An alternative reader of the Athenian urban scape

The Greek particularity

A particularity of Athens may be defined as a case apart.The historical layers, discontinuities, oscillations,interruptions, mistakes, palimpsests, secrets,revelations, informality, aggregate processes that haveproduced the Athenian urban scape and its representationare largely responsible for its identity. 1

Its buildings, roads, ruins, sidewalks, trees, blocks,fences and other features or structures may be understoodas “crystallized” characteristics in space of the societywhich produced them. The Greek crisis and Athens as aspecial case within a global crisis context, must beapproached in their unique characteristics and identitiesas such a case of particularity, and perhaps only throughthe recognition of this specificity can any further stepsof research and action be taken.

The “case apart” argument relates to the city’s long andfull of discontinuities history as discussed later. Thistext was written in way of an alternative reader to theseaspects of the city in mind.

City as textAt this moment the city resists to be read asarchitecture and urban space. Another text insists onbeing prevalent. It unfolds as a narrative everywherefighting for attention. It is the graffiti which describein words or images the state of mind, the object of fightor desire, and the emotional conditions of itsinhabitants. Stitched together it narrates collectivestories talking about things that do not get to be partof the official narrative. It is the writings on the wall

1 Athens has the privilege, or misfortune, of being referred toas the cradle of democracy, and thought of as the city which represents the origins of European culture. This heritage was taken up by Rome and was reasserted in the Renaissance and established in the 19th century. In this way it represented an ideal for Western European countries and its representation has always been in discord with its physical reality.

1

that provide for an opportunity to literally interpretthe city as text.

Figure 1 City reconstructed as a terrain vague and text photo-montage

City as reflection

If we focus only on social or spatial data in isolationwhen examining cities, we run the danger of ignoring veryimportant elements that have shaped either societies orcities as a result of their constant reshapingtransformations determined by historic, economic andsocial factors among many. Our cities are but reflectionsof their societies in physical space.

Cities are not just physical infrastructures, monuments,houses and streets. Perhaps first and foremost theyreflect collective imaginaries and represent theaccumulation of the structures that such imaginariesproduced over time in history. Thus they themselves arereflections of different eras of prosperity, openness,cultural progress and eras of depression, introversion orcollapse. It may be argued that crises as the ones we arefaced with today, besides being economic and politicalare urban crises as well. In the Athenian case for example, we may be able to tracesome elements of the crisis in the inherentcharacteristics of the city. There’s something self-referential about the characteristics of the cityrelating to its topography, with the Acropolis occupyingits symbolic and historical center and with concentriccircles of urban development tightly clenching eachother.Athens reflects its many facets of the ideal and ofoblivion. Athens is a reflection and quintessential case of suchdiscontinuities.

2

City of discontinuities If the city were a musical piece it would be full ofstaccatos: Athens may be the only city with a historythat spans so many centuries and, unlike Rome andJerusalem, is made between oscillating starts and stops,glory and decay, growth and abandonment. So many ruinsand so many new buildings which were never inhabited butlive amongst the living like ghosts must mean something.As it is with its history, the city itself is full ofdiscontinuities. The ancient city, culture, religion andvalue system were overpowered by the advent ofChristianity and the Byzantine Empire. From that point intime the city experiences a shrinking and devaluation asan urban center of significance, reduced over time to avillage of a few thousand inhabitants. The ByzantineEmpire is followed by the Ottoman Empire and it is onlyafter the independence and its designation as capital ofthe new Hellenic State that it is being resuscitated witha new urban identity. In the twentieth century it becomesthe main city that doubles its size as it receives animmigrant population from Asia Minor. In the past twentyyears it increases by one fifth as a result of a constantinflux of immigrants from many other countries. Whilethese changes have been occurring, there was neveradequate time, resources or vision to work on planningfor the city to incorporate these changes. Besides thedramatic lack of public and open spaces, there has alwaysbeen a shortage of public services to cater to thepopulation. Public space is where traditionally thecommon identity of a city has a chance to form among itscitizenry and Athens never had an adequate or properlydesigned stock of public buildings and spaces. This is a city of discontinuities evident also in thefacades of the streets. A city reflects its history, andAthens reflects a history of discontinuities. Void spacesare an element which is a result of many complexprocesses which also solidify in space the elementreferred to as city of discontinuities. For some othervoid spaces time has stood still, in contrast with thelives and activities nearby. These void places that havealso been called “black holes” remains still, mute,silent, and deaf. In its fabric we run across void spaces

3

where “the ghostly presence of the idealized ruins constitute the blackholes, the invisible and immaterialized space of the ideal within the city.”2 Itis the uncanny presence which reflects an inability toreconcile these layers of history and its historicdiscontinuities into a coherent narrative, as well as afunctional city of heterogeneous parts. They are nowpalimpsests of previous lives from centuries gone, tracesof buildings that are no longer there and minisculeecosystems of flora and fauna that go unexpected,uncontrolled and unnoticed. In is in thesediscontinuities that one gets the uncanny feeling ofsuspension and awkwardness about what action to take,often over the realization of a mistake, an error.

