Journal Of Contemporary Urban Affairs 2020, Volume 4, Number 1, pages 71– 78 Why isn’t Urban Development Sustainable? An Institutional Approach to the Case of Athens, Greece * MSc. Antonios Tsiligiannis Head of the "Investments and New Projects" unit at the Municipality of Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium E mail: [email protected] A R T I C L E I N F O: A B S T R A C T Article history: Despite the rise to prominence of sustainable planning, the state of urgency and Received 23 March 2019 the pressure imposed by the extreme competition between metropolitan territories Accepted 3 August 2019 reduces sustainability to a market-oriented doctrine for deregulated urban Available online 1 September 2019 development. The aim of this article is an exploration of the current Athenian urban crisis, by centring on sustainable urban development plans, territorial planning Keywords: institutions, and urban policies. To this end, the phenomenon of urban crisis is Sustainable explained as a derivative of the failure of sustainability reforms. By establishing a Development; link between the institutional framework governing urban development and the Historical Institutionalism; success or failure of sustainability reforms, this article seeks to contribute to the Path-dependency; discussion around the attainability, scope and impact of sustainable urban Urban Policies; Athens. development plans. Through the hypothesis that as long as territorial planning is used as means towards speculative urban development, it will only be equivalent This work is licensed under a to that of a real estate facilitating mechanism, it is argued that the urban Creative Commons Attribution - development model of Athens, as well as the role that institutions have in its NonCommercial - NoDerivs 4.0. shaping, is incompatible with any notion of sustainability. The main contribution "CC-BY-NC-ND" of this article is to potentially help towards developing a critical reflection on how projects, plans, territories and sustainability should be approached. This article is published with Open Access at www.ijcua.com JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2020), 4(1), 71-78. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2020.v4n1-7 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2019 Journal of Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. caricature of a more serious consideration 1. Introduction (Koolhaas, 2014), as well as a polished term for the 1.1. Focus alarming practice of providing growth to declining Currently, the answer to the global economic and economies through speculative urban ecological crisis, along with its social and political development. implications, appears to be sustainable urban development. Sustainable urban development *Corresponding Author: has become a portmanteau term including a wide Head of the "Investments and New Projects" unit at the Municipality of Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium variety of heterogeneous notions. In this regard, Email address: [email protected] several critics emphasise that sustainable urban development has nowadays become a How to Cite this Article: Tsiligiannis, A. (2020). Why isn’t urban development sustainable? An institutional approach to the case of Athens, Greece. Journal of Contemporary Urban Affairs, 4(1), 71-78. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2020.v4n1-7 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS, 4(1), 71-78/ 2020 approach that can address the numerous Consequently, despite the rise of sustainable economic, ecological, technological, and cultural territorial planning both as a fast-developing links between urban development and industry and as a policy priority, they suggest that sustainable planning (Karvonen, 2011, pp. 187- to this day, it has provided us only with some 198). In this regard, even though environmental relatively isolated urban experiments that cannot concerns about the sustainability of metropolitan be scaled up to ensure the sustainability of an territories are typically addressed by implementing entire metropolis and has aggravated “urban technical and policy solutions, they are also greenwashing” and environmental segregation deeply dependent from and interwoven with (Davis, 2006, p. 15). In this article I attempt to social, economic, cultural and political support the thesis that sustainable urban considerations (Gallon, 1987, pp. 83-84). development attempts have often resulted in a In this article I aim to concentrate on an series of profound mutations affecting urban exploration of the Athenian urban crisis that is societies deeper than the broader crises at source. centred on sustainable urban development plans, territorial planning institutions, and urban policies. 1.2. Background To this end, I attempt to explain the phenomenon The diffusion of planning guidelines, technical of urban crisis as a derivative of the failure of formulas and management techniques, has sustainability reforms. By illustrating how path- rendered what literature describes as “sustainable dependent institutions hinder policy change, I seek territorial planning” a decisive factor that mutates to highlight how and why a long-term vision of metropolitan territories. Contemporary planning urban development based on the principles of policies set sustainable urban development plans, sustainability appears difficult to achieve in the as well as flagship development and infrastructure case of Athens. In a broader context, I also wish to projects as the regulatory mechanisms that are contribute to the discussion around the called upon to unify profoundly heterogeneous attainability, scope and impact of sustainable spaces and to organise them towards attaining urban development plans. social and ecological sustainability (Rogerson & Boyle, 