the city has a diverse and unstable three-party system. It is considered a "cyan city" (the mixture of blue (Conservative) and green (Liberal Democratic) politics).

By a quirk in demographic and population distribution, the Libertarians have an edge city-wide but the Lib Dems and Tories dominate among ward districts for city council, producing an unstable, tense three-way political dynamic in municipal government. Since the transfer from an appointed mayor by city council (under a Weak Mayor-Council system) to a directly elected one in 1968, the Libertarians have controlled the mayor's seat in large part since the late 1980s. Likewise, since the 1990s, both at-large city council seats have usually been won by the Libertarians.

In contrast, the urban core, working-income and poorer districts as well as wards with college campuses tend to vote for the Lib Dems while wealthier and white-collar professional and family-populated districts, usually in the suburban and exurban fringe, elect Conservatives.

	City Council Composition by Party
	Term	Libertarians	Liberal Democrats	Conservatives	Majority Control	Mayor
	2014-2016	3	5	4	Liberal Democrat (plurality majority)	Moti Sifran (L)
	2012-2014	3	3	6	Conservative	Moti Sifran (L)
	2010-2012	4	3	5	Conservative (plurality majority)	Liam Mendoza (C)
	2008-2010	4	4	4	Libertarian-Conservative coalition majority	Liam Mendoza (C)
	2006-2008	2	6	4	Liberal Democrat	Yehuda Caro (L)
	2004-2006	5	1	6	Libertarian-Liberal Democrat coalition majority	Yehuda Caro (L)
	2002-2004	3	6	3	Liberal Democrat	Yehuda Caro (L)
	2000-2002	2	7	3	Liberal Democrat	Yehuda Caro (L)
	1998-2000	2	7	3	Liberal Democrat	Levi Amar (L)
	1996-1998	2	8	2	Liberal Democrat	Levi Amar (L)
	1994-1996	1	9	2	Liberal Democrat	Judah Gaon (LD)
	1992-1994	1	9	2	Liberal Democrat	Judah Gaon (LD)
	1990-1992	2	5	5	Libertarian-Conservative coalition majority	Moshe Feinstein (L)

Infrastructure

Main article: Economy_of_the_Empire_(Belhavia) § Transportation

The city has several multilane highways and turnpikes that run through and around the city, which has earned the nickname "the Tel Avson Circuit". The city traffic is notorious among commuters as being led by aggressive, high-speeding drivers, even without having the speed limits that many other countries have.

A well-developed private bus system operates in the center and periphery of the city. An estimated 57% of city residents use the bus lines on a daily or weekly basis, among the highest for a Belhavian city.

Two private rail lines pass through Tel Avson; the "Ayton-Shelvay Line" by the Cross-National Rail Company that heads east from Dakos into Tippercommon to Sussex, and the "Desert Line" by the Horizon Rail Line Company also out of Dakos that ends inside the Tippercommoner side of the joint territory.