Yannis Aesopos reports of private initiatives by which residents in Greece assume responsibility for the development of their city. His examples are city gardens created spontaneously to overcome the serious lack of green areas in Athens.

In Greece there has never been a culture for landscape design or the use of smaller or larger urban parks as leisure spaces. Modern Greek cities were constructed by private small-to-medium scale developers in the form of “private cities”, assemblages of repetitive polykatoikias (apartment buildings). No attention was paid to public space which was seen as a leftover of the built environment. Most of the cities’ inhabitants had moved there from the countryside in the form of internal migration. For them, the city was the necessary evil; their place of origin –a village or a small town- remained their home and retreat for holidays, week-end breaks and summer vacations and provided plenty and fulfilling interaction with the surrounding unspoiled nature. If the village or small town had to do with leisure, the city had to do with work; it was only the numerous flower pots on the balconies of the polykatoikias that softened the harsh reality of the urban environment. 

However, during the last few years, we have been witnessing a reconsideration or even an appreciation for the qualities of urban life within the densely populated Greek cities, and Athens in particular, and an effort to improve urban life conditions. This shift of approach was mostly related to a younger generation; people born in the city that have been more or less disconnected from the countryside.

Athens 2004 Olympic Games operated as a catalyst for investment in the city’s public space: the streets surrounding the Acropolis were turned into a linear pedestrian path, major squares were redesigned, numerous buildings received a face-lift, street sidewalks were re-paved and all major hotels underwent extensive renovation. The new city image boosted consumption in the city-centre and turned Athens into a significant tourist destination. However, following the end of the Games, both state and municipality abandoned city-center public space. This neglect was compounded by the rapid and uncontrolled influx of illegal immigrants straight onto the city’s squares and streets, which became increasingly dirty and rough, transformed into places of peddling, homelessness, drug dealing and prostitution. From a space of collectivity, public space became a space of conflict.

In December 2008, extensive riots in Athens resulted in the burning and destruction of numerous stores, banks and public spaces. The rioting public expressed its frustration with the corrupted socio-political status quo and manifested its ‘presence’ in the city. Privatisation of public space through rising consumerism was also questioned: could public spaces exist, be viable without the support of programs of consumption – cafes, restaurants and stores?

It is through this line of thinking that prioritizes the need for public spaces within the densely-built city free of any private consumption uses that in 2009 community groups cancelled the construction of car-park spaces and turned them into small urban parks. This is the case with Navarinou Street Park in Athens which could be described as an irregularly planted brown-field in which the underlying soil –a clear presence of the pre-existing natural landscape- remains clearly visible. The park is enriched with elements from recycled materials such as randomly placed wooden benches and small-scale playground structures, pathways made of broken ceramic tiles and low walls made of pieces of stone that are added to the park in an unsystematic prosthetic process. Plants and trees are of different varieties and do not create unity – randomness is clearly the desirable effect. The park is a kind of pouch of nature within the city, an oasis. Access is free to all citizens; the ambiance is relaxed and fosters an alternative, much looser urban lifestyle. No architects are involved and no pre-existing overall plan exists, the park is an exercise in ad hoc construction – the result could be described as contemporary vernacular architecture, an experiment for more to come. At the park’s corner, wooden planks placed on a small hill of brown soil create a small, rudimentary open-air theater, a clear reference to public space’s collective character.

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aus Bauwelt 43.2010
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