Cover image: Athens map[Edited by the Author]

Spaces of Com

mons / Spaces of H

ope | Sergios Strigklogiannis

Spaces of Commons / Spaces of Hope The emerging potential of urban commons in the Athens of Crisis

Abstract

Introduction

Methodology

Chapter 1 - B.C. era (Before Crisis) 1.1 Euphoria Chapter 2 - Crisis & Co.(mmons)

2.1 December 2008 2.2 Syntagma Sq.

Chapter 3 - Emerging commons: case studies 3.1 Navarinou Park 3.2 Refugee housing complex 3.3 The other human 3.4 Academia Platonos 3.5 Theatre Empros 3.6 K-VOX 3.7 Markets without intermediates + Athens time bank Chapter 4 - Conclusions

4.1 Emerging common spaces

4.2 Emerging potential

4.3 Final word

Photography index

Bibliography

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{Table of contents}

Author: Sergios StrigklogiannisPromoter: Lieven De Cauter

Advance Master thesis of Human SettlementsResearch thesis (18 ects)

Academic year 2013/2014

Leuven, September 2014

KU Leuven - Faculty of Engineering Science Department of Architecture

Kasteelpark Arenberg 1 – bus 2431, B – 3001 Heverlee - Belgium

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{Abstract}

The last decades the discourse around the idea of the commons, both spatial and cultural, in the urban environment is becoming wider, more radical and in the same time more urgent. Numerous of activists, urban movements or simply active citizens stressed the idea of appropriating urban space in practice, answering that way to the neoliberal practices of privatisation of common spaces or commodification of common resources. In the same time, inspired from the spontaneous and bottom-up initiatives of reclaiming urban public space theorists like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri with the publication of “Commonwealth”, and also the work of David Harvey, Massimo de Angelis, Linebough and Stavrides developed a theoretical background, emphasizing on the urgency for defending urban commons, as a non negotiable citizens right and a unique chance (or hope) for enhancing spatial democracy.

This essay transfers the research focus to the European south, where the attack on the commons is intensified through the financial and social crisis of the last years and specifically to the most intense and in the same time the most interesting case of all, Athens.

Aim of this essay was to examine seven case studies of the emerged practices of commoning urban space and goods in the city of Athens in the crisis period from 2008 till 2014. Cases that emerged, in one hand as a social answer to the luck of essential goods and services and on the other as a unique opportunity for more solidarity and collective spirit in the urban environment. Finally, by analysing and juxtaposing the impact of the case studies on urban space, the research concludes into important findings over the potentiality of the common urban spaces and of the practices of alternative appropriation of space in Athens, conclusion that should be taken seriously into account in order to create a more democratic urban environment. Finally, it is important to mention that the research about ‘Urban commons in Athens’ is part of a series of researchers about commons edited by Elise Candry and Ranjani Balasubramanian.

Keywords: commons, urban commons, Athens, crisis, urban space, public space, urban movements, practices of commoning.

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{Introduction}

Athens, November 2008. The city experiences it’s last months of a long euphoric period that lasted more than two decades a long period characterized by an rapid financial growth. This euphoric period established, spread and enhanced a strong feeling of individualism and consumerism among the citizens, transforming in the same time public space according to the consumerist and individualist habits of it’s users. Walking around the city this spirit of individualism and the consumerist lifestyle was visible in every square, pedestrian zone or unbuilt spaces, creating that way a strictly commercial urban environment, leading with certainty to the ‘end’ of public space.

December 2008. The assassination of a young boy by a policeman triggered a period of massive demonstrations and chaos in the city of Athens. What in the beginning started as a protest to this action evolved into a collective reclaim of the city, which still reflected the euphoric illusions of the last decades. This spontaneous collective reaction transformed temporarily all squares, pedestrian zones or unbuilt spaces into space of protest, while a multitude unites with a common emotion of anger and frustration was attacking all visible in the urban space symbols of the past. After this period of unrest some bottom-up, self-organized initiatives appeared in Athens, trying to change the way of perceiving public space and create a more ‘free’ to use urban environment.

April 2010. The euphoric bubble broke violently through the financial crisis that occurred officially in April 2010 in Greece. Its multifaceted consequences soon transformed it into a social and humanitarian crisis, affecting dramatically the urban life, bringing it closer to what Giorgio Agamben would call ‘bare life’1 . 2010 was a critical year in the contemporary history of Greece, landmarked by the entrance to the support program of IMF2 and later of the European Bank. Since then, and continuing until today Greece is facing its intense consequences, which gradually transformed it from a financial crisis into a social and humanitarian. The most radical IMf ’s

1 Agamben, Giorgio; Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridian: Cross-ing Aesthetics)2 International Monetary Fund

neoliberal practices/policies were experimented and reintroduced (after Argentina in 2001) in Greece’s economical system, leading to the sudden povertization of the citizens. At the same time a massive wave of privatization policies and commodification of common goods (advancing from weakness of the state apparatus towards the market forces) occurred in the name of the paradox concept of ‘sustainable development’3, affecting radically the public or free urban space. These affects of the crisis are intensifier and more visible in the urban space and environment of the metropolis of Athens.

In the same time, as a counterbalance to the crisis affects on the everyday life and on the urban environment, lead by a common will for survival in urban space, urban movements and bottom-up initiatives are increasingly present in Athens. These initiatives are attempting to redefine our relationship with urban space and confront the impacts of the crisis on everyday life, by proposing new practices of reclaiming public space and appropriating it through self-organized and self-managed implementations. The start was made when a team of activists, inspired by the spirit of resistance that occurred after the events of December, occupied a parking lot and transformed into a park. After that, many initiatives of an alternative use and appropriation of public space followed, either in order to protest against the state’s plans of a total privatization of public space or for practically offering a relief to the crisis citizens of Athens.

July 2014. Four years after the official start of the financial crisis, the discourse around urban commons in Athens becomes everyday more essential, while the privatization of public space in favour of the financial depth is increased constantly and the urgency for spaces of social solidarity is greater than ever In the next chapters seven case studies of common spaces and practices of commoning urban space are presented, case studies that I am following since their creation and this research offered the opportunity to research in depth, the way that they affect urban space and life and how potentially could be developed in the future in order to create a more ‘human oriented’ urban environment.

3 De Angelis, Massimo; Stavrides, Stavros; “On the Commons: A Public Interview with Massimo De Angelis and Stavros Stavrides”, e-flux journal #17 , New York, June-august 2010, p.2

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{Methodology}

InspirationThe idea for the creation of a research around common spaces and practices of commoning in Athens was born during a visit to the occupied space of Navarinou Park in June 2009. My presence on the space concurrently with an event for supporting the initiative of the activist to occupy the site in order to transform it into a park constituted my first contact with a bottom-up, self organized and self-managed action for reclaiming urban space, changing in the same time radically my perspective of how space should perceived, and appropriated. Obviously, the spirit of the social unrest period of December 2008 influenced and inspired urban actions for change in the urban envi-ronment of Athens and the case of Navarinou Park was literally the perfect spatial interpretation of this spirit. A second inspiring factor for this research was the social and humanitarian consequences of the financial crisis that occurred the last years in Greece, changing radically both the cityscape of Athens and the appropriation of public space. During this crisis period, as a counterbalance to the affects of the crisis in the everyday life of the Atheni-ans, numerous urban action and movements are born in order to create an urban environment based on solidarity, that would responde to the needs of it’s users. The crisis finally, made the discourse around common spaces in Athens more essential than ever, strengthening my personal belief, that we, as architects or urbanists, are responsible for reacting on any state- or private- driven commodification and misuse of public space.

Research questionsMy observations of the effects of the financial crisis on the social fabric, visible in the urban environment, in combination with my previous contact with the self-organized spaces of the commons in Athens generate the following questions, that constituted the research questions for this research:

‘How did the discourse about the commons evolved in the period 2009-2014 in Athens and how the crisis affected them?’‘Why are commons important for the society of Athens during an economical and humanitarian crisis? What are the social benefits from these commons?’‘What can we, as architects or urbanists, learn from the bottom-up initiatives of appropriation of the urban space in a crisis environment? What could be the potential evolution of these initiatives?’

Theoretical backgroundAs a prelude to this discussion, in order to have a different perspective on urban commons in Athens, it is considered instructive to mention the basic bibliography and theoretical work taken into account and integrated in this research. Initially the work of Karl Marx, and specially the chapter of ‘Das Kapital’ describing the primitive accumulation, can be considered as the basic theoretical source for the conversation around the commons, while in practice the case of the English commons described in the book of Peter Linebough,“The Magna Carta Manifesto” constitutes an inspiring example of the connection of the theory with the space. Additionally, the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri with the publication “Commonwealth” is considered a milestone, but also David Harvey, Massimo de Angelis, Elinor Ostrom and many others developed a theoretical background, emphasizing on the urgency for defending urban commons, as a non negotiable citizens right and a unique chance (or hope) for enhancing spatial democracy. In a personal level, the conversations with prof. Lieven De Cauter, during the research period were highly informative and constructive for the evolution for this research. Finally, information and theoretical perspectives useful for the research on common spaces specific for the case of Athens, are sourced from the work of the Athenian architect and professor Stavros Stavrides, as for example his definition about the relation between community and common spaces:

“Communities in movement “secrete” their own space. This in not the public space as we know it, space given from a certain authority to the public under specific conditions which, in the end, affirm the authorities legitimacy. It is not private space either, if by this we mean space controlled and used by a limited group of people excluding anybody else. Communities secrete common space, space used under conditions which communities collectively decide and open to anybody (not only to those who are members of the community). To be more exact, these communities do not have members: anyone who participates in the actions and accepts the rules of such a community is a de facto member. The use, maintenance and creation of common space does not simply mirror the community. The community is secreted, developed and reproduced through practices focused on “common” space. To generalize this principle: the community is developed through commoning, through acts

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and forms of organization oriented towards the production of the common.”1

Research methodologyThe research starts with the choice of Athens as case study, for the reason that, in one hand it’s urban environment and mentality of inhabitants are familiar and on the other there was already a personal experience on the creation of common spaces, facts that can lead into original and not hypothetical conclusions. Additionally, the consequences of the crisis make the case study Athens even more interesting for the investigation of it’s urban space. However this decision led to the unavoidable question: What are the urban commons specifically in Athens? Reading the theoretical background around urban commons we can have an abstract definition of what common are, but in practice the idea and the definition of the urban commons differentiates itself in different cultural, ethnical or political background and especially through different situation, such as an economical crisis. This finding led in one hand to the decision not to emphasize on the attempt to define theoretically the urban commons, and on the other to choose a phenomenological approach, using a methodology based on the analysis of maximum ten case studies. The selection of the case studies was limited through two basic criteria, because in Athens there is a plethora of examples, which could be included to this research. The first is a geographical criterion, the case studies should be located near the centre of Athens, and the second is a chronological one, the practices of commoning should have started within the crisis period, later than 2009. These two criteria were chosen in order to have similar timeline and background in order to facilitate their comparison and connection with each other for more productive results and conclusions. Finally, informal interviews, mapping, field observations, personal presence and participation in the activities or assemblies of the commoners are thought as suitable research tools.

Additional inputsThe evolution of the research, in order to make the case studies and in general the discourse around the commons in Athens understandable, required a detailed analysis of some historical facts and events that affected radically the creation of many of the following case studies. The analysis of the ‘Before

1 Stavrides, Stavros; “Communities of crisis, squares in movement”, online publica-tion, professional dreamers, working paper No 6, 2011

crisis era’ is considered essential for the understand of the radical social and spatial change occurred by the crisis. Secondly, the events of December 2008 and the indignados movement in Syntagma square in 2011, are also two important periods of the contemporary history of Greece that marked irreversibly the way that the Athenians perceived urban space.

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{Chapter 1} B.C. (Before Crisis) era 1.1 EuphoriaThe period starting from the restoration of democracy1 till 2008 is marked by the rise of Greece’s economy and simultaneously could be characterized as a meta-static period of the Greek society and of the Athenian cityscape. The rapid fi-nancial growth in combination with a seemingly social and economical stability within the limits of the European Union created a sense of euphoria amongst its citizens, sense that was also mirrored in the Athenian urban space. Real estate, construction industry and provision of services, (mainly touristic), were the pil-lars on which the financial boom of the last three decades was based, increas-ing that way the standard of living and the buying capacity of a large part of the population. A new model of neoliberal consumer-citizen was introduced and established during this euphoric period affecting the city landscape which gradually was transforming into a consumerist city, following the example of other European cities such as London or Paris. The image of Athens as a con-sumerist city was supported by new architectural and urban development inter-ventions that were realized this period in Athens: gigantic malls, theme parks, entertainment zones, new commercial centres, but also gentrification projects or commercial appropriation of the limited public spaces, redesigned Athens’s urban map, because “it became important not only what people were consuming but also where, marking the formation of neighbourhoods with distinct class identities.”2 In the same time we can observe a dramatic shift of a traditionally collective society3 to a more individualistic one.

“Modernization theorists have argued that economic development goes hand in hand with the adoption of individualist values, both at the national and at the personal level.” 4

In the same euphoric spirit there is an effort of re-branding the city of Athens by large scale regeneration projects, such as the transformation of the whole Gazi former industrial zone into an urban entertainment zone with an artistic charac-ter or the gentrification of the former handcrafts neighbourhood of Psiri (in its area is located also one of our case studies, ‘Embros’ Theater). The highlight of

1 Reference to the dictatorship in Greece, 1967 - 19742 Chatzidakis, Andreas; “Crisis-scapes: Athens and Beyond”, Athens as a failed city of consumption, Crisis-scapes conference publication, Athens, 2014, pp. 33-463 Greece is traditionally regarded as a collectivist society but is undergoing a process of individualization and modernization (Georgas, 1989; Hofstede, 1980; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005)4 Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker, Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Per-sistence of Traditional Values

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this euphoric period of capitalist’s / consumerist’s utopia was the organization of the Olympic Games at 2004, which triggered a construction, real-estate and marketing industry boom for the re-branding of the city. The plan was to re-discover Greece’s ancient sophisticated spirit and trade it for marketing purposes, in order to increase the city’s collective symbolic capital5. Within this paroxysm of radical changes in the cityscape of Athens for the Olympic Games, the organizers tended to cover up, hide or visually erase every ur-ban picture of collective memory, which didn’t match with the new aesthetics that the marketing companies imagined. A typical example of this paroxysm was visible in of one of the case studies analysed for this research; the old and abandoned Refugee housing complex in Alexandras avenue was covered up with gigantic posters, in order to hide behind them the badly preserved building and their marginalized residents. The social and financial euphoria continued also the years after the Olympic Games establishing and spreading even more the consumerist and individu-alist culture in the everyday urban life. An urban life that at the zenith of this euphoric period was the quintessential example of the alienated urban life as defined by David Harvey:

“The progress of alien or compensatory consumerism has its own internally destructive dynamics. It requires what Schumpeter called “creative destruc-tion” to be let loose upon the land. Daily urban life in the city, settled ways of living, relating and socializing, are again and again disrupted to make way for the latest fad or fancy. Demolitions and displacements to make way for gentrification or disneyfication break open already achieved fabrics of urban living to make way for the gaudy and the gargantuan, the ephemeral and the fleeting. Dispossession and destruction, displacement and construction be-come vehicles for vigorous and speculative capital accumulation as the figures of the financier and the rentier, the developer, the landed proprietor and the entrepreneurial mayor step from the shadows into the forefront of capital’s logic of accumulation through alienation and dispossession. The economic engine that is capital circulation and accumulation, gobbles up whole cities only to spit out new urban forms in spite of the resistance of people who feel alienated entirely from the processes that not only re-shape the environments in which they live but also re-define the kind of person they must become in order to survive.”6