City of Errors3 The present city has not ever been read “as is”, such asa very pragmatic reading, as an accumulation of mistakes,ignorance and cruelty that ignored all the parameters forbuilding the city that appeals to people and people withrights citizen. Is it possible to recognize the currentfabric of Athenian city as a constant and unendingaccumulation of errors where the errors of the city andits citizens go back several decades? A City of Errors, is acity of accumulated mistakes over time which did not getany attention when they were made, and were covered andwere subsided instead by newer generations of mistakes.So perhaps a possible starting point and methodologywould be to be able to view the city as a reading ofaccumulated errors. A methodology we could devise, tohelp us in this the reading process would be of peelingoff the layers of errors one by one, until we get to thevery essence of the city, unencumbered by distorting2 Maria Theodorou, ‘Athens 2000 AD: Forensic Spacescape’, Archis, 2000, 68–77.3 The word “mistake” means to misunderstand, misinterpret and it originates from a Scandinavian source (cf. Old Norse mistaka "take inerror, miscarry). The concrete meaning of the word "error" has its origins from Latin errorem (nominative error) "a wandering, straying, a going astray; meandering; doubt, uncertainty is "wandering" or "straying". “errore”and is deeply connected with “errare” that means “wander, roam, ramble, rove, stroll”. In that sense in its double meaning, it is closer to a spatial condition and the urban condition of the wanderer.

4

filters. Perhaps this process would allow to look backand in front or ahead.

There are no ready recipes and solutions to be applied.While in some cases it may suffice to redesign what wealready have of the existing, in other cases, we may haveto invent other new social structures which then thearchitecture and cities will have to accommodate. In manycases though mistakes may be ignored or treated withimpromptu solutions characterized by an ephemeral andinformal quality.

Figure 2 An anonymous graffiti persisting all over the urban landscape reads"λάθως", meaning "mistake" spelled wrong.

City of informalityInformality could be defined as a condition where a voidor an impossibility to abide to whatever rules may be,leads to an informal state of doing things which becomesthe norm. The peculiar relationship between state andits citizens, the oscillation between periods ofabandonment of the management of the city by the stateand periods when the state wishes to assert its power andexercise control (usually in all the wrong ways) createsa peculiar clandestine state and an informal condition ofliving, a life taking place in the fringes. To paraphraseIgnasio Morales, those who live permanently in theparadox of constructing their experience out ofnegativity, as in the case of Athens, are invited as itwere, to escape from the totalizing presence of power.Safety summons up the life of risk and sedentary comfort

5

calls for shelterless nomadism, an urban call to theindefiniteness of the terrain vague.4

Modern Athens is the product of an endless strugglebetween efforts of planning and various other social,historic and social processes which produced unplannedurban space. Its current and peculiar gigantism as anaggregation of a long succession of "villages" in thecapital and no provision for the equivalent public spacesand services is one outcome of this form of unplannedgrowth. Extensions of the city in all directions possibleon the foothills and slopes of the mountains thatsurround it resembling the colonization processes ofbarrios, are indications of the affinities and the commonpractices involved in the production of space, betweenGreek cities, Athens being the dominant paradigm, and theinformal, radical, clandestine and complex urbanizationprocesses found in Latin American cities5. This affinityhas to do with the fact that formal planning was never astrong determinant of the city’s future and character,but it was left instead to private enterprise,speculation and initiatives.

Figure 3 A record of the collective use of the terrain vague of the empty lot at Psyrriby spontaneous organizing to turn it into a community garden. 2011

4 Ignasio de Solá Morales, ‘Terrain Vague’, στο Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale, επιμέλ. Patrick Barron και Manuela Mariani (New York: Routledge, 2013), 27.5 Justin McGuirk, Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture (Brooklyn: Verso, 2014); Alfred Brillembourg et al, Informal City: Caracas Case (Munich; New York: Prestel Publishing, 2005).

6

City as systemA society is a system where a city is one subsystem indirect interaction with other subsystems, in constantinteraction with each other are the economy, culture,politics and the production process. Some aspects of thecrisis may be better understood in the context of thecity and as a collection of symptoms of society, whichare directly reflected onto the city itself. Indeed acity may be likened to an organism. A human body to bemore precise. A human body is also a system, composed ofvarious systems that work in coordination with each otherand make sure that the human body functions as it issupposed to. An ailing human body will present symptomswhich are indications of a malfunction of a system or anorgan, of a disease or of an imbalance. We may search forsymptoms of a society reflected onto the city itself. A city as a complex whole not only is the materializationof a society or -according to systems thinking theories-a system, but it also favors and predisposes certaintypes of social patterns of organization and behaviorsand, which in turn determine a certain system of society.We make the house and the house makes us. In other words, thecity is what the citizens make it to be, just as thecitizens are what the city allows them to become.6 Thiscondition is what is referred to in systems theory asrecursive cycles and feedbacks. The phenomenon ofrecursive cycles and feedbacks is quite important to ourunderstanding both of the city and of the society.