2000, pp. 133-196). Consequently, these 1.4. Hypothesis tools are gradually becoming the ordering Both institutional actors and a substantial number mechanism of the urban field (Waldheim, 2016, p. of academics agree that Athens has been facing 15) and the main parameter of the contemporary an urban crisis since at least the beginning of the urban condition (Graham & Marvin, 2001, pp. 8- Greek financial crisis of 2009. This discourse is often 16), prejudging the possibilities and the methods conducted by resorting to technocratic and with which sustainable territorial development is aesthetic arguments, and through a purely soaked (Easterling, 2014, pp. 11-14, 18-21). financial and architectural spectrum (Dragonas, However, if the lack of appropriate sustainability 2011, pp. 12-15). My hypothesis is that as long as tools impedes the sustainable rebalancing of territorial planning is used as means towards territorial organisation, their existence alone does speculative urban development, it will only be not guarantee the regulated transition of territories equivalent to that of a real estate facilitating towards sustainability either (Rodrigue, Comtois, & mechanism. Instead of trying to explain how the Slack, 2013, pp. 1-8). In this regard, as the transition urban crisis in Athens is an unfortunate by-product towards sustainability is undertaken under the of last decade’s breaking down of the Greek urgency and pressure imposed by the extreme economic development model, I argue that in competition between metropolitan territories, it is fact the urban development model of Athens has speculative real estate development that always been essentially the same. Moreover, this materialises the material and immaterial global hypothesis suggests that the production and the flows (Ascher, 1995, pp. 7-20). Thus, sustainability is consumption of urban space as a real estate reduced to a market-oriented doctrine for commodity is an inherent characteristic of the deregulated urban development (Dawson, 2017, prevailing urban development in Athens. Lastly, by pp. 15-16, 36, 39, 55). pointing to the recurrent crises in Athens under the current development model, I attempt to highlight 1.3 Aim the ways that this model, as well as the role that Although institutional actors admit the existence of institutions have in its shaping, is incompatible with a generalised urban crisis as a result of real estate any notion of sustainability. speculation and deregulated urban development, they also advocate that it can be 2. Main Part treated as a temporary crisis that shall be resolved 2.1. Disciplinary Approach through targeted technical and policy measures The interdependent urban systems composing that fall under the umbrella of sustainable urban Athens are created by a complex array of development. However, the complexity of structures and agents, and take into account contemporary metropolitan territories requires an several and varied agendas (Varnelis, 2009, pp. 6- MSc. Antonios Tsiligiannis 72 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS, 4(1), 71-78/ 2020 17). Institutional theory can highlight the 2004, pp. 545-566) at all levels of territorial planning overarching systems of values, traditions, norms, in Athens, as well as the role that these policies and practices that shape or constrain territorial accord to urban development. These are in turn transformation, providing analytical assistance to juxtaposed to the recurrent and prevailing the understanding of the direction, objective, and practices of urban development in the meaning of the processes unfolding on metropolitan territory of Athens, throughout its metropolitan territories (Peters, 1996, pp. 205-220). urban history. The limitations of this article impose The identification of critical junctures and link mostly a synthesis and juxtaposition of data sequences as conditioning factors of the urban gathered by secondary sources. However, primary development path of Athens (Karidis, 2008, pp. 15- sources have been used when and where it was 22) facilitates the understanding of how the necessary and feasible. institutions that currently direct sustainable policies in Athens have been shaped. These institutions 2.3. Findings have been forged through a long path- Athens amasses over one third of Greece’s dependent accumulation process of rules, laws, population and half of the country’s industrial and norms, incentives and social relations, as well as tertiary production (Economou, Petrakos, & contradicting responses to prior critical junctures Psycharis, 2016, pp. 193-216). However, its (Connolly, 2018, pp. 8-11). As a result, some economic, political and cultural hinterland roughly structures are more conducive to sustainability coincides with the rest of the Greek state. Athens transitions than others (Hansen & Coenen, 2015, is therefore a Dynametropolis, whose pressures pp. 92-109). accumulate people and activities spatially and The involvement of international organisations and materially while polarising international, physical private actors in the planning process of Athens and symbolic flows (Doxiadis, 1968, pp. 26-30). This has also resulted in policy transfer, which has resulted in a peculiar landscape of densely encouraged specific mechanisms for dealing with packed suburbs, seasonally occupied exurbs, urban processes. In this regard, the failure of seaside touristic units, infrastructure space along policies that set sustainable urban development as the main networks, industrial and tertiary enclaves the way to achieve sustainability goals in Athens and exclaves, and speculative agricultural can be attributed either to the incomplete installations, extending for tens, or even hundreds implementation of such policies without of kilometres from the city centre (Burgel, 2002, pp. considering local