5 Harvey, David; “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution”, The creation of the commons, Verso, London, 2013, pp. 67-886 Harvey, David; “Crisis-scapes: Athens and Beyond”, Alienation and urban life, Crisis-scapes conference publication, Athens, 2014, pp. 195-208

At this point, in order to have a better understanding of the current situa-tion of the urban common spaces, it is considered essential to analyse the discourse over the commons in the context of the Athens before the crisis. Hardt and Negri in their book ‘Commonwealth’ imagined the utopian city as a factory of production of commons. In this almost surrealistic situation of consumerist driven urban development of Athens, the city seemed to pro-duce urban commodities, commodified urban space and alienated urban life, which in it’s turn, reshaped urban space. The city of Athens at this cer-tain moment was incapable to provide common ground for productive and creative encounters.7 The individualistic culture and atomized logics and practices hindered the urban citizens to reclaim their right to the city and to mold spaces of solidarity and collective spirit. Furthermore, they didn’t feel the need to shape a collective urban space. Free urban spaces were gradually limited in favour of the real estate and construction industry, the squares were appropriated from private entrepreneurship (cafes, entertainment cen-tres etc.), while pedestrian zones or in between spaces were considered as the extension of the shops located around them. These urban pictures mirror the exact way the Athenians perceived urban space: strictly private or public, state owned, but definitely not as their own space, that they can appropriate it their way. In the same period the urban alienation supported by the afore-mentioned shift to consumerist model was destructive also for the tradition-al concept of the neighbourhood, as a collective space, an urban threshold, where people used to stay in front of their houses and use the street and the pavement as a meeting and interactive space. Summarizing the characteris-tics of all these new elements for the Athenian cityscape, we could speak of an hostile urban environment for creative and socially productive encounters, that hindered the urban citizens of appropriating its physical space, creating that way a form of Idiotopia.8

7 Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio; “Commonwealth’, Metropolis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011, pp 249-2608 Idiot : A word derived from the Greek ἰδιώτης, idiōtēs “person lacking professional skill”, “a private citizen”, “individual”. a) An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as op-posed to public—affairs. Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis, was considered dishonourable. “Idiots” were seen as having bad judgment in pub-lic and political matters. Over time, the term “idiot” shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment–individuals who are “stupid”. b) In modern English usage, the terms “idiot” and “idiocy” describe an extreme folly

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“Often, in fact, since so many chance encounters are harmful, residents of the me-tropolis close themselves off to avoid encounters with others, walk silently past without seeing one another, erecting invisible walls in a common space, hardened to contact as if the skin had become callous, numb, mortified. And the privileged close themselves off in enclaves so that, even though they live near people radically different from them, they manage to interact only with those who are

the same. This is when the defining characteristics of the metropolis degen-erate, when it becomes no longer a space of the common and the encounter with the other, no longer the site of communication and cooperation.”9

Athens in this euphoric period was literally transformed into an ‘Idiopolis’, a city based on consumerism and individualism, unable to offer in its public environment the space to create productive encounters for it’s citizen’s. As Harvey insists:

“The politics of the metropolis is the organization of encounters. Its task is to promote joyful encounters, make them repeat, and minimize infelicitous en-counters. This requires, first, an openness to alterity and the capacity to form relationships with others, to generate joyful encounters and thus create social bodies with ever greater capacities. Second, and perhaps more important, it requires learning how to withdraw from conflictive, destructive relationships and to decompose the pernicious social bodies that result from them. Finally, since so many of the spontaneous encounters are not immediately joyful, this politics of the metropolis requires discovering how to transform conflictive encounters, as much as possible, into joyful and productive ones.10

Searching for common spaces of productive and joyful encounters resisting against the destructive consequences of the consumerist and individualist utopia called Athens before 2008, our findings would be limited in occupa-tions of public buildings and squats in state owned buildings, mostly organ-ized by leftist or anarchists initiatives. As we will have the opportunity to see in the next chapters, this situation changed radically in 2008, when the protest against the assassination of a 15 years old child from a policemen, evolved into a general reaction against the existent urban space formed for this euphoric period and from the financial crisis, responsible for a radical change in Athens’ urban space. or stupidity, and its symptoms (foolish or stupid utterance or deed).9 Hardt, Michael; Negri, Antonio; “Commonwealth’, Metropolis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011, pp 249-26010 Harvey, David; “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution”, The creation of the commons, Verso, London, 2013, pp. 67-88

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{Chapter 2} Crisis & Co(mmons) “We can also however discover emerging new forms of resistance to the policies of capitalist crisis connected to act for the transformation of public space. The December 2008 youth uprising and the Syntagma square. Both events produced collective experiences that reclaim the city as a potentially liberating environment and reshape crucial questions that characterize emancipatory politics occupation.”1

In order to understand the evolution of the urban commons in Athens is essential to trace in the recent crisis history and analyse two milestone periods of urban conflicts: Firstly, the uprising and urban riots of December 2008 and secondly the massive protests of the ‘Indignados’ movement and the occupation of Syntagma square in May 2011. These two periods of social unrest interconnected with the general consequences of the socio-economic crisis reintroduced, after a long hibernation, the discourse over the right to the city and the importance of the urban common spaces and by reactivating the will of the Athenians to reclaim them.

2.1 December 2008. Commoning urban injustice and streets.

“December was not the answer, it was the question”- Motto of the uprising youth

6th December 2008. A young boy’s assassination by policemen in the centre of Athens triggered Greece’s most massive urban uprising since the end of the dictatorship in 1974. The assassination was the spark that spread the fire of riots and unrest in all Athens’ neighbourhoods and public spaces, while it’s deeper causes evolved the urban conflict to a dynamic reclaim to the right to the city. As Stavros Stavrides mentions for the case of Athens’s December :

“As it is characteristic in most urban conflicts, the city was not simply involved as the setting of actions but urban space and its uses became one of the stakes of the conflict. Either explicitly or implicitly connected with demands related to city life conditions, urban conflicts actively transform the city.” 2

1 Stavrides, Stavros; “Crisis-scapes: Athens and Beyond”, Emerging Common Spaces as a Challenge to the City of Crisis, Crisis-scapes conference publication, Athens, 2014, pp.209-2142 Stavrides, Stavros; “The December 2008 youth uprising in Athens: spatial justice in an emergent ‘city of thresholds’ ” [« La révolte de la jeunesse athénienne de décembre 2008 : la justice spatiale dans une “ville des carrefours” émergente »

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At this point it is considered essential to trace the December’s uprising actual events, in order to understand in which way the relationship between the rebellious multitude and the urban space affected later on the discourse over the urban commons in Athens.

The city as the protagonist and not the theater.Athens’ most socially active neighbourhood, Exarchia, is located near the city centre and it’s square is since many decades the start and the end of many demonstration, activists’ urban actions or political protests. Meanwhile it is considered as the most important centre of alternative culture, inhabited and visited by a politically active and socially sensitive community. Anarchists’ and leftists’ urban actions and initiatives , such as squats and informal hosting centres for immigrants for example, are often spatially connected to the Exarchia’s square or the surrounding neighbourhood, while it is historically connected with the Technical University of Athens, located in its area, a symbol of resistance during the dictatorship back in the 70’s. All the aforementioned actions and characteristics of Exarchia apply to the area a strong anti-systemic, antiauthoritarian, resistance and anti-capitalistic spirit, which in return transforms its physical space. The presence of police is something uncommon in this part of the city and is limited to special occasions, but in 6th December 2008, exceptionally a police car passed near the centre of Exarchia. Some youngsters shout them something, probably insulting, the car stops, the policemen come out, shoot and in the very next moment the 15 years old Alexis Grigoropoulos was lying dead on a street of Exarchia. The place (with its particular spirit as described before) where the assassination took place and the young age of the assassinated Alexis occurred a rapid flow of the news through social media, mobiles and in general the invisible informations network that exists over contemporary metropolises. The sequences of the spread news followed rapidly. Only some hours later a spontaneous uprising occurred in many neighbourhoods of the city spreading chaos in the public and in the in-between spaces of Athens. The multitudes rage was not only expressed against authoritarian symbols, but also against urban physical environment that represented the previous euphoric capitalistic and consumerist era. The following three weeks numerous expensive cars, luxurious shops, banks or stores of international commercial chains were destroyed by a multitude driven by its anti-systemic swarm intelligence, expressing collectively its opposition against an urban

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environment that didn’t reflect their perspectives. The rage actions of this spontaneous urban conflict were spread out all over the city and not limited around some urban symbols like Syntagma or Exarchia square, revealing two new and unprecedented characteristics of the protests in Athens, characteristics that are also visible in the following cases of urban commons in Athens: Firstly, it was geographically decentralized and additionally it started and evolved without any official organization leading the multitude, but only a common feeling of anger, frustration and injustice:

“The key element seems to have been a shared idea of justice, which is felt to be absent from the acts of the state, as emblematically declared by the shooting policeman.” 3

Although, the deeper reasons for the massive character of the December’s urban conflict were the forthcoming socio-economic crisis with the absence of alternatives in an urban environment that still mirrored the lifestyle of the previous euphoric period, which continued to reproduce and represent a consumerist and individualistic archetype. The surrealistic picture of the burning Christmas tree in the Syntagma square represents the exact relationship between multitudes rage and urban rage during this period. In it’s second phase the first catastrophic and chaotic wave of riots focused only on destroying the euphoric past’s symbols was followed by the occupation of public buildings and spaces, that were transformed temporarily into cultural centres organizing the resistance.At this point a synopsis of the events of December reveals the tight relation between urban space and urban conflicts and also how this period affected the urban commons in Athens. During the three weeks that the unrest lasted the city with its physical space was not just the locus of the conflict, not the stage where a theatrical performance took place, but it became an actor, a protagonist. The first protesting reaction of the youth against the assassination evolved rapidly to a reclaim of the city’s public space, redefining that way its character, its spirit, transforming it temporarily and creating new emergency spatialities of resistance.

“When, during an urban conflict, people collectively seek to re-appropriate

3 Stavrides, Stavros; “The December 2008 youth uprising in Athens: spatial justice in an emergent ‘city of thresholds’ ” [« La révolte de la jeunesse athénienne de décembre 2008 : la justice spatiale dans une “ville des carrefours” émergente »

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public space, they are not simply using the city as it is; they are transforming it. Their actions not only search for space, they invent space. These “performed” spaces, these “practiced” spaces, as they “happen” in the process of the conflict, acquire distinctive characteristics that tend to influence the outcome and the form of the conflict. Emergent spatialities, thus, represent the ways people who participate tend to imagine spaces that will house the life they fight for. At the same time, those spatialities reflect the ways in which collective action attempts to create its own space” 4

As aforementioned, the events of the December introduced two new different and uncommon characteristics of the use of urban space for protest. Firstly, the reaction and the appropriation of public space as a space of reaction was geographically decentralized: the urban conflicts taking place in every possible street, square, hidden or visible public space, in every corner or in-between space revealed its high grade of plasticity malleability and the ability of the multitudes action to transform it and mold it through the diverse appropriation of its common space. The violent period of interaction between the physical space and its users generated new emergency common spatialities, that later would affect the discourse over the urban commons in Athens. The analysis of this period resulted to a second and important conclusion: During these days the city functioned as a giant factory producing common ground for encounters of people that shared common emotions, solidarity spirit and will for changing the current situation. The whole city provided the space for the creation of micro-communities that later on will more organized and focused would reclaim urban space and goods, promoting self-organization, political and social action and supporting collective actions without an enlightened political leadership. This spirit is also present in many of the following case studies as we will discover in the next pages and directly connected with the Navarinou park, that is located some meters way from the area that Alexis was assassinated. Finally, the spirit of December left its mark on the future fight over the urban commons in Athens by inspiring mostly the youth that an alternative urban life is possible.

4 Stavrides, Stavros; “The December 2008 youth uprising in Athens: spatial justice in an emergent ‘city of thresholds’ ” [« La révolte de la jeunesse athénienne de décembre 2008 : la justice spatiale dans une “ville des carrefours” émergente »

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2.2 Syntagma square. Commoning anger in the square.

The second period that affected dramatically the discourse around urban common spaces and practices of commoning in Athens was the period, where thousands of people occupied the Syntagma square and settled for almost two months in order to protest against the upcoming economic policies and the interlinked financial crisis.The Syntagma square was always the most symbolic urban space of the Athenian metropolis, that throughout Greece’s contemporary history constituted a place of expression of collective emotions. Its centrality and its position, placed directly in front of the Greek parliament facilitate the creation of a surrealistic dialogue between multitude and the symbolic building of the parliament, favouring that way its use for protests, collective events or manifestations, and in general as a platform or a display for the expression of collective emotions in different situations. A symbolic space, a ‘topos’1 embodied with diverse (and in most of the times) intense emotions of its users throughout the contemporary Greek history. The Athenians always appropriated the physical space of Syntagma square in order to share common emotions such as; joy and happiness in the win of the favourite football team, anger of strikers protesting for labour rights or feelings of injustice during the massive and radically violent for the urban space protests of December 2008. These shared emotions in Syntagma square created collective memory strongly connected with its physical space applying to it a heterotopic character. The collective expressions of emotions taking place in Syntagma square transformed and remoulded in many occasions its built environment with most characteristic example the burning Christmas tree in December 2008 or the numerous slogans, mostly against the state’s practices, sprayed on its walls or benches. 1 Topos: In the text is often used the Greek word topos to define a space or a place that its use and appropriation in the past or present created a genius loci, a certain spirit of the place that can be easily felt by the visitor. In conclusion, in the following research as Topos are described the heterotopic spaces. As Stavros Stavrides defines it:

“Crucial is the differentiation between space and place (topos). What mediates between the two concepts are the lived experiences (bios): meaning by lived experiences, the ex-pression of fundamental life situations, fundamental experiences of the human nature, what forms places within space, what characterizes places, but also is being characterized by them. This way the place constitutes the spatial interpretation of ‘bios’ or experiences. The concept of lived experiences is connected with the concept of appropriation, which states the way that individuals or groups participate to something public, in which also invest private (or personal) elements.”

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In May 2011, one year after the signing of the memorandum for Greek economy’s entrance to the IMF’s and European bank’s austerity programs, the Syntagma square was just about to come through one of the most historical moments of its history, moments that would also play a catalytic role for the future appropriation of urban space in general, but also the discourse around common spaces in Athens. After a year of apathy, inactivity and neutral resistance against the state’s financial violence, (probably occurred by the still recent memory of the last decade’s consumerist utopia) Greek citizens started to realize that their euphoric way of life of the past years is definitely not coming back. The offensive paroxysm of the current financial system was more and more present in their everyday life affecting it radically, while the neoliberal long-term practices implemented by IMF and Greek state proved to be harder than ever imagined. Meanwhile, the wide spread spirit of individualism in combination with the state of fear which the media supported by spreading around the dilemma ‘IMF or bankruptcy’ was obstructing a massive reaction to the radical change of the social cohesion and the upcoming povertization of Greek society. The isolated individualism was in the beginning of the crisis enhanced by the feelings of suspiciousness and distrust between one to the other, while the collective spirit was hidden behind the illusion of emerging the crisis exclusively relying on one’s own forces. Again as in the event of the December, a message in the social media calling for a massive protest in Syntagma square against the states policies at May the 25th was enough to reintroduce the forgotten spirit of collective action and unite the, till then isolated through fear, citizens of Athens. Once again the common spirit of indignation and frustration forced the Athenians to rediscover the common space, where the expression of these emotions would take place. Starting from the May 25th and for almost 2 months the Syntagma square became again for hundreds of thousands ‘indignados’ the urban space of commoning collective emotions. Following the example of other south European occupied squares, the Syntagma square became the space where collective emotions were just about to find space for expression. Anger against all social hostile practices, fear for the future, indignation against the existing situation and also a collective feeling of injustice became the adhesive material between the isolated individuals and the square was once again transformed into a platform of interconnected experiences, collective memories and dreams that something new can be born.

