The Greek urban system is characterised by high and persistent concentration - with Athens dominant - and a notable deficit in medium-sized cities. Greece has seen an essentially identical urban policy model over the post-war period. The main features have been consistent support for small property along with its intensive use and its eligibility for construction both inside and outside town boundaries, the role of illegal construction as the basic mechanism of urban development, the negligible public expenditure on urban infrastructure, the subordination of urban policy to the priorities of social policies and the weakness of urban planning.

Historical Background
The urban policy model in Greece has remained largely consistent across the entire post-war (WWII) period. With its roots preceding the war, this model had already crystallised in the mid-1960s in Athens; it was then extended to the rest of the country over the following decades, and it still prevails to a large extent, augmented with some new developments.

The main policy features are:

Organisation
Greece is characterised by a number of spatial peculiarities making it a rather untypical EU country case. The country’s peripheral south-eastern location and the fact that it shared no frontiers with other EU countries, have both been limiting factors for the country’s development. Internally Greece is typified by a highly fragmented physical and economic area, given the existence of hundreds of scarcely inhabited islands and the limitations imposed by its mountainous terrain.

The country’s economy is largely inward looking with a limited market and limited capacity to adapt in size and technology in order to compete in national and international markets. Compared to the other original EU member states (15 until recently), Greece has the highest proportion of self-employed people in its economy, the highest proportion of small and micro firms and perhaps the largest informal sector. The country is typified by a low level of development, a weak economy production structure, the lowest GDP per capita, a continuously declining industrial share in GDP, and its productive base includes traditional sectors and low capital and technology intensity. These conditions have brought about the development of a large highly centralised public sector, which has had a major task in recent decades to absorb the labour force, often through a clientele system so as to reduce the employment deficit in the private sector.

Greece has one of the most concentrated urban structures in Europe. Its urban system is characterised by high and intense concentration and a serious lack of medium sized cities. Athens is the only urban area with population over one million, encompassing some 50% of the country’s urban population.

Greece has seen an essentially identical urban policy model over the post-war period. The main features have been consistent support for small property along with its intensive use and its eligibility for construction both inside and outside town boundaries, the role of illegal construction as the basic mechanism of urban development, the negligible public expenditure on urban infrastructure, the subordination of urban policy to the priorities of social policies and the weakness of urban planning.

Current Issues
The long-standing, constitutionally-based sanctification of private property and its protection have undermined Greek urban planning, while societal support for development regulations has been low. Planning has rarely driven decisions but instead has frequently followed development to coordinate public infrastructure.

The implications of the specific choice of urban policy (or the lack of urban policy) have been the low level and quality of urban infrastructure (transportation networks, urban transport, public space, etc.), the high costs of providing urban infrastructure in already (illegally) built areas around the city and the low quality of this infrastructure, the demolition of traditional housing and the loss of cities’ historical character. Other factors are the friction of incompatible land uses arising spontaneously inside and outside the cities, and intense construction activity (legal or illegal) outside the city limits, particularly in tourist and seaside areas, destroying the environment and transplanting urban problems (pollution, congestion) to many countryside areas.

Despite the highly polarised environment and the dominance of Athens and Thessaloniki, consolidated and perhaps increasing, the other four cities with populations over 100,000 inhabitants have managed to maintain positive growth and development prospects. Some seek a new identity and many will have to make difficult future choices. All are poorly funded and have administrations with limited authority and even fewer resources to implement restructuring or development policies.

Some new urban policy developments have effectively appeared over the past decade, some being the direct effect of EU policies. However most have not attained maturity. These developments have also been relatively peripheral, in relation to the core of the urban policy model prevailing throughout previous post-war decades. This model therefore remains powerful with some minor modifications, and in the best instances the new elements are incorporated without altering its key characteristics.

Key Programmes
Up to the mid-1990s there were no programmes focusing on the social and economic problems related to urban space, while most existing programmes were primarily focused on physical planning. The first step towards socio-economic urban space issues were six projects of the ’Urban‘ Community Initiative, implemented between 1994-99 and comprising a mixture of physical planning and socio-economic measures. Projects of this type have increased considerably in the current programming period and apart from the new generation URBAN projects, some 100 analogous interventions are now in the Third CSF for Greece. These projects are located in settlements of all ranks from the metropolis to small provincial towns. Incorporating these 100 projects in the Third CSF came about largely through European Committee pressure for the insertion of the ’urban dimension‘ in the CSF Operational Programmes. Projects in the URBAN line, which by definition are concentrated in smaller parts of the city, are however not very suitable for the Greek situations, because socio-economic problems in Greek cities are not generally concentrated in particular areas or neighbourhoods but are rather diffused within the urban centre. However, evolutions such as the massive influx of foreign economic migrants or the deindustrialisation crisis of the 1990s altered the social geography of Greek cities and resulted in the appearance of localised social problems.

21/12/2005

policy

Urban Policy