sensitivities and inherent 20-21). Oddly enough, up until the early 2000s, institutional drift (Torfing, 1999, pp. 290-291) or to Athens had been credited also with one of the the choice of an inappropriate solution, which lowest competitiveness indicators in Europe, due path-dependent institutions could not implement to what was considered a variety of endemic (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000, pp. 5-23). factors. Often portrayed in negative colours, the urban 2.2. Methodology development of Athens has been characterised By making use of historical institutionalism, I as “unplanned”, “wild” and “spontaneous”, attempt to identify and examine the critical permitting the creation of an enlarged middle junctures in the urban history of Athens, as well as class and bridging the social, ideological and the link sequences that have shaped the urban cultural differences of the interwar period development path of Athens. To this end, I explore (Theocharopoulou, 2017, pp. 9-18). Contrary to and compare the ideas, challenges, narratives these preconceptions implying the lack of a and discourses of formal and informal actors at a higher-level agency and the employing of a national and local level. This includes not only the random procedure, the urban condition of Athens official version of the Athenian urban history, but may be explained better by the antithesis also its informal version and aspects. In addition, I between the tactics employed by societal agents examine whether and to what extent a process of in their attempt to claim their right to participate in -coercive or imposed- ideological transplanting the transformation of the city (Lefebvre, 1996, p. occurred, mainly by analysing the predominance 158) and the obligation of authorities to adopt and of international organisations and of global implement coherent sustainable planning policies. economic factors and actors to the detriment of It is also characterised by the pivotal role that has national and local agendas (Dolowitz & Marsh, been accorded to infrastructure as a key 1996, pp. 343-357). Furthermore, I investigate the regulating mechanism ensuring the sustainability adoption and advocacy for specific urban of territories but also as a tool facilitating the policies and legal frameworks as “best practices”, deregulation of territorial development by as well as the development of new planning normalising the application of market rationale bodies and mechanisms (Moran, 2010, p. 27). To (Cluzet, 2007, pp. 18, 27-28). this end, I assess institutional interdependence and Athens became the capital of the Greek state in global policy networks by examining specific 1834, largely serving symbolic, political and sustainable policy adjustments and reforms (Stone, economic motives that necessitated the existence MSc. Antonios Tsiligiannis 73 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS, 4(1), 71-78/ 2020 of a distinct centre, which could exercise control to the contractor who built a “polykatoikia” on it, over the Greek territory. The Ottoman town grew was responsible for the massive explosion in the rapidly into a large Balkan city with its references built environment and the ultimately speculative to the West, despite the internal turmoil, expansion increase of land value. However, this extremely wars and bankruptcies that occurred during the productive period for the private construction 19th century. The political and economic instability sector could not be met by the necessary that was the main characteristic of this period is infrastructure projects due to the inability to secure considered to be the principal reason funding during the Great Depression (Skagiannis & discouraging investment in productive sectors and Kaparos, 2013, pp. 12-65). Therefore, the turning private investors towards the construction implementation of metropolitan planning was sector. At the same time, however, these same abandoned, by tolerating the already existing conditions limited the financial capabilities of the laissez-faire attitude (Karidis, 2015, pp. 125-184). Greek state and the city would not acquire The 1950s found the country ravaged from a brutal adequate urban infrastructure until as late as the foreign occupation and a disastrous civil war. The early 20th century. Furthermore, the first city plan of Greek authorities sought to ensure internal political Athens that was drafted by the architects Kleanthis stability, while having to address the reconstruction and Schaubert might have predicted and of almost the entire pre-war infrastructure and the provided for extensive green areas and a large depopulation of large parts of the Greek archaeological zone around the Acropolis, countryside, with a crumbling post-war economy. however, the aggressive reactions from the Immediately after the war, US officials supported landowners whose properties and speculative and coerced Greek governments actively into interests were affected led to it never being applying some kind of "aided self-help" implemented. Shortly after, a new, more modest programme on several occasions. In fact, city plan by the architect Klenze was approved American consultants and experts involved in the based on the earlier version, only for it to never Greek reconstruction “experiment” did not only being implemented in its totality, as well (Karidis, expect the restoration of the destroyed 2014, pp. 85-130). settlements but also the internal stabilisation of the The critical juncture establishing Athens as a country, the diffusion of free-market norms and metropolis was the effort to integrate a large policies, and eventually the smooth integration of number of the Asia Minor refugees in 1923, which Greece into global post-war capitalism. Therefore, resulted in almost doubling its population. The the role of the capital city