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an estimated budget of the project close to one million Euros. The private appropriation of Athens’s most historical public space in a form of donation of a generous and ‘caring for the city’ private company constitute a danger for the democratic nature of the space and simultaneously for the use of Syntagma square as an urban common and free for everyone to use space. The adoption of public space from a private company and its appropriation and exploitation for marketing reasons is also visible in one of the researched case studies ‘Academia Platonos’, where the ‘gentle’ and almost invisible appropriation of public space from a private company leads to the end of public space, as an urban common space.

By analysing these two periods of social unrest, the events of December and the Indignados movement in Syntagma square and by evaluating their impacts, it is easily understandable how catalytic their role was, on the evolution of the public spaces in Athens. In one hand, the event of December, that evolved to a collective reaction and protest against an urban environment that didn’t reflect their expectations and couldn’t fulfil their needs, and on the other, the Syntagma square manifestations against the social and financial crisis, applied some new characteristics in the Athenian way of appropriating urban space. Both cases left their mark in the way the citizens of Athens perceive public space and inspired and facilitated bottom-up initiatives of an alternative way of using and appropriating space, while they created the encounters responsible for the birth of many urban social movements fighting for a more democratic urban space. Inspired from these events, but also forced from a survival instinct created by the crisis a spirit of solidarity in urban space is reintroduced through many bottom-up initiatives, spirit that is also visible in many of the following case studies. For example, directly connected with the events of December is the ‘Navarinou Park’, near the Exarchia square, case that was followed by different examples of common spaces in Athens appropriated by alternative practices of ‘commoning’

The way the space of the square was appropriated from the protesters revealed an extraordinary practice of commoning and use of the occupied physical space. Tents, temporary constructions for collective actions, a space for an informal medical/emergency point, the kitchen, the zones of protection and many more spatial interventions were born through the swarm intelligence of a multitude sharing a common sense and desire of resistance. The pop up, temporary micro-urbanism within the limited space of the Syntagma square reintroduced to its users the forgotten spirit of the place and enhanced its symbolic dimension as one of the most important urban common spaces of the city of Athens.Today, exactly three years after the collective use of Syntagma square as an ‘urban common space for resistance’ the situation is radically different. The austerity policies, always justified as essential for social security have also affected the Syntagma square’s character as a common space for the collective expression of shared emotions. The prohibition of protests and collective actions in the Syntagma square but also in the historical and commercial centre of Athens is increasingly often, fact that affects its character as a common space, a space for sharing collective emotions as it was defined by the indignados movement. For example, my last visit to the square for this research was coincided with the visit of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The space and the atmosphere of Syntagma square had nothing in common with the one 3 years before. The prohibition of protesting due to the visit and the enclosure for safety reasons of Athens commercial centre resulted to a desertification of the square. The space lost its character as public space, while there were almost no users to appropriate its physical space for the expression of common emotions. For the citizens that actively experienced the square during December 2008 and May 2011, the appearance of the empty Syntagma square is something more than surrealistic, a soulless urban heterotopia. Additionally a phenomenon of private appropriation is taking place the last years in Syntagma square: The ‘adoption’ of the public space from private companies and institutions. For example, the hotel ‘Grande Bretagne’ is a historical and most luxurious touristic residences of Athens, placed directly on the limits Syntagma square. In 2013 a close cooperation and discussions between the municipality of Athens and the hotels managers resulted to the signing of an agreement that allows to the private company to run some maintenance and repair works of the public space of Syntagma square with

{Chapter 3} Emerging commons: case studies

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Syntagma square Navarinou Park - 1 Refugee housing complex, Alexandras av. - 2

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Navarinou park‘Your parking, our park’

Self organized / managed park and garden Occupation of public space 7th March 2009 - now Exarchia district / Harilaou Trikupi & Zoodohou pigis str.

“The Navarinou Park is a ‘topos’ of creation, empowerment and resistance and neighborhood garden, play area and promenade, communication and reflection. In this respect our neighbors is an immediate priority. The park is and will remain beautiful! Solidarity is our weapon.”1

IntroductionThe evolution of the common spaces in Athens, as aforementioned, was greatly influenced from the events of December 2008. The initial spontaneous collective reactions and protests against police’s violence, evolved into a dynamic reclaim of urban space. This period of social unrest produced and spread amongst the insurgent youth a spirit of strong will for remoulding the built environment, which still reflected the individualistic lifestyle of the previous years. The spirit of December and the arising demand for a change in urban environment and in general for the right to the city gave birth to the first case study of my research, the Navarinou Park2. ‘The Park’3 is a self-organized and self-managed space, spatially connected in Athens’ most socially active neighbourhood and located a few meters away from the spot that Alexis Grigoropoulos was killed. It’s creation resulted through a citizen’s initiative and the occupation of public space, while today the case of Navarinou Park constitutes an important reference point in the discussion around the common spaces in Athens.

1 ‘For the Park, without title’, online published manifesto, edited by the as-sembly of the self-managed park of Navarinou in the first period of the occupation of the space2 My personal attendance during the first phase of reclaiming the space, be-fore the creation of the park, but also the second visit nearly five years later, consti-tutes the inspiration for this research and in general my interest in urban common spaces.3 ‘The Park’ is the way, in which the inhabitants of the area refer to Navarinou Park.

Background informationInitially the 1500m² site, located in the centre of the dense Exarchia neighbourhood (and near to the following case study of K*VOX occupied medical center), was since 1907 built a medical clinic, which in 1972 stopped working. The site was bought by the representative body of engineers (TEE), who planned to build there its new offices and for that reason demolished the building of the clinic. However, the plan was never realized and the site was offered to the municipality of Athens, in order to build a park on it and in exchange, the engineers chamber asked for more beneficial planning regulations for another site, that wanted to develop.4 The transformation never started even if the decision about it was officially published in 1990. Instead the site was for several years rented to a private investor that used it as a private parking.5 In 2009, in a moment when the leasing of the site was about to end leaving the future of the site unknown, the ‘Residents Committee of Exarchia’ decided to intervene and occupy it, in order to transform it to a park. At this point it has to be mentioned that the decision for the occupation was made some months after the events of December 2008, in a period of social and political unrest, but also in a period, when anti-authoritarian spirit, protests and urban conflicts actively transform the city space.6 Finally after 19 years of delay, the citizen’s initiative started transforming this marginalized urban space into a space for leisure and collective action.

Commoning in actionThe occupation of the site started on 7th March 2009, when the ‘Residents Committee of Exarchia’ in cooperation with socially active collectives entered the space of the till then unused parking lot and organized in it together with many citizens of the surrounding area events, celebrating the new park,

4 At this point we must mention a link between two of the case studies. Some days later the city of Athens and the representative body of the engineers decided to exchange the occupied Navarinou site with 5 of the 8 buildings of the refugee hous-ing complex in the Alexandras avenue (one of our following case studies), in order to be transformed to host its offices planned on the site of Navarinou Park.5 Informations retrieved from the official site of “Attiko Prasino”, owned and managed from the Attika regional office, responsible for the green spaces of Athens’ metropolitan area: http://www.attiko-prasino.gr/Default.aspx?tabid=1296&language=el-GR6 Stavridis, Stavros; The December 2008 youth uprising in Athens: Spatial Justice in an emergent ‘City of thresholds’, Spatial Justice and Environment, No2, October, 2010

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that was about to be built. From the beginning, the park was managed by an open assembly that would collectively decide the activities and the spatial transformations that would take place. Moreover the park was meant to be much more than just a space for leisure. As we can read from the manifesto of the residents assembly:

“From the beginning it was created an open assembly of the park, where all participants would decide together both the form and function of the initiative, and its political characteristics. As a result of this self-organized, spontaneous and concerted action ‘from below’, the creation of the park in the territory of an occupied private space and the formation effort with direct democratic and anti-hierarchical terms through the open assembly, it was already an act with a clear political position. A stigma perfectly integrated in the atmosphere and the expectations that spawned the revolt of December 2008.”7

The direct reference to the spirit of December in this statement clearly demonstrates the resistance essence of the initiative and furthermore the political status of the space, that the residents decided to occupy and transform according to their perspective of how urban space should be.

The evolution of hopeThe whole process of reclaiming the parking lot for the creation of a park was an open participatory process involved local residents and other social active groups who in the first phase of occupation, cleared the site, broke the asphalt, brought potted plants, designed landscapes and placed handy street furniture in it. Result of the citizen’s initiative in this dense urban area that lacks of open spaces was the successful reclaim of the site, with the plan for the creation of an open, self-organized and self-managed park with a strong inclusive character where everybody could use and enjoy. During the following years several events and collective actions for the transformation of the space, supported the identification of the Park as one of the most significant bottom-up practices of commoning in Athens. Continuously the assembly organized collective actions for the gradual upgrading of the Park, interventions always harmonized with the political character of the space as a common space of resistance:

7 ‘For the Park, without title’, online published manifesto, edited by the as-sembly of the self-managed park of Navarinou in the first period of the occupation of the space.

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“Urban garden, but also space for political debate, playground, but also place of political-cultural event, always in the framework of collective management and anti-capitalism. Such a multiplicity of functions in the same area requires mutual respect between visitors and participants in the activities of the park. The particularity of the project as an open occupied space, exposed to all sorts of behaviours that could affect its existence, requests conditions of mutual respect, solidarity and self-organization.”8

One of the collective actions decided and organized by the open assembly resulted to the creation of a small urban garden in the area of the park. By producing food and seeds the urban garden would apply also an educative character for the new generations to the space. Today the Navarinou Park is fully equipped with an urban garden, a playground, an amphitheatrical stage for resting and relaxing, benches and paths decorated with a ceramic mosaic and small storage spaces for the gardening equipment.

A space for lifeSummarizing, the significance of Navarinou Park, for the discussion around the urban commons in crisis-city Athens, has a double value.On one hand, the case of Navarinou Park constitutes today a paradigmatic practice of commoning by the occupation and appropriation of state-owned urban space. As a result of a self-organized and spontaneous citizen’s initiative, the transformation of the unused parking lot into a lively, multifunctional and inclusive free space inspired till today many bottom-up urban movements for reclaiming public space. On the other hand, Navarinou park is the first case that went beyond the stereotype of the enclaved and isolated common spaces. As described in the previous chapter, during the period before the events of December and the creation of Navarinou park, common spaces in Exarchia (but also in the rest of Athens) were mostly squats or occupied buildings, enclaves organized and used only from a certain and limited community of commoners. Their defending status, stemming out of the fear of a possible evacuation from the police, applied to these spaces a low grade of accessibility, while metaphorically we could define them as isolated utopic (urban) islands. The Navarinou Park collective initiative broke this rule and reintroduced

8 ‘For the Park, without title’, online published manifesto, edited by the as-sembly of the self-managed park of Navarinou in the first period of the occupation of the space.

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new perspectives in Athens’ practices of commoning. As Stavros Stavrides mentioned in the ‘Crisis-scapes, Athens and beyond’ conference:

“The Occupied Navarinou park project, however, (as well as many neighborhood initiatives after Syntagma occupation), hints towards a different imaginary of emancipating autonomy. Always porous and open to new potential users, Navarinou park may support a spatial experience as well as a spatial metaphor which is beyond and against the experience and metaphor of the enclave (Marcuse and Van Kempen 2002, Atkinson and Blandy 2005 and Graham and Marvin 2001). The park’s porous perimeter is defined by spatial arrangements which acquire the characteristics of a threshold rather than those of a boundary. Actually, the park itself may be considered as a multileveled and multiform urban threshold.”9

Finally, two critical points that require further discussion arise from the analysis of the case of Navarinou Park. The first, concerns the community of the users and the way they use the Park. From the very first moment of the existence of the Park the organization of its space and its maintenance required a continuous collective effort and a spirit of harmonic coexistence of different users in the space. At this point I would like to refer the discussion of Massimo de Angelis and Stavros Stavrides in 2010 about community around the Park:

Massimo De Angelis: [...] Some of the park’s organizers told me that apparently every night some youth hang out there, drinking and trashing the place, making noise and so on. The organizers approached them, asking them not to do that. And they replied “Oh, are you the police?” They were also invited to participate in the assembly during the week, but they showed no interest.

Stavros Stavrides:[...] Those people you refer to were not saying that they have a right as individual consumers to trash the park. They were saying that the park is a place for their community [...] They certainly refer to some kind of commoning, but only to a very specific community of commoners. And this is the crucial point: they did not consider the neighbors, [...], as part of their community.

9 Stavrides,Stavros; “Emerging Common Spaces as a Challenge to the City of Crisis”, published in ‘Crisis-scapes: Athens and Beyond’ acts as an accompaniment to the conference of the same title that took place at the Athens Polytechnic in early May 2014, p. 210

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Massimo De Angelis: First of all, I think this case shows that whenever we try to produce commons, what we also need is the production of the respective community and its forms of commoning. The Navarinou Park is a new commons and the community cannot simply consist of the organizers. The organizers I have talked to act pretty much as a sort of commons entrepreneurs, a group of people who are trying to facilitate the meeting of different communities in the park [...]Thinking about the work of reproduction is actually one of the most fundamental aspects of commoning. How will the diverse communities around this park come together to share the work of reproduction? That is a crucial test for any commons.10

The evolution of the Park from 2009 till today shows that the test of the harmonic coexistence in the common space of Navarinou Park was quite successful and constitutes the best given answer to De Angelis’ concerns of how diverse communities would come together and share the work of reproduction. I suppose, that during the 5 years of its existence there were several problems on the organization and management of the space, but the appearance of the Park during my last visit in April 2014, demonstrated clearly that they were overcame. The space was clean and well maintained, while the urban garden was blooming creating an heterotopic feeling to the visitors experiencing the space as a welcoming oasis for everyone who wants to retreat from the dense urban environment of Exarchia.The character of places like the Navarinou Park as spaces of retreat from the capitalistic reality constitutes the second critical point for further discussion. As Slavoj Zizek mentioned in his speech in the National Technical University of Athens in 2010:

“In his speech at the Left Forum in London in 2010, John Holloway, who had just arrived from Greece, reported as an example of the exercise of communism a park in Athens, which was occupied by protesters and functioned as a liberated zone, with posters at the entrances of who wrote “Entrance forbidden to capitalism.” Inside, commercialization was prohibited, people were free to gather, dance, debate. But capitalists undoubtedly would welcome similar islets as recreational areas, that give their workers more vitality when they return to work. We must therefore be careful when we hear of similar zones withdrawal, where Badiou meets Holloway.” 11

10 De Angelis, Massimo; Stavrides, Stavros; “On the Commons: A Pub-lic Interview with Massimo De Angelis and Stavros Stavrides”, e-flux journal #17 , New York, June-august 2010, p.1211 Zizek, Slavoj; reference from his lecture in N.T.U.A, “Living in the age of monsters”, Athens 19.12.2010

Refugee housing complex in Alexandras avenue

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Refugee housing complex in Alexandras avenue.Commoning memory and space

In-between spaces Appropriation / Occupation of certain spaces. 1935 - now Alexandras avenue

Introduction

“What creates the possibility of reaction and maybe resistance is not the misery of the present (whatever we understand as present). There is neither misery nor unhappiness that necessarily creates riots. It is the ability to remember or dreaming life differently. And dwellers of the crisis cities can and must remember to get angry and seek.” 1

April 2014. Walking through the space that surrounds and contains the Alexandra’s avenue refugee housing complex, the signs of abandonment, decay and corruption are visible in every of the observer’s step, while the absence of liveliness in the spaces in-between the blocks strengthens the feeling of desolation in the area. The same walk some decades earlier, would offer to the visitor a completely different experience of how the marginalized refugee community used the today vacant of human activity space between the housing units as a space for life, transforming it into a collective platform of interaction, meeting or play. The way that the initial inhabitants appropriated the common space as an extension of their small apartments diffused the limits between public and private sphere and achieved to convert the amorphus area that surrounds the buildings into a stage where the theatre of everyday life took place.However, through a more critical view on the place and despite all the signs of abandonment, like the empty apartments with their closed windows, the desert in-between spaces or the decay of the building’s facades, the visitor of the refugee housing complex can still feel the spirit of the collective living, solidarity and shared everyday life that is embodied in its physical space.

