Name of City/municipality: Elad
Population: 48 763 inhabitants (2019)
Area: 2756 km2
Elad is a city in the Center District of Israel. It was built in the 1990s for a Haredi and to a lesser extent Religious Zionist Jewish population.
Located about 25 kilometers (east of Tel Aviv on Route 444 between Rosh HaAyin and Shoham).
Name of Mayor: Israel Parush
Contact: (972) 03-9078112
Website: www.elad.muni.il
Main features:
It is a young city of 60% children, religiously diverse population, rapid growth rate, surrounded by forests and dense.
Elad is the only locality in Israel officially designated a religious municipality. The name Elad means “Forever God”, but it is also named after a member of the tribe of Ephraim, who lived in this area.
The town was built from scratch as a planned community according to urban planning paradigms not unlike Modi’in and nearby Shoham. While those towns were designed to suit a mixed population of secular and religious Jews, Elad was originally planned to suit a mixed population of Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist Jews and ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews, offering a solution to the acute shortage of affordable housing for Haredi families. Most of the population are Haredi Jews. Accordingly, Elad is built in a way that suits their religious lifestyle, with a larger selection of housing options offering larger than average apartments to accommodate religious families, who tend to have more children than the average national population. Another characteristic is easy access and short walking distances to local education institutions to avoid the need for school transportation costs.
Main economic activities:
Elad is a city without industrial zones.
The support center of Ramat Gan-based Israeli company Daronet is located in Elad. Its workers are ultra-Orthodox women. In 2012, Daronet signed a sales agreement worth NIS700,000 (US$180,000) with Saudi energy giant Yanar.
Environmental conditions and challenges:
Elad municipality is surrounded by forests and therefore has the effects of construction waste consequences. Low socio-economic, a city without industrial areas and which revenues are from collecting property taxes, and a diverse population.