as the control centre of Interwar period saw the implementation of a the country was consolidated predominantly by broad urbanisation operation aiming at their allowing an informal and self-regulated urban integration into the Athenian society, which development process to materialise in Athens prompted the first successful effort to equip the (Heidenreich, Chtouros, & Detlev, 2007, pp. 11-35). city with industrial installations. The introduction of This occurred through the extensive expansion of reinforced concrete, already from the beginning Athens by means of arbitrary and often illegal of the century, as well as its progressive settlements, called “afthaireta”, that were a generalised application in the wider sector of posteriori legalised and incorporated into the city. construction facilitated and steadily promoted the Once officially recognised and incorporated into construction of multi-storey buildings. In 1929, the the urban fabric, the “afthaireta” would acquire enactment of a specific law advancing the legal planning rights and could be further institution of horizontal ownership and vertical densified, in most cases, by applying the institution segregation of buildings permitted rights of co- of the “antiparochi”. The increasing housing needs ownership of the entire lot for the first time and were met without a welfare programme and no gave birth to the first apartment blocks (Εφημερίς serious social housing programmes were ever της Κυβερνήσεως [Government Gazette], 1929). undertaken, even though almost a quarter of the The first State Construction Code, which went into pre-war housing units had been destroyed. This effect the same year, significantly impacted the resulted in the massive reconstruction of Athens morphology of the structures, by introducing a and the consequent rapid economic recovery of strict standardisation in the organisation of the the country happening with minimum state storeys and of the facades (Εφημερίς της intervention (Paschou, 2008, pp. 38-42). In less than Κυβερνήσεως [Government Gazette], 1929). This three decades, Athens tripled its size and resulted in the distinct typology of the Greek population but lacked a coherent metropolitan version of the apartment block, the “polykatoikia” planning policy. What became clear during the that would be multiplied all across the Athenian post-war wave of construction, was the territory. At the same time, the institution of the emergence of a new branch of the Greek “antiparochi”, a uniquely Greek arrangement, economy, that of the construction capital. The whereby the owner of a building plot or smaller construction sector became the most significant building was compensated with new apartments part of the economy, often being labelled as in lieu of payment for the land that he relinquished “Greece’s heavy industry”, indirectly implying that MSc. Antonios Tsiligiannis 74 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS, 4(1), 71-78/ 2020 it made up for the lack of an actual heavy industry, intervention of social actors in the urban planning as well as the “locomotive” of the Greek process is significant, which renders the official economy, mainly because it set the rhythm of procedures of public consultation auxiliary or even growth of the national economy. irrelevant (Giannakourou, 2004, pp. 51-60). Over By the end of the 1970s, Athens had achieved a the years, this has increasingly favoured 65% ratio of owner-occupied dwellings, leaving speculative urban development in detriment to the renting of property only to tertiary students and any notion of sustainability. At least 77% of the newly-arrived immigrants (Emmanuel, 1994, p. settlements in the country are estimated to be 348). Several inhabitants of the extremely dense unplanned, while 11% among them are situated inner city embarked in a first wave of still beyond any regulatory consideration. From suburbanisation that could not be accompanied 1983 till 2013, at least four laws “legalising” the by public transportation infrastructure, thus “afthaireta” have been introduced, each and depending solely on car mobility. The introduction every time declaring the “temporary” and “final” of regulatory planning mechanisms and of the first nature of these legal provisions. The last law is still in regulatory plan for the region of Attica in the early force today, having been extended for the 1980s, as well as the investment in large seventh time (Εφημερίς της Κυβερνήσεως infrastructure projects across the country and the [Government Gazzette], 2013). These laws have institutionalisation of sustainability in the late 1990s, poured billions of Euros into state treasuries, in order attempted to halt the alarming population growth to repay the national debt, and their constant of Athens. This soon proved to be detrimental to extension showcases that putting an end to the both the city centre and its periphery, as it urban anarchy is not their primary goal. Moreover, favoured an intense phenomenon of sprawling of the ratification of the New Regulatory Plan for the the already existing Athenian population. Athens-Attica Region characterised a series of Conversely, the Athens 2004 Olympic Games existing woodlands as metropolitan parks, where encouraged the shifting of national and regional new planning regulations could be applied, policy towards the objective of raising the permitting sports, cultural and leisure activities competitiveness of Athens and modernising its inside the parks. At the same time, in the Hellinikon infrastructure (Economou, Getimis, Demathas, former airport site, which was initially supposed to Petrakos, & Pyrgiotis, 2001, pp. 329-346). The become a large metropolitan park, the allocation of significant funds for the realisation of construction of 10,000 new housing units for 25,000 flagship development