Today, a few months after the announcement of the site’s property rights

1 Stavrides, Stavros; “Spaces of memory, spaces of the commons”, online publication, 2014, retrieved from: http://avgi-anagnoseis.blogspot.be/2014/04/blog-post_6409.html

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transfer to the state’s official real estate institution in order to be sold for covering a part of Greece’s depth, we are confronted with some important questions: How is the case of the refugee housing complex connected with the broader discourse around the urban commons in Athens? Why is it essential to defend the exploitation of the refugee housing complex in Alexandras avenue? And finally what can we as architects learn from the history and the collective memories of the place and how can we re-invent and re-introduce the in-between common spaces of the complex?

Background informationIn order to understand in depth the case study of the Refugee housing complex is considered crucial to trace and analyse the history of the place. How did the construction of the housing units emerged? What was the synthesis of its initial inhabitants and their relation with the indigenous population? And finally what are the elements that applied to the area an heterotopic aura and also connected it with the present discourse of the urban commons in Athens? In year 1922, the defeat of the Greek army at the Turkish-Greek conflict, what is also known as the ‘Minor Asia disaster, marked deeply not only the Greek modern history, but also the evolution of Athens’ urban design. The peace treaty, signed from both sides, specified the largest population exchange in European history, causing the resettlement of around 1.2 million Greeks living in cities near Turkey’s Aegean coast to Greece.

“The State’s policy was to keep almost half of the refugee population around major cities, so as to control them and to “integrate” them into the local economy. Those who were allowed to stay in Athens had to build their houses on empty public lots, mainly outside the city, using whatever building materials they could find and with almost no money. Shanty towns with no roads or public facilities were erupted around Athens and Piraeus.”2

This fact increased enormously the population of Athens 40%, where ca. 130.000 refugees were transferred, causing as we can easily a violent urbanization of the city. The refugees were not really welcomed in Athens and in most cases marginalized from the indigenous population. Despite their rich urban culture they were characterized as a threat for the city’s social

2 Stavrides, Stavros; “Heterotopias and the experience of porous urban space”, pub-lished in Franck K. And Stevens Q., Loose Space - Possibility and diversity in urban life, Rout-ledge, London, 2007, pp.180-181

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homogeneity and also stigmatized as poor and underprivileged.

One decade later, in order to solve the housing problem and clear the slums, that started to emerge, the Greek state decided to implement a project for the construction of refugee housing complexes spread in several locations in Athens. The refugee housing complex in Alexandras avenue were constructed during the years 1934-1935 as part of this wider housing project. At this point we have to mention two important facts, that taking place the same period: First of all, in 1929 the law that established the floor ownership in apartment building was voted, starting a new era of urbanization in Greek cities. Through this legislation change the architectural concept of ‘polykatoikia’3 was introduced, building concept that would later result into a chaotic and extremely dense urban environment in Athens. Secondly, in the 1933 the International Conference on Modern Architecture (CIAM) was organized in Athens (Athens Charter), affecting in multiple ways the social housing projects in Athens. The influence of the modernist’s movement is clearly visible in the architecture of the Alexandra’s avenue housing complex. The complex consists of 8 uniform buildings units, hosting 228 apartments and is characterized by its rational layout. Every apartment was designed with the minimum habitation standards of 40m2, even if every apartment used to host more than one family. The site spanned in an area of 1,45 hectares, while the buildings occupied only 0,45, leaving a vast, empty, amorphus and without any defined function (or use) space in-between and around the buildings. This remaining open space, this vast area containing the housing units, was in the beginning received as a separation zone between the complex and the surrounding neighbourhood, while it constituted a mental border dividing the urban life of two seemingly different groups, the indigenous population and the stigmatized refugees.

Life in-betweenHowever, the following years, the informal appropriation of this amorphous and empty of any designed socially inclusive function outdoor space, would be used as a common space of life, strengthening the cohesion of the community living in the housing complex, but also as an meeting and interaction stage with the neighbours:

3 Polykatoikia: multistory housing unit format, common in Greek cities

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“In direct contrast to the rational and function- oriented design of the buildings, outdoor space was not marked by absolute boundaries. Most of the basement flats were extended in small private courtyards, which were either circumscribed by low walls and fences or integrated into a recognizably communal outdoor space. In this latter case, private and public uses were not clearly demarcated. Visiting, small feasts and everyday encounters between neighbours wove the fabric of a diverse and porous urban environment. Terraces, where common laundry facilities were situated, became miniscule stages of an everyday theatricality where mostly women met. During the winter, staircases were transformed into noisy play areas absolutely integrated into the life of the buildings.”4

Marginalized from the local population, the micro-community of the refugee inhabitants of the complex shared common experiences and memories in the common in-between spaces, establishing a solidaristic and collective way of living. The space between the buildings, was through the collective appropriation of the micro community transformed into an informal square, giving space to the everyday meetings and interaction. Also, the surrounding open space, the staircases, the terraces or the front door space were appropriated as theatrical stages, where collective everyday life’s moments took place, enhancing that way their relationships and turning it into common space.

“Common spaces are shaped by those who inhabit it. Even if it is designed by others, staircases or shared terraces, common areas are formed through the collective use and the rules of good coexistence that residents themselves create through their common everyday life.”

Slowly through the years also habitants of the neighbouring buildings started to use the space of the refugee complex as their own, as a common space collectively used, transforming it from a buffer, segregation zone into a place of inclusion, into a space of life.

4 Stavrides, Stavros; “Heterotopias and the experience of porous urban space”, pub-lished in Franck K. And Stevens Q., Loose Space - Possibility and diversity in urban life, Rout-ledge, London, 2007, pp.182

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Recent historyThe Alexandra’s avenue refugee complex, is since 1991 considered a monument of cultural heritage, as one of the first and few examples of collective/social housing in Greece. Despite that, in 1999 within the master plan of city renewal for the Olympic Games there was a plan of demolishing 6 out of the 8 housing units of the complex and building a public park on the site. For the realization of this project the state bought 137 apartments from the owners and expropriated 30. The project was never realized and instead the view to the refugee houses was blocked during the Olympic games by a huge covering fabric, hiding behind it the desolated and abandoned area.

During the last years and because of the uncertain future of the complex there were no preservations or maintenance works were undertaken, neither for the buildings themselves, nor for the vast surrounding and in-between outdoor space, fact that resulted to the current marginalized condition. Today 50 of the 228 apartments of the complex are legally inhabited and a large number of the rest is occupied from immigrants, homeless and underprivileged residents of Athens. Finally, the vast common space, that previously used to be a ‘space of life’, is today used as an informal parking lot.

In 2013 as part of the extended privatization program opposed by the IMF and the conservative Greek government granted the ownership of 137 of the apartments to the ‘Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund’ (TAIPED)5 , responsible for their exploitation. “Fast track” policies were invented as governmental tool in order to skate over any legal difficulties or oppositions concerning private investments in the refugee housing complex.

Common space of collective memoriesToday only some months after the announcement of the privatization plans of the refugee housing complex, during my visit to the area, I was confronted

5 The Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (TAIPED) was established on 1st July 2011 (Law 3986/2011), under the mid-term fiscal strategy that was imposed by the Troika and adopted by the Greek government. It constitutes the agency responsible for implement-ing the Greek privatization program with the sole purpose of using its revenues for re-paying the country’s public debt. TAIPED is a “limited liability company”, whose sole shareholder is the Hellenic Republic with a share capital of €30 million. The Fund is not a public entity, and is governed by private law. Full ownership, possession and occupation of all ‘state owned as-sets’ (land, infrastructure and public companies) that are to be privatized are transferred to TAIPED with the provision that these assets cannot be transferred back to the Greek state.

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with several questions: What can we as architects learn from the history and the use of the in-between areas as common space? Why is it essential to defend the exploitation of the refugee housing complex in Alexandra’s avenue? And finally, how can we re-invent collective life in these common spaces of the complex and re-introduce them in times of crisis? The research and the analysis of the area’s history revealed a significant past of appropriation of the in-between and the surrounding space, appropriation that granted it with a double role. Firstly, as a space for the refugees common life, whose everyday public expressions transformed it into a stage for the choreography of life. This harmonic sharing of everyday’s experiences and the particular use of the space, reintroduced to Athens’ urban culture the collective way of living based on a spirit of solidarity. This spirit is embodied in its physical space and it can still be felt. Secondly, as an inclusive medium of interaction between the refugees and the inhabitants of the surrounding neighbourhoods, which facilitated the integration of a marginalized group into the social fabric of Athens. The case of the Refugee housing complex of Alexandras avenue demonstrated clearly that the use of spaces out of the concept of private property or state’s control, can have a sedative role in socially difficult urban situations. Finally, let’s make a parallelism between the situation then and today: That time there were Greek refugees that inhabited the complex, today there are again underprivileged groups like homeless or immigrants that occupy some of its apartments. Both, then and now used to live under difficult circumstances in a hostile for them environment, in the past was the war, today is the financial crisis. This space was then and now a welcoming and inclusive ‘topos’ of hosting marginalized population of Athens, which through the appropriation of its spaces creates a unique space of common, reintroducing to the city its surrounding space as commonwealth, common good. The essentiality of defending the complex against the plans of demolishing or exploitation, stems from the social urban ‘difficulties’ emerged from the current financial crisis, an era that architects, urbanists, activists and social active citizens in general are searching ways to create more collective and socially friendly neighbourhoods for the crisis-citizens of Athens, the case of the Alexandras housing complex constitutes an excellent example of the Athenian history of collective living in public spaces. A pattern inspired from the history of the commons in Athens that could and should be multiplied, instead of being conserved as a monument, as the plans of the state were (preservation of only two of the eight buildings as an example of modern architecture).

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Social /Nomadic kitchen ‘The other human’

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‘The other human’‘Nomadic urban commons’

Social kitchen / Collective cooking Temporary occupation of public space / Alternative use of the space 2011 - now Several locations in Athens / Refugee housing complex of Alexandras avenue

Introduction

“I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.” Eduardo Galeano

“We cook “live”, we eat together and we live together.” Official Manifesto

April 2014, Refugee housing complex in Alexandras avenue. In order to research the possibilities and the potentialities of the in-between common spaces of the Refugees housing complex a second exploration of the space was organized. Similarly to the first experience, the absence of liveliness of the first, closer to the avenue, in-between common spaces, created again strong feelings of desolation, abandonment and solitude. However, in contrast to the rest, in one of the spaces this existing sense of desolation was interrupted by a lively and loud human activity, revealing in the same time a particular practice of commoning in the crisis-city of Athens. This vibrant and vivid multitude, that occupied the space between the housing units and appropriated it as a common space for cooking, was participating in a collective meal, converting it, in the same time into a space for life. The informal open-air kitchen installation is part of a nomadic, social-kitchen project, known as ‘The other human’, a practice of commoning that is born as a consequence of the financial crisis in Greece and is directly linked to the increasing number of homeless and unprivileged. Starting in 2011, as an individual initiative, the social kitchen of the ‘Other Human’ is on a daily basis occupying urban space in several locations around Athens, offering to homeless or to poor the opportunity of a collective cooking and eating. By transforming temporarily urban space, a new practice of commoning, emerged from the social disaster of the last 6 years is introduced to the crisis

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environment of Athens.Background informationsIn order to have an in-depth understanding and analysis of the case ‘The other human’, it is considered essential to describe Greece’s current social and financial situation, that led to the urgency for the organization of a social kitchen in Athens. The period starting from 2010 till today is characterized by the rapid and radical impoverishment of the Greek population, causing multiple affects to the social cohesion in Greek cities and specially in the metropolis of Athens. Since the debt crisis erupted, hundreds of thousands of Greeks have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate in Greece reached 27, 8%, affecting dramatically the social and financial conditions of the population. Today, the percentage of the Greek population who lives under the official poverty threshold1 is amounted to 34.6% or 3,795,100 people. Indeed, this figure is steadily increasing since 2010 and the first Memorandum (27.6% in 2010, 27.7% in 2011, 31% in 2012 and 34.6% in 2013). Translating the numbers of these statistics into actual social consequences visible in the urban environment of Athens, we would identify them to the increasingly number of homeless or poor roaming around the city in search of shelter or food. The tremendous rise of the number of homeless people, that Greece is experiencing right now is changing the urban environment of Athens and especially the most dense and underprivileged neighbourhoods, where the issues of homelessness are especially visible. In order to understand the explosiveness of the current social situation regarding the issue of homelessness is important to mention that the number of people living in the streets in 2009 was around 7,720 and today is estimated to be around twenty thousand2.

It is shocking how rapidly this change occurred and how common it became seeing homeless sleeping on a bench in squares or parks in the centre of the city. Our perception also changed. A person seen sleeping on the streets of Athens ten years ago, probably it would be one of a handful of known individuals who roamed the streets and were cared for by the neighbourhood. Not

1 The poverty threshold is considered the income of 5,708 per year per person and 11,986 euros for households with two adults and two dependent children under 14 years.2 In 2009 there were 7.720 homeless in Greece, while according to the estimations of the NGO ‘Klimakas’, now there are more than 20.000. The research numbers: 77% of the homeless are men and 76% is between 26-55 years old. 54% are Greek and 46% foreigners. 24% has not a family. 50% is married. 61% is drug addicted. 73% of them are unemplyed since 2 years.

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anymore. Now their numbers have increased tremendously, proportionally to the complete disintegration of the social safety nets. The new homeless come from different walks of life, gender, race, ethnicity and class. Additionally, the picture of visible poverty in the public spaces of Athens is also framed from the large number of people (not necessarily homeless) searching and collecting food in the garbage, converting the financial crisis into a humanitarian one.

