 Cramped housing conditions and high property prices pushed families out of Tel Aviv and deterred young people from moving in.From the beginning of 1970s, the common image of Tel Aviv became that of a decaying city, as Tel Aviv's population fell 20%.In the 1970s, the apparent sense of Tel Aviv's urban decline became a theme in the work of novelists such as Yaakov Shabtai, in works describing the city such as "Sof Davar" ("The End of Things") and "Zikhron Devarim" ("The Memory of Things").