and infrastructure projects, inhabitants, 7 hotels, 2 shopping malls, a casino as well as the amendment of the metropolitan and a convention centre has been approved planning framework with fast-track methods, (Εφημερίς της Κυβερνήσεως [Government aimed at overcoming the lack of a National Gazzette], 2014). Cadastre and of a Forest Registry while minimising These contradictions introduce a peculiar delays in the planning implementation processes. approach to the regulation of space, whereby However, this also triggered an even more “obsolete” regulatory mechanisms and plans are deregulated, third wave of diffused urbanisation kept in force and are modified through ad whereby construction either preceded planning or hoc procedures in order to accommodate speculatively followed public investments infrastructure and development projects (Stathakis (Chorianopoulos, Pagonis, Koukoulas, & Drymoniti, & Chatzimichalis, 2004, pp. 26-47). The literature 2010, pp. 249-259). Similarly, the economic crisis has attributed the peculiar conditions that shape that Greece is currently experiencing provides a the sustainable planning institutional framework of pretext for employing a strategy of deregulation Athens to the ideological and cultural clash and exceptional measures, with permanent rather between the persistence of traditional practices than temporary characteristics (Gunder, 2010, pp. and the call for modernity (Prévélakis, 2000, pp. 31- 298-314). 34, 124-125), the implementation of a peripheral Despite facing unprecedented levels of model of capitalism based on the accumulation vulnerability to forest fires and flash floods, of capital through speculative land development planning processes and infrastructure projects in (Sarigiannis, 2000, pp. 12-14, 232-233, 244-262), as Athens either ignore or bypass altogether the well as to the socio-political similarities of the required environmental impact assessments, by Athenian urbanisation process to those of cities in giving much greater weight to the word other Mediterranean (Leontidou, 1990, pp. 7-13, “development” rather than the word “sustainable” 100-108) and Latin American countries (OECD, 2009, pp. 15-16). The institutional system of (Petropoulou, 2011, pp. 8-9, 13, 30-31, 40-41). The urban planning in Greece is currently defined by recurrent theme in the literature is that of an the segmentation of urban planning actors and interaction between formal and informal the fragmentation of urban decision-making within institutions, which materialises in a mobilisation of a strongly centralised administrative context the territories around Athens through policy and bound to conform to EU strategic planning and infrastructure (Burgel, 1976, pp. 25-53). environmental legislation. Moreover, the informal MSc. Antonios Tsiligiannis 75 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS, 4(1), 71-78/ 2020 3. Conclusion In this article I attempted to complement and Burgel, G. (1976). Αθήνα, Η Ανάπτυξη μιας address a gap in the existing literature, by Μεσογειακής Πρωτεύουσας [Athens, The examining the Athenian process of territorial Development of a Mediterranean development in relation to the objectives, Capital]. (P. Linardos-Rylmon, Trans.) Athens: methods and shortcomings of the Athenian Exantas. planning policy mechanisms. Contrary to the limitations of the past, primary data have now Chorianopoulos, I., Pagonis, A., Koukoulas, S., & become easily accessible, thanks to technological Drymoniti, S. O. (2010). Planning, advances, digital platforms and the digitalisation Competitiveness and Sprawl in the of public data and archives, which are now Mediterranean city: The case of Athens. Cities, accessible to the public. With the aid of 27 (4), specialised software, a large quantity of these pp. 249-259. data can be filtered, compared and synthesised, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2009.12.011 within a more reasonable timeframe. Moreover, several educational and research institutions have Cluzet, A. (2007). Ville Libérale ou Ville Durable? contributed to the pool of secondary data, while Répondre à l'Urgence Environnementale investigative journalism and reporting, as well as [Liberal City or Sustainable City? specialised academic conferences, have Responding to the Environmental Urgency]. significantly improved the development of a Paris: Editions de l'Aube. critical discourse around the research question. This means that potential researchers of the Connolly, J. J. (2018, March 1). From Systems Athenian urbanisation process may find it easier Thinking to Systemic Action: Social Vulnerability than before to conduct their research on the and the Institutional Challenge of Urban topic. Resilience. City & Community, 17, pp. 8-11. Despite the more favourable settings under which https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12282 this research was conducted, my principal goal in this article was limited to identifying and clarifying Davis, M. (2006). Planet of Slums. London / New the general context under which the success or York, NY: Verso. failure of sustainable planning in Athens occurs. This goal, however, is part of a broader objective Dawson, A. (2017). Extreme Cities. London: Verso. that attempts to illuminate the relation between planning policies and factual urban development, Dolowitz, D., & Marsh, D. (1996). Who Learns What as well as to assess its territorial impact in terms of from Whom: A Review of the Policy Transfer sustainability. On an even broader context, this Literature. Political Studies, 44 (2), pp. 343- objective has the potential to help develop a 357. critical reflection on how projects, plans, territories https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1996.tb00334.x and sustainability should be approached. 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