Common space, common kitchenThis decadent and often surreal urban image inspired the birth of what could be characterized as a survival practice of commoning urban space. Starting in 2011 from the initiative of a social active citizen named Kostas Polihronopoulos, also recently unemployed that time, the social kitchen ‘The other human’ is since then present everyday in various locations around the city of Athens, commoning temporarily urban space, in order to provide food to the underprivileged of the city. As we can read from his official manifesto about the inspiration of this initiative:

“The idea of Social Kitchen “The Other Human” began when we noticed in the public food markets of Athens, people of various ages, nationalities, and social levels rummaging through rubbish to find food they otherwise couldn’t afford to buy. The first obvious response was to cook our own food from home and distribute it in the public market places. We asked each food stall merchant to volunteer one item from their food bench so we could continue the next day. We then decided to cook on site for people and to eat the cooked food together. This way we could all come together and break through any shame or embarrassment which might be an issue for anyone.” 3

The concept is simple: every day during the last four years the team of the nomadic social kitchen sets up its basic cooking equipment in several areas in Athens, occupying without any official permission public space in order to cook and share a meal together with people who are in need of food and communication. Nowadays the ‘other human’ is organizing his informal kitchen in 3-4 different areas daily, sharing this way the cooked food with 90-100 people every day (ca. 3000) in one month. Concerning the group of people that participates at the collective cooking the organizer states:

‘In the beginning 80% of the people coming to eat together were immigrants,

3 Informations retrieved from the manifesto of ‘The Other Human’ retrieved from: http://oallosanthropos.blogspot.gr/

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but today half of them are also greek.’4

Tracing the everyday route of the ‘other human’, is easy to locate and map urban spaces such as squares, streets, neighbourhoods, thresholds or parks in Athens where homelessness and poverty is tense, revealing a new mental urban map of social stress. New urban centralities of poverty that emerged from the crisis, and reflect the city’s current social anxiety are everyday temporarily appropriated as an open-air kitchen from the participants of the collective cooking sessions organized by the ‘other human’. This fact allows us to categorize this way of using urban space as a urban common space, while spatially speaking this self organized initiative, could be characterized as a ‘nomadic, multiple and temporary practice of commoning.’

Creating temporary heterotopias of solidarityBy reviewing and re-examining the experience of the social kitchen during my presence in the refugee housing complex and the temporary appropriation of its in-between spaces as spaces of commons, revealed a perfect case, a characteristic example of how the crisis affects the appropriation of the urban public space transforming it into an urban common ground. As the pictures during and after the collective cooking clearly show, the in-between spaces are temporarily convert again into ‘spaces for life’. These spaces, where collective life is practiced, as it was in the past, interrupt the atmosphere of abandonment in the area, creating in the same time an instant urban heterotopia. Analysing the overall presence and activity of the social kitchen in different locations in Athens, one could say that it constitutes the connecting link between the emerged centralities of poverty in the city. The nomadic nature of this self organized initiative applies to it a special characteristic, which differentiate this case from the other practices of commoning urban space and results into a wandering generator of common spaces.

At this point it is considered essential to mention the connection of the nomadic kitchen of the ‘other human’ with a wider food/nutrition urban movement, but coming back to the idea of the ‘Other human’ as a practice of commoning, one would ask: Why is it a practice of commoning and not

4 Informations retrieved from the manifesto of ‘The Other Human’ retrieved from: http://oallosanthropos.blogspot.gr/

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simply a charity? What distinguishes it from a charity? First of all it is not an NGO or any kind of state managed organization, it is spontaneous self-organised initiative. Secondly, the food is cooked on site by occupying public space and not prepared somewhere else and distributed to the people that they need it. In such a spirit, the organizers got ridden of the feeling of shame, enhanced trust, confidence and social coherence, which otherwise mostly value money and power. Finally, it is the spatial interpretation of the sharing of food as the ultimate basic gesture of community and communication. As the organizer Kostas Polihronopoulos states:

“The other human makes clear that it is not a philanthropic or charitable organization. Its organisational values are based on cooking “live”: we eat together and we live together. A lunch with our fellowman on the street.”5

In conclusion, the significance of the activity of the nomadic, social kitchen ‘other human’ as a practice of commoning urban space, stems from the fact that the particular appropriation of the space as a meeting, collective cooking and eating place is responsible for the its transformation into a space for life. As we had the opportunity to observe in the Refugee housing complex, but also in other locations, during the presence of the informal kitchen in the site the in-between space became an open air kitchen, the pavements on the both sides an informal dining ‘room’ and apply to the aura of the space a feeling familiarity, similar like being home with friends for a collective meal. That way, the inclusive and lively activity of the collective meal transforms the previously inhospitable and empty of emotions space that host it into a space for life. Forgotten and desolated centralities of poverty around Athens are in a daily basis temporarily reactivated through the nomadic kitchen, which reintroduces them to the Athenians as a common space where solidarity and mutual help are practiced.

5 Informations retrieved from the manifesto of ‘The Other Human’ retrieved from: http://oallosanthropos.blogspot.gr/

Academia Platonos

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Academia Platonos‘Historical space as an urban common’

Archeological site / Park Occupation of public space 7th March 2009 - now Academia Platonos district

IntroductionThe idea of a nomadic kitchen as a practice of commoning urban space is also present in the following case study, the case of Academia Platonos. Academia Platonos is the name of a park and it’s surrounding district and as it is easy to understand, it is the place where Plato’s academy ruins are discovered. Today the park is used from the citizen’s of the surrounding neighbourhoods as an open free and inclusive space for light recreational activities. The case of the Academia is considered as especially important case in the discussion about the urban commons in Athens. It’s particularity stems in one hand from the historicity of the place and its heritage for the western civilization that could be considered as an internationally recognized cultural common and on the other from the park of the academia as an urban common space, the spatial interpretation of the cultural heritage. Both cultural and spatial commons embodied in the space of the park are today under threat because of the plans of a private investment company, for the construction of a gigantic mall at the edge of the site, that even if spatially won’t affect the park, it will have an impact at the identity of the space and it’s use.Similarly to the ‘other human’ the citizens assembly of the Academia Platonos district created a number of activities inspired from the nutrition movement, such as a nomadic kitchen, a seed bank or a team for experimenting in urban agriculture. However the case of the Academia Platonos as a case of urban commons in Athens is completely different than the one of ‘the other human’, even if the practice of commoning urban space is similar. The idea of appropriating urban space as an open air kitchen in the space of the Academia Platonos park, is used in this case as a tool for social cohesion and interaction in order to raise awareness and create a micro-community able to defend the cultural and spatial common of the Academia Platonos.

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Background informationsAcademia Platonos is a historical district of Athens, located at the north/west part of the city. As its name clearly states, Plato founded almost 2400 years before in this area the first academy of the world, Plato’s academy. The academy’s ruins are situated within a 135.000 m2 archeological site, where more than 250.000 findings from different historical periods are discovered,1 demonstrating the historical significance of the place and it’s importance as a cultural centre, but also the fact that it was considered, also before Plato’s academy, as a holy place. Today the district named Academia Platonos that surrounds the archeological site is a highly dense and deprived area, facing serious access, infrastructure and land use management problems. In the past several plans were made in order to regenerate the whole area and transform it into a cultural and intellectual centre, with the implementation of a museum, in order to strengthen the historical character of the site. The implementation of the museum was part of a wider plan of connection and integration of many archeological sites of Athens. Meanwhile the Academia Platonos archaeological site is used as a free and open for everybody recreational space, where the visitors can actually wander among the ruins that hosted Plato and his students and except of some spaces designed for children the space is free of other designed spaces hosting any function and can be used for every public, non-speculative activity. The state’s delay in enhancing the Academia Platonos’ cultural, educational and historical character, despite the regeneration proposals from the citizen’s assembly (Picture 2) was enough for the market forces to understand the still not exploited value that is embodied in this historical area. In 2010 a private investment company claimed the old and abandoned industrial site located on the north edge of the Academia Platonos’ park2. The proposal concerned

1 In 1929 the architect Panagiotis Aristofron spent a large amount of money for the expropriation of land in the region around the Academy of Athens, in order to begin the ar-cheological excavations under the supervision of archaeologist K. Kourouniotis. The excava-tions lasted until 1939, when the Gymnasium, parts of the Ipparcheion Wall and several tombs were discovered. From 1955 to 1963 the archaeologist Phoebus Stavropoulos conducted new excavations, during which revealed the House of Academos and the foundations of the house proto-hellenic period (2300-2200 BC), which was named the ‘Sacred House’. In 1965 the area was declared a archaeological site and in 1979 an archeological park. From 1991 to 1993 the site was completely fenced. Today, the investment fund MGPA proposed to build a culture, recreation and commerce centre in the area, named Academy Gardens, covering a total area of 55,000 m2 near the site.Source: Hellenic Association of Architects2 The industrial building of ‘Textile Mouzakis’. The Department of Traditional Set-

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the construction of a new ‘multifunctional space of culture and recreation’, as the investment company named it, a new mall in reality. The plans for the mall would extend in an area of 55.000 m2 and would be placed around 1 km from the Plato’s academy ruins. At this point we have to consider the crucial role that the financial crisis played for the future of the area. In a period that the crisis facilitates and promotes neoliberal practices of privatization of public space, using the alibi of investment it was easier for the market forces to claim the space. The municipality of Athens included the project in the wider master plan of ‘Re-launching Athens’ and changed the urban planning regulation, that would prevent the such a huge construction on the old industrial site. The investment company using the argument that 6.000 new working places will be offered in the new mall managed to overcome the permission difficulties. In 2011 the industrial buildings were demolished and in 2013 the municipality of Athens classified the space as ‘industrial park under redevelopment’ what legalized the construction of the ‘Academy Gardens’, as the mall would be named.

Defending the space in practiceThe citizens reaction against the municipality’s plans for the area was immediate. They directly organized a citizen’s committee in order to self-organize activities to inform the residents and protests against the project. Their first step was to create space for dialogue in order to form a micro-community able to defend the area’s commons. For that reason on the perimeter of the park the Academia Platonos’s citizens committee established a self-organized café, a meeting and discussion space for the committee’s assemblies and a social school, where teacher’s of the neighbourhood could help school children. The citizen’s assembly, using as starting point of all the actions the ‘European village’, the self organized cafe placed directly on the park, organizes several actions and activities in the park of the academy trying to inform and raise the awareness to the public on the threat against the cultural common embodied in the academy’s space. In the space of the park are organized in a weekly basis, lessons and workshops which are intended in one hand to teach new ways of creative living and self-knowledge

tlements suggested that the building should be preserved and restored, as conducive for pre-serving the architectural and industrial heritage of the area, while MOnuMENTA demanded from the Ministry of Culture and Environment the characterization of the industrial complex ‘Mouzakis’ as monument. The two ministries have never considered the request. In 2011 their demolition started.

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and on the other to promote social interaction, solidarity and the building of relationships in the neighbourhood. At this point, it is important to mention that a crucial part of the self-organized activities around the Academia Platonos are interlinked with the wider nutrition movement that occurred the last years in Athens. A seed banks, a nomadic kitchen and experiments with urban agriculture are introduced by the citizens assembly in order to create a community able to defend the space of the academy against the state’s plans.

Plato’s common groundAt this point one could ask: Why is it so important to resist the construction of ‘Academy Gardens’? On one hand the park is a public space and is not directly affected from the mall and on the other there will be thousand new working places created through it. In order to answer the question we have to refer to the affects that a construction of a Mall will have to the double character of the Academia Platonos, firstly to the history of the place as a cultural common and secondly, to the park as a common space. Therefore, Academia Platonos constitutes one of Athens most important urban commons with this double nature: First of all, the cultural heritage stemming from Plato’s academy in the area constitutes a cultural common good not only for Athenians, and secondly its spatial interpretation of the park surrounding the archeological findings, which is appropriated as an open free space by the citizens of the neighbourhood for several activities. As Harvey insists:

“That culture is a form of commons, and that it has become a commodity of some sort, is undeniable. Yet there is also a widespread belief that there is something so special about certain cultural products and events (be they in the arts, theater, music, cinema, architecture, or more broadly in localized ways of life, heritage, collective memories, and affective communities) as to set them apart from ordinary commodities like shirts and shoes.”3

The case of Academia Platonos in the common’s discourse is a characteristic example of speculation of the urban commons, both spatial and most important cultural; in order to create what Pierre Bourdieu would call collective symbolic capital. In order to understand and emphasize to the emergency for resistance against the construction of a Mall in the area, we have to re-examine and epitomize the current situation and the factors of

3 Harvey, David; “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution”, Monopoly rent and competition, p. 90-96

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Academia Platonos’ case: On one side there is a place where a world famous philosopher founded the first academy in the known world, fact that bequeaths the place with a uniqueness, a symbolic aura and a extremely particular genius loci, important not only for the Athenians but recognizable to the western world. In this point of view, we could openly speak about a world cultural common. The spirit of this cultural common arises from Plato’s academy heritage which is embodied in the ruins of the academy and the surrounding space (area which in ancient times was considered as holy and even respect by the Spartans during their invasion 413 B.C.). On the other side there is the mall as the spatial interpretation of an offensive against the social and public space urban entrepreneurism and simultaneously a symbol of a capitalistic system that tends to centralize capital in mega corporations like that. The problematic is created through the fact that the cultural common of Plato’s academy used directly (through the name of the Mall: ‘Academy Gardens’) and indirectly (using the space of Plato’s Academy Park as an attractive point for the recreation of its clients) for the branding of a private investment. The commodification of the academy’s cultural common and the exploitation of its uniqueness for the marketing promotion of the mall will with certainty give an economical advantage to the company, but simultaneously will lead to the ‘Disneyfication’ of the place. The ‘Disneyfication’ of Plato’s Academy heritage will subsequently lead to the loss of its uniqueness and the extinction of the mystical aura that surrounds the space and is embodied in its built environment, in its ruins. In the future the conscious or unconscious connection of the name ‘Academy’ (remember that the mall’s name is ‘Academy Gardens’) and the space of Plato’s Academy will lead to a confusion and a replacement of the collective memory attached to the Academy’s archeological site. In 10 years for example a young girl or boy would say: ‘I am going to the ‘academy’ to buy new shoes/drink a coffee’ connecting conceptually the word ‘Academy’ or ‘Academia Platonos’ with a commercial or recreational action forgetting completely the symbolic cultural heritage of the space. Finally as aforementioned, the investors support the argument that the spatial interpretation of the cultural common, the park of Academia Platonos, will not be affected, by the construction of the mall, but is easy to understand that the short distance to the park will allow and facilitate its inclusion to the marketing practices of the commercial centre. The common space of the archeological site or the park is not directly traded but it will be traded in a more invisible way through the marketing practices. Result will be

the appropriation of the space for more speculative and commercial events within the limits of the park, even used as an extension of the mall changing that way its users, their habits in relation to the space, their present commoning practices and finally the character of the park. Exactly this is the reason why the citizen’s movements of they are fighting against the municipality’s and private sector’s plans about their neighbourhood. They constitute a critical observatory of urban politics in the area and simultaneously they are trying to resist by creating space. In the park or in the surrounding collective spaces they organize discussions and free speeches, where urban decisions or next steps of their resistance to the plans for the park can be taken during informal meetings, coffee sessions and cooking, in order to achieve their target and keep the park inclusive and accessible. Examining the situation of Academia Platonos on an international level we can observe and locate the similar cases in other cities around the world. Athens is trying to reintroduce itself as a more attractive touristic destination. Since the crisis started there are many projects heading to a more tourist friendly Athens, such as ‘Re-activate Athens’ or ‘Re-launch Athens’. The ‘Academy Gardens’ project fits within the philosophy of these projects, and is planned in order to ‘Re-brand Athens’.