6Vidler, Harvey and others comment on the ability that building types, planning and spatial features have, to crystallize social forms and to sustain particular social orders and behaviors. See Anthony Vidler, The Writing of the Walls : Architectural Theory in the Late Enlightenment / Anthony Vidler. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1987); David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000).

7

Figure 4 (a) A diagram showing a recursive circle or feedback loop (Capra, Web of life, p57) (b) A recursive cycle between city and society and (c) Recursive diagram of anegative feedback loop between society->city->crisis->society-.city->crisis, etc.

Informality, crisis, city and systems

This context no doubt harbors peculiar and unique formsof expression of violence.7 But the potential for noveland extraordinary forms of auto-organization,initiatives, collectivity and mutual support is alsobeing recognized in the absence of any sufficient answersto pressing problems. As a result, we are now faced with the emergence ofcomplex processes where the receding state from allsectors of what it traditionally presided over, that iseducation, health and public services in combination withthe threat to demolish a long cherished pillar of Greeksociety, that of family property, are being met with arenaissance of the commons. Plato´s Academy, workingclass neighborhood of Athens which is host to onemilestone of ancient civilization is one such paradox. Ithas always been known as a poor neighborhood one wouldn’tgo to unless it would be to visit friends or family. Thehistory and the actual place, traces of which may befound in a park, where completely hidden and latent, withone single signifier in the name. It is only recentlythat Plato´s Academy became known to a wider public forsome remarkable citizen initiatives. Viable systems have the capacity of self-organizing. Thecommons are a manifestation of a society’s healthyreflexes towards self-organizing.

7 “violence as a great purging, cleansing act in society. THe violent chatharsis was so great that what happened after seemed petty and anti-climactic”. See Richard Sennett, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), 174.

8

Nicholas Anastasopoulos

Nicholas Anastasopoulos, PhD is a researcher, architectand academic. Lecturer at NTUA, Athens and currently aresearcher, conducting research on “Redefining sustainability,resilience and Buen Vivir in a cooperative and commons-based economycontext: Theory and implementation” in Ecuador (PrometeoResearcher, IAEN, Quito). Involved in activist movementson the commons worldwide, a topic for which he haslectured and written widely. Currently writing one bookon Ecocommunities (in Greek) and one book aboutalternative movements and their impact on the mainstreamin English.

9

ReferencesAnastasopoulos, Nicholas. ‘The Crisis and the Emergence

of Communal Experiments in Greece’. Στο CommunalPathways to Sustainable Living Proceedings, επιμέλεια GrahamStuart Meltzer, 350–59. Findhorn Foundation, 2013.

Batty, Michael. The New Science of Cities. Massachusetts: MITPress, 2013.

Berry, Brian J. L. ‘Cities as Systems Within Systems ofCities’. Papers in Regional Science 13, τχ. 1 (1964): 147–63. doi:10.1111/j.1435-5597.1964.tb01283.x.

Bollier, David. Think like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Lifeof the Commons. New Society Publishers, 2014.

Brillembourg, Alfred, Kristin Feireiss, Hubert Klumpner,και et al. Informal City: Caracas Case. Munich; New York:Prestel Publishing, 2005.

Chase, John H., Margaret Crawford, και John Kaliski.Everyday Urbanism / Featuring, John Leighton Chase ... [et Al.] ; Editedby John Leighton Chase, Margaret Crawford, and John Kaliski.Expanded ed.. New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 2008.

Harvey, David. Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: EdinburghUniversity Press, 2000.

Laerhoven, Frank Van, και Clare Barnes. ‘Communities andCommons: The Role of Community Development Supportin Sustaining the Commons’. Community Development Journal49, τχ. suppl 1 (1 Ιανουάριος 2014): i118–32.doi:10.1093/cdj/bsu005.

Landry, Charles. The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. 2ndedition. New Stroud, UK : London ; Sterling, VA:Routledge, 2008.

Liaros, Steven. Rethinking the city. Sydney: PolisPlan, 2014.Linebaugh, Peter. Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and

Resistance. PM Press, 2014.———. The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.McGuirk, Justin. Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New

Architecture. Brooklyn: Verso, 2014.Meadows, Donella H. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. White River

Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Pub., 2008.Mitchell, Don. ‘The End of Public Space?People's

Park, Definitions of the Public, and Democracy’.Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85, τχ. 1

10

(1995): 108–33. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1995.tb01797.xa.

Morales, Ignasio de Solá. ‘Terrain Vague’. Στο TerrainVague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale, επιμέλεια PatrickBarron και Manuela Mariani. New York: Routledge,2013.

Sawyer, R. Keith. Social Emergence: Societies as Complex Systems.Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Sennett, Richard. The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life.New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.

Theodorou, Maria. ‘Athens 2000 AD: Forensic Spacescape’.Archis, 2000, 68–77.

Vidler, Anthony. The Writing of the Walls : Architectural Theory in theLate Enlightenment / Anthony Vidler. Princeton, NJ: PrincetonArchitectural Press, 1987.

11