“The collective symbolic capital which attaches to names and places like Paris, Athens, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, and Rome is of great import and gives such places great economic advantages relative to, say, Baltimore, Liverpool, Essen, Lille, and Glasgow. The problem for these latter places is to raise their quotient of symbolic capital and to increase their marks of distinction so as to better ground their claims to the uniqueness that yields monopoly rent. The “branding” of cities becomes big business.”4

The urban entrepreneurship as a tool of the neoliberal politic is trying to accumulate the collective symbolic capital of Plato’s academy in order to enhance the collective symbolic capital of the city of Athens in general. A cultural common is used in order to make the product ‘mall’ more attractive to its future clients and Athens more attractive to its international visitors. Trading it’s marks of distinction, such as history, culture, philosophy, mythology, monumentality, aesthetics and heritage the city will end up in a status of neutrality or ‘Disneyfication’ as Harvey would surely call it. In my personal opinion, the only hope for Academia Platonos is its own citizens, the micro-community, which is able to understand the reason why the common ground and the cultural common of the academy must be protected.4 Harvey, David; “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution”, Monopoly rent and competition, pp. 90-96

Embros Theatre

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Embros TheatreA temporary reactivation of a disused building

Theatre / Space of culture Squat November 2011 - now Psiri district, Riga Palamidou 2

IntroductionThe paradox of art is that, particularly in periods of financial and social crises it’s production is booming. However, despite this high production it is hardly institutionally promoted, sponsored or supported in any way. The dramatic reduction of state’s contribution in the promotion of art, forced, in 2011, the activists of the ‘Mavilli Collective’ to take action and occupy the abandoned building of ‘Embros Theater’, in order to reactivate it and transform it into a ‘free for everyone to use, urban laboratory of art and culture. Since, 2011 several theatrical or dance performances, art exhibitions of any kind are hosted in the occupied space of Embros Theater transforming it into a common space of art production in the city. Despite it’s important role for the neighbourhood and the city in general the official authorities tried twice in this period to evacuate the theatre, both times unsuccessfully. The following case study open ups the debate around the squatting of disused or empty buildings, as a practice of commoning in Athens. Despite the long tradition of squatting in Athens, in the analysis of the next two case studies (Embros Theater and K*VOX) we will have the opportunity to understand how the crisis changed their function and also their status. Additionally, the case of Embros Theater gives the opportunity to analyse and discuss art as a cultural common that in times of crisis is under threat and also the potential and role of urban spaces such as occupied empty buildings for the promotion of the cultural overproduction.

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Background informationsThe historical building of ‘Embros’ Theater was build in 1933 in the neighbourhood of Psiri1 in the center of Athens and till 1985, housed the printing facilities of EMBROS newspaper. In 1988 the Greek real estate corporation leased the building to the actor Tassos Mpantis in order to host theatrical events. ‘Embros Theater was born. During this period until the death of the actor in 2007 it became one of Athens most important theatres, hosting several events and theatrical performances. In 1989 the building was included in the cultural heritage catalogue, protected as an historical monument. After 5 years of abandonment and inactivity in November 2011, the initiative of artists and intellectuals called ‘Mavilli movement’2 (or ‘Mavilli collective’) occupied the ‘Embros’ Theater building in order to reactivate it.

“Today 11 of November 2011 Mavilli Collective occupied the historical disused theatre building of Embros, deserted and left empty for years by the Greek Ministry of Culture. We aim to re-activate this space temporarily with our own means and propose an alternative model of collective management and post-contemporary forms of creative work. For the next 11 days Mavilli will reconstitute Embros as a public space for exchange, research, debate, meeting and re-thinking.” 3

The reactivation process started with a 11-days long festival, where artists, activists, theoreticians, dance/theatre makers, architects and the general public were invited to the occupied space of the Theater. The result was of this activist movement was the creation of the self-organized and self-managed artistic space of ‘Embros Theater’. From the very first moment of the occupation there was a cooperation and intense communication with the ‘Psiri resident’s movement’ and other urban active collectives. One year

1 Psiri neighbourhood is a district in the 3rd phase of gentrification, that started be-fore the Olympic games. The neighbourhood today has strange mixture of locals: small shops, bars restaurants for tourist and greek youth. 2 Mavili Collective was formed during summer 2010 as an autonomous collective structure for emergent practitioners and came together in order to re-think and re-imagine the current Greek cultural landscape and propose structures, platforms collaborations, pro-jects that produce new alternatives. Mavili Collective is committed to produce nomadic, au-tonomous collective cultural zones that appear and disappear beyond the logics of the market.Mavili Collective is committed to producing nomadic, autonomous collective cultural zones that appear and disappear beyond the logics of the market.3 Reference to the official Manisfesto of the Mavilli collective during the first occupa-tion of the building. Retrieved from: http://kinisimavili.blogspot.gr/

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later, in November 2012 the Greek Real estate corporation announced to the activists of ‘Embros Theater’ that the space has to be evacuated in order to be leased to private investors. Against the states plans, over 2000 signatures were collected in order to support ‘Embros Theater’, sending a clear message that in times of crisis culture has to be considered as a common good and must be free for everyone. Crucially many artists, theorists and activists, felt the urgent need to actively defend the space, a fact which resulted in a further widening of the participants of the occupation, which in the last year operates with an open Assembly as its organizing body and under the name “Free Self-managed Theatre EMBROS”.In September 2013 the property rights of the theatre were offered to the ‘Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund’ (TAIPED), (as in the case of the refugee housing complex) in order to be sold out for the benefit of the national depth. A few days after the transfer of the property rights, police closed and sealed the building, which was re-occupied a few days later.

Culture commons and common space. A state of emergencySince its official start in November 2011 ‘Embros Theater’ supports the production of culture and art, in one hand by organizing several activities and cultural events and on the other by offering space to every art group needs it for its own art experiment. Numerous art festivals, performances, exhibitions, workshops and seminars have taken place in the occupied space of the theatre, introducing new artists to the public always free of any charge for the public and the artists. Gradually the Embros Theater became one of Athens’ most active cultural spaces in a period, when the crisis has dramatically affected the state’s funding for art and culture. The impressive reduction of the production of art, occurred by the financial crisis of the last years was the main reason that led the members of the ‘Mavili collective’ to react, get self-organized and finally reactivate the empty building of the theatre. As we can read from their official manifesto:

“We act in response to the total lack of a basic cultural policy on the level of education, production and support of artistic work as a national product. We act in response to the general stagnation of thinking and action in our society with collective meeting, thinking and direct action reactivating a disused historical building in the centre of Athens.”4

4 Reference to the official Manisfesto of the Mavilli collective during the first occupa-tion of the building. Retrieved from: http://kinisimavili.blogspot.gr/

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Today, the occupied space of the theater provides a stage, a platform of cultural and artistic experimentation in Athens turning art that way into a free shared common, but in the same time it provides an urban stage for the extended theater of urban life. A topos, where life takes a different meaning, where even the physical presence in any of its spaces is considered as a political statement, a statement of protest or resistance to the state’s under funding and to the markets exploitation of art. This urban resistance common ground was created and organized not only as a cultural but also as a social platform, where individuals interact with each other and react collectively against any the crisis’ impacts on art, defending it as a cultural common that must stay free for everyone:

“This re-activation is not a proposition of a “better” model of production and management but is a proposition of re-thinking, responding and re-making. This model emerges from the current lacks and shortfalls of our system and attempts to interrogate the global changing landscape at this moment in time. We challenge our own limits and understanding and we propose and operate this space as a constantly re-evaluated model by both ourselves and the public - an open system that might offer the potential to re-think relations between people and possible roles for art in society.”5

Its self-managed way of organization based on solidarity, its anti hierarchical structure and the totally inclusive character promote and reintroduce a radical form of direct democracy. The squatted space turns into vivid cell of a society in a crisis, commoning in the same time, space and cultural goods in Athens.

A platform of commoning art in practiceAs aforementioned, Athens has a long tradition in creating cultural common spaces through the use of the occupation of public buildings as a practice of commoning, fact that is proved from the existence of numerous squats distributed over several neighbourhoods in the city. The reactivation of the deserted space of the Embros Theater and its transformation into a common cultural space was also, similarly to other examples, realized through the occupation of the abandoned, state-owned building, however it distinguishes

5 Reference to the official Manisfesto of the Mavilli collective during the first occupa-tion of the building. Retrieved from: http://kinisimavili.blogspot.gr/

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itself from the other cases through some characteristics. First of all, the squatted Embros Theater belongs to a wider movement of occupied theatres in other European countries, a movement that is very active in Italy.6 Despite the series of occupied spaces in Athens, the Embros Theater constitutes the first and unique example belonging to the movement of occupied theatres in Greece.

The activists of the Mavilli collective envisioned the reconstitution of the Embros as a public space for artistic expression, exchange, research, debate, meeting and re-thinking, but also as a small workshop of practicing direct democracy, collective decision making and self-organization. This envision is clearly reflected in the way the theatre is organized and in its inclusive and free to participate management body. Its management is based on an weekly open assembly, where decision about the program or the future of the Theater movement in general are made collectively. As the activists state:

“It is important to stay clear that the theater is open to everybody and not only to use it, but also there is a necessity of active participation in the decision making at the open assembly every Sunday”.

Every Sunday the dark stage of the theatre is transformed into a space where direct democracy, solidarity and collective decision making are practiced. Additionally they emphasize in the anti-hierarchic character of the assembly in order to keep it vivid and open to different opinions and ideologies:

“We have no moderator. We never vote. We don’t believe in minority and majority. Decisions are made by a collective discussion. In Greek the word discussion is freely translated ‘we search together’ and this is who it works every Sunday in Embros theater’s assemblies. (…) We try always to find a solution in the middle and if we don’t, then we discuss again and again until we reach a point that everybody is comfortable with. Even if it takes a month.”

The assembly and in general the initiative has constantly been in collaboration and communication with the ‘Psyri Residents Movement’ for issues concerning the theatre and its relation with the neighbourhood.

6 Occupied theatres in Italy, July 2014: Macao/Milano, Teatro Rossi aperto/Pisa, Tea-tro Marinoni/Venice, Sale Docks/Venice, Teatro Valle Occupato/Rome, Nuovo Cinema Palaz-zo, Rome, La Balena/Napoli, Teatro Garibaldi/Palermo, Teatro Pinelli Occupato/Messina, Tea-tro Coppola/Catania

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“In response to your order for the immediate closing of the Embros theater we would like to inform you that for the entire period that Embros remained open it has been a very important public, cultural and social space, the equivalent to cultural community spaces which European capitals have. Throughout this period it accommodated the meetings of the Psyri Residents Movement which have as their goal to deal with the problems that the neighborhood and the center of Athens are faced with.

There have been theatrical and dance performances and other art and architecture presentations and events from Greek and foreign groups on topics that address urban issues, a Christmas dinner for the community was also held, as well as meetings concerning the creation of community gardens in the city. Works produced by students of architecture, several discussions, presentations and workshops for the city center and other activities also took place.”

As we can read from the announcement of the ‘Psyri Residents Movement’, published directly after the evacuation of the theatre from the police in 2012, is easy to understand how important is the presence of the theatre in the neighbourhood.

K*Vox / K*ΒΟΞ

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Κ*ΒΟX Self-organized health structure of Exarchia

Social medical centre / pharmacy Squat November 2011 - now Exarchia square, Arachovis st. 59

IntroductionThe Exarchia square and the surrounding Exarchia neighbourhood constitute, as aforementioned, Athens’ most socially sensitive district. Located near the centre of the city, the Exarchia neighbourhood was always an urban workshop of alternative ideologies and practices. Within its limits many anarchist, extremely leftist or activist groups are active, applying to the place it’s characteristic antiauthoritarian, anti-consumerist and anticapitalistic spirit. However, the Exarchia district is not only a heterotopia of alternative thinking, but in the same time it constitutes an urban threshold, a protecting zone for the city’s underprivileged population, such as immigrants, drug addicts or in general people excluded from the formal social fabric. In this socially difficult neighbourhood, near the spot that Alexis Grigoropoulos was assassinated and near the previous examined case of the self-organized and self-managed Navarinou park is located another important case study in the conversation about the urban commons in Athens: the social and health structure of Exarchia, housed in the squatted space of the VOX building. The K*VOX squat belongs to a wider series of squatted buildings in Athens, but in contrast to the previous case of Embros Theater, which is occupied in order to promote art as a cultural common, the self-organized medical centre is created in order to front the humanitarian effect of the continuous financial crisis. Additionally, the K*VOX belongs to a series of solidarity health initiatives, created the last years in several neighbourhoods of Athens. The K*VOX is considered as one of the most important and better organized of all the initiatives. In its occupied space, transformed into a medical centre, every week doctors of different specializations offer free medical examinations and seminars about health issues, transforming the space of the VOX building into an important common space, where medical care becomes a free for everyone common good. Nevertheless the official authorities do not share the same feeling of solidarity and during a wider program of evacuation of

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squats in Athens the K*VOX was evacuated and needed to be reoccupied.

Background informationsIn 2012 one of the many anarchists and anti-authoritarian groups active in Greece’s most important laboratory of sociopolitical ideas and activism, the Exarcia district, decided to proceed to the occupation of the abandoned, till then VOX building, placed directly on the Exarchia square, in order to transform it to a ‘open and free cultural center’. The choice for squatting particularly this building, in the heart of Exarcheia, was symbolic, because the VOX building was previously owned and used from the ‘Greek Foundation for social insurance’. Its occupation was a clear statement of protest against the continuous dismantling and degradation health and social protection structures, because of the crisis. Some months later, in the 20th of April police, as part of a broader program of extinction of all squats in Athens, evacuated the occupied building. Within 24 hours the building of K*VOX was re-occupied through the initiative of the neighbourhood residents. In October 2013 spaces of the occupied VOX building were transformed in order to host the ‘Exarchia self- organized Health structure’, an initiative, that was implemented by the general assembly of the residents, social activists and members of collectives that live and act in the district of Exarchia. Nowadays a psychologist, a general practitioner/radiologist, a special tutor–child psychologist, a gynaecologist and a speech therapist are providing voluntarily medical care in the social medical center of K*VOX. Additionally several seminars and workshops around health issues are realized in the occupied space of VOX. Basic concern and target of the Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure is to offer free primary healthcare, immediate help and psychological support as well as to promote the concept of health for all, without any discrimination for reasons of race, skin color, origin, sexual identity or religion, transforming that way the squatted space into a platform of practicing urban solidarity. As the activists of the self-organized medical centre of K*VOX state:

“Main political conviction of its participants is being able to provide solidarity reciprocally, rather than egoistically or philanthropically, given the fact that we are all potential migrants, homeless, unemployed, precarious workers without access to healthcare services. We believe that self-organized health structures are not solely a response to problems in provision of medical care, filling the gap left by the State. Therefore, what we apply in practice is the way we would

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like to see health in the society we are envisioning, a society of true solidarity and humanity. We perceive the project of the Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure as a living cell of social resistance and emancipation against contemporary barbarity, thus we collaborate with people’s assemblies and base unions.” 1

Medical care as an urban common The case of the occupation of K*VOX and the appropriation of its space as a self-organized and managed health structure constitutes a very particular case in the conversation around urban common spaces and goods in Athens, as it appears some specific characteristics. First of all, similarly to the previously analysed case of ‘the other human’, the creation of the ‘Self-organized health structure of Exarchia occurred because of the financial crisis and it’s humanitarian consequences. The affects of the crisis on the social fabric caused the formation of large population groups without access to basic goods, such as food or medical care. The survival instinct of these people forced them to the creation of self-organized structures and initiatives in order to defend their everyday life in a hostile urban environment. These two cases of appropriation of urban space differ significantly in the way the urban space is appropriated (temporary, nomadic, outdoor in the case of ‘the other human’, permanent, indoor in the case of K*VOX), but they are conceptually united through a common objective, the confrontation of the humanitarian impacts of the crisis. The K*VOX initiative belongs to a wider category of health structures based on solidarity spread around Athens. I this time of crisis these self organized and self managed health structures reintroduce health care as a free, cultural common. The occupied space of the abandoned state-owned building (one of many in Athens) became in this case through the collective act of commoning, a space where social cohesion and solidarity cross each other, against the social and humanitarian consequences of the crisis. In any case the KVOX Self-managed health structure is a perfect example of ‘survival’ commoning of urban space in practise, that provides to the underprivileged part of the population access to the common good of health care.

A second interesting issue that revealed the research and juxtaposition of the K*VOX and the Embros Theater, is the role of the squats and their impact on the social fabric of the crisis-city Athens. Squatting as a practice of commoning public space has a long tradition in Athens, offering to the urban environment an alternative way of thinking and using the empty

1 Official manifesto published online: www.indymedia.org

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public buildings. Examining K*VOX and Embros Theater as two of the most important examples of squats in Athens we conclude that they are important function as spaces of social cohesion and interaction, offering their space for commoning cultural goods, such as art and medical care, but also as

spaces of protest and resistance against the a socio-political system, that failed to reproduce and support the lives of the inhabitants of Athens. The declarations in the manifesto reveal the fact that the occupation of K*VOX is a clear statement of collective opposition and protest against the political and social system:

“Enlargement of sociopolitical struggles and the dynamic development of all forms of resistance to be effective must be consistent with the concepts of self-organization of social and political solidarity and the refusal of institutions. (…) We believe that the practice of squatting is an integral part of the subversive movement and its revival in the circumstances having a double meaning, as a line of defence to create spaces of freedom and aggressive tactics delimitation new perspective. (…) Whether for permanent occupation of buildings to create open political-social sites to act as center and base of fight, whether the occupation of public spaces as a form of protest across bourgeois legality, or even more, when it comes to the occupation as a means of class claims challenging the very notion of ownership, meaning the occupation of means of production and workspaces.”2

Finally, the two analysed squats, the K*VOX and the Embros Theater possess similar characteristics in the way the space is managed and the activities in it organized. In both cases a weekly, free for everyone to take part assembly decides the future of the initiative and defines the next activities, which will take place in the occupied space. This assembly in both cases has a strictly anti-hierarchical form, applying in practice a horizontal model of decision making, transforming that way the space into a an experimental laboratory of direct democracy:

“We want the Social Centre Vox to become an area of direct communication, interaction and creation, without hierarchies and specialists, spectacular and consumption patterns. A space of togetherness, solidarity and struggle against every form of power.”3

As a last comment it is consider essential to mention, that today 4 years after the official start of the financial crisis the importance of spaces as the K*VOX is constantly increasing proportional to the booming the population percentage which has no access to the formal health insurance system, offering for free in its common space health care as a free to share commonwealth. Creating networks of common space, where health care is provided wouldn’t potentially replace the official health system, but certainly would offer a relief to a large part of the urban citizens.2,3 Reference to the official Manifesto of the occupiers. Retrieved from: http://adye.espivblogs.net/

Markets without intermediates + Athens time banks

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Markets without intermediates The city as a farm of production of commons

Informal markets Appropriation of public space 2012 - now Several locations

Introduction

“Joyful encounters are economically significant acts and, in fact, are in many respects the pinnacle of the biopolitical economy. In them the common is discovered and the common is produced. This gives us a new view of the slogan we proposed earlier: the metropolis is to the multitude what the factory was to the industrial working class. The organization of the joyful encounters of the multitude corresponds to the productive deployment of workers on the factory floor, in cooperative teams, clustered around specific machines, or coordinated in the sequences of the assembly line; but the biopolitical production of wealth—and here is the central point—must be grasped from the other side, not from the perspective of capital but rather from that of the multitude.”1

Trying to identify how the pragmatic and realistic translation of the above mentioned metaphorical definition of the Metropolis as a factory that produces commons in the crisis-city of Athens would look like, then the result would be the self-organized network of the alternative economy movement, spread out over Athens the last years. Its two main representatives, the ‘Markets without intermediates’ and the Athenian ‘Time banks’ are forms of alternative economy, that were born through the initiative of the crisis-citizens, as an answer to the threat of their survival in the urban environment. The ‘Markets without Intermediates’ started as an spontaneous initiative for the distribution of potatoes to the crisis citizens of Athens, but it is rapidly evolved into a nutrition movement of informal markets spread in many neighbourhoods of Athens. In the beginning the initiative was a reaction to the high prices of agricultural products because of the intervention of speculative intermediates between the producer and the consumer, but in the end an informal food network was created and ‘occupied’ in a way the city.

1 Negri, Antonio; Hardt Michael; Metropolis, Commonwealth chapter 4.3, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011

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Background informationThree years after the financial crisis start and almost one year after the indignados movement in Syntagma square, the signs of povertization were now more visible than ever, especially in the urban environment of Athens. High unemployment rates, in combination with the isolation of Athens from any kind of production, resulted rapidly to extremely high prices of basic nutrition goods, pushing that way a relatively large part of the population into its survival limits. The previous capitalistic euphoria separated even more the agricultural production from the consumers, through the intervention of speculative intermediated between them. Result of the complicated process of accumulation of profit without any production from the intermediate factors in the agricultural goods’ route to the consumers was the unreasonable increase of the prices. In a period when the crisis-citizens had already realized that the state is not only unable to set the right policies to reproduce harmonically their lives but also hostile to them by applying a financial austerity program, in combination with the incapability to support their own lives, a call for a collective reaction was more than essential.In 2012, agricultural producers and consumers associations decided to organize themselves and take the initiative to overleap the speculative intermediates, in order to provide fair prices for the goods. Through a spontaneous occupation of urban space this self-organized movement created informal, temporary, open-air markets, commoning that way without any state’s permission squares or streets in order to distribute potatoes to the citizens of Athens and other cities of Greece in fairer prices. The ‘Potato movement’ as it was named from the media was warmly welcomed and constituted the spark of a wider urban movement which would affect the discourse over the urban emergency commons in Athens. Following the examples of Argentina and Spain where alternative economy movements related to distribution of agricultural products or urban agriculture the organizers of the ‘Potato movement’ saw the high grade potentiality for the future of the movement. The following phase of this bottom-up cooperative initiative was the expansion of the distributed products variety and the effort of applying to the markets stable and permanent characteristics. Result was the birth of the ‘Markets without intermediates movement’ that within its framework included a wide range of interconnected urban self-organized actions.

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Resident’s assemblies and comities were established in numerous Athenian neighbourhoods creating a network of alternative economy cores, spreading and multiplying that way the spirit of a more fair economy. Some of these cores are the linking point between the urban commons in Athens. For example the ‘European Village’ organized the presence of the movement in Academia Platonos. While in the beginning of the ‘Potato movement’ the informal markets had a pop-up character taking place in random time and space, the core organizers managed to regulate the actions of the movements and systematize them, in order to apply more stable, permanent and trustworthy characteristics to the project. The informal markets were now organized in certain neighbourhoods occupying a specific urban space in a weekly-basis, moulding that way a new urban map of solidarity in Athens. Moving onwards to a higher level of self-organization, small no-profit social groceries were introduced in several neighbourhoods, created from the citizen’s cooperation and the producers within the framework of the ‘Markets without intermediates.’

A variety of small or large spaces distributed in the urban environment of Athens became a platform for productive ‘encounters’ between producers and the community and a place of horizontally structured, bottom up collective action for solidarity and fair economy, away from the vertical logic of philanthropy and charity, which produce and reproduce the social

hierarchy. Simultaneously, the ‘Markets without intermediates’ movement motivated and inspired the creation of urban and peri-urban gardens, terrace gardens and seed banks , ideas that before the crisis were not widespread in Athens, putting together the last parts of the nutritional movement’s mosaic in Athens, as exactly the ‘Midnight Notes Collective and Friends’ suggested:

“The only feasible way of doing agriculture on this planet is intensive, mixed-crop, organic production. This form of agriculture is hopelessly unprofitable under current conditions—so a new type of cooperation between consumers and producers (in fact the abolition of this distinction) must be found, transforming agricultural work into a part of housework for everybody.” Midnight notes and friends”

Solidarity Illegal Throughout its route, till today the movement facet several differences connected with its relation to public space. In many occasions, mostly in the beginning of the movement, the open–air informal markets occupied urban space without a permission causing the police’s intervention in order to prevent them. Although, the organization of the markets the following years in communication and cooperation with the municipalities and possibility to apply for a permission for using public space for commercial reasons solved temporarily the problem. Since May 2014 the legal background supporting and allowing to the ‘Markets without intermediates’ the occupation of public space has changed. The new legislation2 about the open–air market prohibits its implementation in cities with population of over 3000 citizens, fact that affects the self-organized markets of the movement by criminalizing them. Practically this law declares the end of the markets with their current form, favoring that way the speculative intermediates and the huge international and national food and nutrition industries, by criminalizing the commoning of urban space.

2 According to Article 32, § 2 of the legislation about outdoor markets, every outdoor commercial activity is prohibited (including the distributions of the “Markets without inter-mediates”) in municipalities with over 3,000 inhabitants.

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Athens time bankPeer-to peer commoning of knowledge

Time bank Peer-to-peer 2012 - now Not in certain space / Cyberspace

Introduction

“The concept of encounter we have used thus far as characteristic of the metropolis, however, is merely passive and spontaneous. In order for the metropolis to be for the multitude what the factory was for the industrial working class, it must be a site not only of encounter but also of organization and politics. This could be a definition of the Greek concept of polis: the place where encounters among singularities are organized politically. The great wealth of the metropolis is revealed when the felicitous encounter results in a new production of the common—when, for instance, people communicate their different knowledges, different capacities to form cooperatively something new. The felicitous encounter, in effect, produces a new social body that is more capable than either of the single bodies was alone.”1

The research and analysis of the ‘Markets without intermediates’ as a case study of urban commons in Athens led to a unknown since now, not so widespread, but equally important practice of commoning. Simultaneously with the ‘Markets without intermediates’ movement and within the same spirit of solidarity-based economy, a new category of experimental practice of commoning was born in the crisis city of Athens, the Time Banks. The Time Banks is a citizens’ initiative, that created a peer-to-peer online platform of exchanging and sharing time with the form of services and knowledge, such as lessons of any kind or house works for example. The Athens Time Banks feature all the aforementioned characteristics of the emergency practice of commoning and is also an excellent example of alternative, solidarity-based and collective project against the humanitarian effects of the financial crisis in the everyday life, for sharing time, knowledge and services as a common cultural good.

1 Negri, Antonio; Hardt Michael; Metropolis, Commonwealth chapter 4.3, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011

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Background informationsThe idea and the concept of the Time Banks was also introduced and realized successfully in similar crisis environment of Argentina in 2001 and responsible for its creation was the incapability of its participants to fulfil some basic needs, crucial for maintenance of their standard of living over the survival limit. But what are exactly the Time Banks? How do they function? And how do they fit in the discourse around commons in Athens? Time Banks are self-organized, self-managed collectives of commoning time, based on a participatory, peer-to-peer system. In the Times Banks the concept of time is redefined and converted into an exchange unit in order to share knowledge services and over all personal time. The participation in this peer-to-peer network requires the registration of the user in a internet community, in order to enter a common cyber space, where every user offers/receives services or products to/from the rest of the community. As the manifesto of one of the numerous Times Banks in Athens states:

“The exchange of services, skills and knowledge, without the mediation of money between the members of the society; regardless of gender, education, age and race, within a framework of cooperative and barter market model based on solidarity.”

Every labour hour that a user offers to another user adds one time unit in his account and conversely abstracts a time unit from the user that received the offered service. The offered services vary: medical help or teaching foreign languages, but in order to provide a fair exchange system all offered services, regardless of their type, they all have the same ‘price’. One hour of Italian lesson equals to one hour of working for repairing a wash machine for example. As the initial organizers and participant’s state, the Time Bank does not cause unfair competition against the professionals, because it appeals to people who have no financial resources. Moreover, the services provided are supplementary, aiming to facilitate the everyday of individuals living within the limits of survival and promote between them solidarity, trust and spirit of mutual help.

At this point is useful to mention the importance of the solidarity cores, as in the ‘Markets without intermediates’ case in Athens’ neighbourhoods. In both case studies the citizen’s initiative created common space in each neighbourhood, in order to communicate, interact with principles of

direct democracy and finally get self-organized against the misery of the times. Forced by the emergency crisis situation that activated their survival instinct, the Athenian micro societies found a common ground in cafes, parks, squares and in general common spaces in each district, in order to organize their emergency initiatives to protect the reproduction of their lives. Although the two case studies, the ‘Markets without intermediates’ and the ‘Time Banks’ have many similarities (such their creation in many cases from the neighbourhood assemblies or their networking nature) they differ in many crucial characteristics. First of all the ‘Times Bank’ urban project has not a spatial interpretation, while its participants are commoning time in cyber space and not physical. Secondly the Time Banks is an urban common based on a peer-to-peer relationship between the commoners and thirdly the shared goods in this case are mostly cultural commons, such as education, knowledge and abilities that are shared on a solidarity basis. At last the Time Banks in Athens are anti-capitalistic movement, absolutely independent from currency or the neoliberal market logic. This type of social bank is now wide spread in many Athenian neighbourhoods while it has potential for further expansion with more stable permanent features and a wider public of commoners is possible.

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Athens Inc. – A factory for the production of commons

“The metropolis, then, is entirely inserted in and integral to the cycle of biopolitical production: access to the reserve of the common embedded in it is the basis of production, and the results of production are in turn newly inscribed in the metropolis, reconstituting and transforming it. The metropolis is a factory for the production of the common. In contrast to large-scale industry, however, this cycle of biopolitical production is increasingly autonomous from capital, since its schemes of cooperation are generated in the productive process itself and any imposition of command poses an obstacle to productivity2”

The analysis of the previous two case studies logically results to the conclusion that they constitute the exact translation of the allegoric/metaphoric definition of Hardt and Negri of the metropolis as a factory that produces the commons. The ‘Markets without intermediates’ movement facilitated and forced the mass ‘production’ of an extended network of social groceries, urban and peri-urban gardens or barter markets by creating that way the largest food movement in Greece. The time banks, on the other side introduced to a city suffering from the crisis an alternative peer-to-peer network of commoning knowledge and services that increased rapidly the number of its participants. The innovative element that these two case studies succeeded to insert into the urban discourse of the commons in Athens was the high grade of inclusiveness, which characterizes them and facilitated their introduction to a broader public. The spirit of solidarity-based economy was incorporated that way in the city’s social body. Offering to the crisis-society common space (physical or virtual) resulted to the productive for the biopolitical life encounters of people committed to fight against the crisis humanitarian consequences with solidarity and not with social cannibalism. Finally returning to the metaphorical definitions of Hardt and Negri about the metropolis these two case studies constitute the result of the activation of the spinal cord of the multitude through its own survival instincts, and in the same time the machines of a factory that produces commons.

2 Negri, Antonio; Hardt Michael; Metropolis, Commonwealth chapter 4.3, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011

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{Chapter 4} Conclusions

The analysis and juxtaposition of the seven cases studies and the investigation of the factors and events that affected their evolution, the long euphoric period of the past decades, the events of December, the Syntagma square movement and above all the catastrophic for the society consequences of the crisis, formed a clear understanding of how a new social and spatial urban environment is emerging the last years in Athens. As a first conclusion the following text in response to the starting research question: ‘How did the discourse about the commons evolved in the period 2009-2014 in Athens and how the crisis affected them?’

4.1 Urban survival instincts and the emerging common spacesThe first years of the crisis the collective reaction against the upcoming povertization had exclusively a protest character, limited on a dialectic against the state’s and the IMF’s policies and expressed as collective movements of resistance, such as the aforementioned events of September 2008, the indignados movement in 2011 or in general strikes and protests in Syntagma square. Considering Hardt’s and Negri’s definition of the metropolis, the first years of the crisis Athens was as a factory of production of commons still inactivated. The biopolitical production was still ‘hypnotized’ by the long previous period of capitalistic and individualistic euphoria, which, metaphorically, set the multitude in a narcosis. The majority of Athens residents were still, as the years before (when the real estate industry was booming), acting with the accumulation of wealth as their common and sole objective. The urban encounters and interactions were still based on a speculative way of thinking, fact that disfavoured the organization of the city as a factory of production of commons, turning the metropolis into an ‘idiopolis’. The real productive encounters, where interaction and communication created new ideas and social peace in Athens were marginalized and considered as activities of the radical left or anarchistic part of the population, limited in specific areas and spaces such as the area around the Exarchia square and squatted urban spaces. The hypnosis of the biopolitical production and the i was disturbed by the shocking events of September 2008 and the indignados movement in 2011, but still the city had not started producing common spaces for the transformation of the hostile urban environment formed the past euphoric period. The phenomenal failure of the indignados movement,

made the multitude in Syntagma square to become conscious of the state’s failure or inability to reproduce and protect their lives. In the same time they became conscious that, only by protesting the situation will not return to the status as it was before the crisis and that if they wanted to change their live there should be self-organized action. After Syntagma square, the real groundbreaking turn to a conscious self-organization of the city of Athens as a factory that produces commons, happened only when their production became an emergency reaction of the Athenians. This was the moment, when the povertization through the financial programme implemented from IMF and Greek state lead to lack of basic goods such as food and basic services such as medical care essential for keeping the living standards over the survival limits. The K*VOX social medical centre, the Markets without intermediates, the time banks or the ‘other human’ are practices of commoning emerging for this luck of basic survival goods and service in the Athens of the crisis.At this point we have to mention that Athens as a commercial city and as the most of the metropolises around the world is completely segregated from primary production and is feed from goods produced in the countryside, while within its limits any kind of production is almost zero. The survival instincts activated by the level of emergency of the current situation, together with the simultaneous realization that the state is unable to help in any way, forced the citizens of the crisis-city to create new common spaces of communication and interaction, in order to share basic goods and services. The new emergent commons, as we understood from the analysis of the case studies, are not based anymore on profit and their users, commoners are not anymore interconnected through speculative links, but through a collective spirit of solidarity. The creation urban commons for survival in the hostile urban environment of Athens were, as the analysed described case studies proved, the ultimate reaction of a multitude in its survival limits against a way of everyday life, that couldn’t reproduce their lives. Collective movements were organised in the crisis-city of Athens, creating new urban cultural and spatial commons, in order protect their own lives and finally to survive through the humanitarian crisis that still goes on. As Hardt and Negri mention:

“A series of recent studies investigate the specificity of African urban forms, the Afropolis, from Lagos and Kinshasa to Johannesburg. It is not sufficient, these scholars insist, simply to see them as slums or failed cities, although many are characterized by extreme deprivation and poverty. From an external

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standpoint it is clear that urban planning has been largely absent or ineffective in most African metropolises. But these scholars focus on the fact that, despite crumbling infrastructure and destitute populations, the metropolises actually work—most often through informal networks of communication, mobility, employment, exchange, and cooperation that are largely invisible to outsiders. The multitude of the poor, in other words, invents strategies for survival, finding shelter and producing forms of social life, constantly discovering and creating resources of the common through expansive circuits of encounter. That is not to say, of course: Don’t worry about the poor, their life is lovely! All cities should be like these! The importance of these studies is to demonstrate, even in conditions of extreme adversity, what the poor can do, how they can produce the common and organize encounters.”1

4.2 Emerging potential Observing and analysing the case studies through a different perspective we can easily feel their potential for the future transformation of the now hostile urban environment into a more social and humane. The spontaneous initiatives, implementations and appropriation of urban space from its users, prove that a change is urgent. The idea of creating new urban spatialities using the aforementioned practices of commoning or the evolution and the improvement of the existing cases of common space contains a great potential for a radical change in the cityscape of Athens The self-organized Navarinou Park introduced for the first time in Athens the idea of occupying public space in order to transform it into a place of social interaction. Reshaping the old abandoned parking lot into a park equipped with an urban garden and a playground through a collective action, was for Athens a significant example of self-organization and self-managing. Today, five years after the realization of the project the condition of the park proves the success of the project. The Navarinou park project and the way it was realized could easily be applied also in the in-between spaces of the Refugee housing complex. In particular, the idea of transforming the empty and disused spaces between the buildings into urban garden for the cultivation of agricultural products, contains a great potential for the space. Connecting the refugee housing complex with the wider nutrition movement, that exists the last years in Athens, and by interlinking it with the food network created by the ‘Markets without intermediates’ movement could change rapidly the marginalized image of the place. As a starting idea there could be proposed

1 Negri, Antonio; Hardt Michael; Metropolis, Commonwealth chapter 4.3, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2011

the self-organization of the residents in order to create small urban gardens in the in-between spaces but also in the vast space around the buildings. A reactivation project like that would have a double benefit for the residents but also for the neighbourhood: In one hand, the creation of urban gardens would offer a platform of interaction and collective working, enhancing that way the spirit of solidarity among its users and reintroducing the disused spaces as spaces for life. On the other it would offer some basic agricultural products, that could connect, even more, the case of the ‘other human’ with the refugee housing complex, while he could supplied with basic goods for his nomadic social kitchen. Additionally, a potential idea for the empty apartments of the housing complex could be the housing of the large number of homeless in Athens and their social reintegration through the urban gardens. The case of Academia Platonos is also a particular case in the discourse around urban common spaces in Athens, because the construction of the gigantic Mall has already started . However the self-organization of the citizens for opposing and resist to the state’s and private plans for commercialization of the place created a strong community, that with activities for the appropriation of the space are still capable to defend their right of using the park according to their own needs. At this point it is essential to mention that also the activities of the citizen’s assembly of the Academia Platonos are connected to the wider urban agriculture movement by creating a seed bank, a nomadic kitchen and also by offering frequently seminars for the creation of urban gardens.By juxtaposing the previous case studies (Navarinou park with it’s urban garden, the refugee housing complex with the potential for urban agricultural projects, th ‘other human’, the Academia Platonos with the seed banks and the nomadic kitchen, and finally the markets without intermediates, we conclude that the creation of common spaces in Athens is inextricably linked with a nutrition and urban agriculture movement emerging the last years in the city. A movement that is occurred not only as an urban trend but also as a need against the lack of basic goods in the hostile environment of Athens.

Finally, the question that all self-organized initiatives for the creation of common spaces in Athens must answer in the future is how to become stable, permanent and not to disappear as soon as the financial crisis is over, because their potential effect for the creation of a more humane urban environment is particularly high:

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“As a leading anarchist thinker, David Graeber, puts it, echoing the reservations of Murray Bookchin set out above:Temporary bubbles of autonomy must gradually turn into permanent, free communities. However, in order to do so, those communities cannot exist in total isolation; neither can they have a purely confrontational relation with everyone around them. They have to have some way to engage with larger economic, social or political systems that surround them. •This is the trickiest question because it has proved extremely difficult for those organized on radically democratic lines to so integrate themselves in any meaningful way in larger structures without having to make endless compromises in their founding principles.”

4.2 Final word, Spaces of Commons / Spaces of HopeAs a last word to this research, I would like to return to the title of this paper, stating my confidence that the creating of a humane urban environment can only be achieved through self-organized urban actions, as the previously described cases. Creating spaces of solidarity in the hostile urban environment of Athens, or of any metropolis, can inspire future urban projects and finally provide to it’s users the hope and confidence that a different world is possible.

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Photography Index:

Page 11 : Pedestrian in front of an anticapitalistic graffiti in Athens Bloomberg News, retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443855804577601373039677662 Page 18 : Burning Christmas tree in Syntagma sq. during the events of December retrieved from: http://libcom.org/news/there-will-be-blood-warns-greek-labour-minister-crisis-deepens-26122009Page 19 : International stores, banks and luxury cars attacked during the riots Gerasimos Domenikos / Γεράσιμος Δομένικος, retrieved from: http://popaganda.gr/dekemvris-2008-athina-anochiroti-poli/Page 21 : Demonstrations and riotsGerasimos Domenikos / Γεράσιμος Δομένικος, retrieved from: http://popaganda.gr/dekemvris-2008-athina-anochiroti-poli/Page 23 : Picture Sina street during the riotsRetrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20081206_Alexandros_Grigoropoulos_december_2008_riots_Sina_Street_Athens_Greece.jpgPage 25 : Protesters in Syntagma square during the ‘indignados’ movementmurplejane, retrieved from: http://murplejane.flavors.me/#photojournalismPage 27 : Panoramic view of the Indignados movement in Syntagma squareRetrieved from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011_Greece_Uprising.jpg?uselang=ElPage 33-36 : Maps of Athens with the case studiesEdited by the authorPage 38 : The entrance of Navarinou Park / “Self-organized Navarinou Park, Squat”Edited by the authorPage 39 : Navarinou parkPhoto retrieved from Google Maps and edited by the authorPage 41 : Navarinou Park before it’s transformationBoth photos retrieved from the official site of the Park: http://parkingparko.espiv-blogs.net/ Page 43 : Actions for the transformation of the parking lot into a parkAll photos retrieved from the official site of the Park: http://parkingparko.espivblogs.net/ Page 45 : The final result, a playground for the children of the neighbourhoodBoth photos retrieved from the official site of the Park: http://parkingparko.espiv-blogs.net/ Page 47 : 1) Sign calling for participation at the open assembly every Wednesday 2) Collective activities in the park Both photos retrieved from the official site of the Park: http://parkingparko.espiv-blogs.net/ Page 49 : 1) Music concert organized in the space of the Navarinou park 2) The final shape of the park after several implementations

Both photos retrieved from the official site of the Park: http://parkingparko.espiv-blogs.net/ Page 52 : Close up to the deserted facades of the refugee buildingsAspasia Koulira / Ασπασία Κουλύρα,retrieved from: http://popaganda.gr/ti-sim-veni-sta-prosfigika/Page 53 : Refugee housing complex in Alexandras avenuePhoto retrieved from Google Maps and edited by the authorPage 55 : 1) Historical photo of the refugee housing complexRetrieved from http://mikrasiatis.gr/ 2) The cover up of the buildings during the Olympic gamesPage 57 : 1) Panoramic view on the housing complexRetrieved from: http://www.kathimerini.gr/759372/opinion/epikairothta/politikh/ta-prosfygika-ths-lewforoy-ale3andras 2) The misused in-between spacesEdited by the authorPages 59, 61, 63 : Captions from the everyday life in the housing complexAspasia Koulira / Ασπασία Κουλύρα,retrieved from: http://popaganda.gr/ti-sim-veni-sta-prosfigika/Page 66 : The pot of ‘the other human’ in the refugee housing complex Retrieved from the official site of ‘the other human’, http://oallosanthropos.blogspot.gr/Page 67 : Captions of the daily trips of the social kitchenPhotos retrieved from Google Maps and edited by the authorPage 69 : Two moment, two emotions. Photos from the social kitchen in the refu-gee housing complex and after it Both photos edited by the authorPages 71, 73, 75 : Captions of the informal social kitchen in several locationsAll photos retrieved from the official site of ‘the other human’, http://oallosanthro-pos.blogspot.gr/Page 78 : View of the Academia Platonos parkRetrieved from the official site of the citizen’s assembly, http://akadimia-platonos.blogspot.gr/Page 79 : Map of the Academia platonos archeological sitePhoto retrieved from Google Maps and edited by the authorPage 81 : Views of the Academia Platonos parkBoth photos retrieved from the official site of the citizen’s assembly, http://akadimia-platonos.blogspot.gr/Page 83 : Collective activities in the archeological site by the citizen’s assemblyBoth photos retrieved from the official site of the citizen’s assembly, http://akadimia-platonos.blogspot.gr/Page 85 : 1) The citizen’s assembly proposal for the archeological site 2) The architectural proposal for the construction of the mallBoth photos retrieved from the official site of the citizen’s assembly, http://akadim-ia-platonos.blogspot.gr/

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Page 90 : Zoom in at the theatre’s emblematic signRetrieved from the official site of the occupied theater, http://embros-theater.blogs-pot.gr/Page 91 : Embros TheaterPhoto retrieved from Google Maps and edited by the authorPage 93 : The entrance of the theatreRetrieved from the official site of the occupied theater, http://embros-theater.blogs-pot.gr/Page 95 : Artistic photography at the theatre’s roofRetrieved from the official site of the occupied theater, http://embros-theater.blogs-pot.gr/Page 97 : Captions from the visit of Giorgio Agamben Both photos retrieved from the official site of the occupied theater, http://embros-theater.blogspot.gr/Page 99 : Artistic activities of any kind in the occupied theatreAll photos retrieved from the official site of the occupied theater, http://embros-theater.blogspot.gr/Page 101 : Posters from the festival against racism All photos retrieved from the official site of the occupied theater, http://embros-theater.blogspot.Page 104 : The outdoor and the sign of the occupied VOX building Retrieved from: http://en.squat.net/tag/k-vox/Page 105 : The K*VOX squatted buildingPhoto retrieved from Google Maps and edited by the authorPage 107 : Views of the squat during activities organized in it’s spaceBoth photos retrieved from: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1397634/Page 109 : The logo of the self-organized health structure in the space of K*VOXPhoto retrieved from the official site of the structure, http://adye.espivblogs.net/Page 111 : Photos and poster from the seminars and workshops around health in the K*VOXAll photos retrieved from the official site of the structure, http://adye.espivblogs.net/Page 115 : Captions of distribution of potatoes, the potato movementBoth photos retrieved from : http://limanixorismesazontes.blogspot.gr/Page 117 : The first informal marketsBoth photos retrieved from : http://limanixorismesazontes.blogspot.gr/Page 119 : Markets without intermediates, occupation of public spacePhoto retrieved from : http://limanixorismesazontes.blogspot.gr/

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