Dissemination

Vertical social segregation as a separation of different social groups in apartment buildings is a phenomenon that mainly appears in the cities of Southern Europe and in some cities of Western and Central Europe. The focus of this paper is the Athenian model of vertical segregation, which shares similarities with the models of other European cities but has its own distinct features. By focusing on the Athenian case, this paper aims to contribute to the broader discussion of segregation at the micro-scale. The study documented here, based on two specific cases, will shed light on the details of the Athenian case. The data were collected within the framework of a recently completed research project on the Municipality of Athens, where vertical segregation is very present.

Therefore, this paper is based on the micro-data of the ISTOPOL project (2020-2022) and on their analysis as part of the SeDe project (2024-2026), both funded by the H.F.R.I. The paper describes the types of micro-segregation existing in two apartment blocks located in different neighbourhoods of the inner city. The main questions addressed were whether these two buildings followed the typical vertical segregation model and whether the structure and the internal design of the specific buildings affected the type of segregation. The study reveals that while the model of vertical segregation is evident in the two case studies, the actual reality is more complex than theoretically expected. The internal design of the buildings has significantly influenced the type of segregation.

During the Programming Period 2014–2020, dozens of Greek cities drafted Integrated Territorial Investment programmes, based on Integrated Sustainable Urban Development Strategies (ITI SUDs). The Strategies justified the selection of intervention and activity areas using socio-economic analysis. The parameters of that analysis, as specified by the National Coordination Authority, reflected the socio-economic and functional parameters highlighted in the relevant EU regulations. This paper uses a recently published methodology in order to estimate and map deprivation in Greek cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, and compares the results with the activity areas identified in the ITI SUDs of those cities.

The paper also makes an estimation of the potential for micro-segregation in deprived areas, in an effort to uncover the links between deprivation, built form and social composition at the micro-scale. The analysis shows that deprivation is comparatively more pronounced in Athens and Thessaloniki, and that the use of a common methodology to measuring deprivation, but with customized measurement scales, could support a more targeted allocation of urban policy resources. On the other hand, micro-segregation seems to be a factor worth exploring only in Athens and Thessaloniki, and not in Patra, Larissa, Volos and Heraklion, where the building stock in areas of deprivation is mostly low-rise.

The book tackles core issues of the SeDe project. T. Maloutas, the book’s editor, is member of the research team, while other members participate as editors or co-editors (I. Polyzou, N. Karadimitriou, S. Spyrellis) of several chapters.

In more detail, it looks at the current trends in Athens, the capital city of Greece, and focuses on the processes of globalization it has been undergoing during the last two decades. In this time the city has transformed from a low-key, petty bourgeois cohesive and rather isolated city in south-eastern Europe to an internationally visible metropolis, increasingly unequal and polarized.

The book mainly deals with changes in the social structure and the ways that different groups are linked to the city’s built environment. The main issues discussed in the book include the economic identity and the position of Athens in the regional and global urban networks; the reproduction of class and ethnic boundaries and the uneven distribution of different social groups in urban space; the exploration of political processes related to the class vote, including the gender and demographic profile of the city’s electorate; the making of the built environment, the main trends in real estate and the ways they affect the housing market.

Athens is not abundantly discussed in the urban studies literature, even though social and spatial changes have been remarkable. As such, this book provides a concise overview of the main socioeconomic and spatial changes in Athens during the last two decades and their significance beyond the case of Athens.

This book will be of interest to researchers and students of the built environment, urban studies and urban sociology.

Seeing Athens from above, one revels in its most characteristic view: a ‘sea’ of apartment buildings. The ‘polykatoikia,’ a key component of Athens’ contemporary history and current structure, emerged from post-war urbanization as a reconstruction model, providing wider social strata with the opportunity to rebuild the city, building by building. These processes have long become a subject of public discussion, as well-established myths around those “who destroyed Athens” have allowed a perceived divide between the agents of ‘antiparochi’ and ‘polykatoikia’ and the city’s present-day residents.

As an effort to entwine these two worlds, the book, on the one hand, profiles stories from within—narratives that trace what took and still takes place in the interior of the Athenian polykatoikia—and, on the other hand, tracks grassroots tales of the city, namely narrations around the people who built, passed through, inhabited, and still inhabit the city.

The interpolating stories and theoretical texts are not necessarily read in the book’s intended order but rather in a ‘free-floating’ manner on the reader’s part. Recounts, memories, personal experiences, photographs, diagrams, building codes, contracts, and operating regulations all together trace the histories of people and buildings, while at the same time charting composite processes that transpire across the scale of the neighborhood and the Athenian society at large.

This chapter describes the occupational structure of Athens and the changes observed since the 1950s and mainly since the 1990s. The main change during this period is the transformation of the pyramidal occupational structure, with a thin top and a large bottom, to a polarized shape following the increase of higher and, to a lesser extent, intermediate occupational categories and the decrease of lower ones. This broad change cannot be easily summarized as increased or decreased inequality between top and bottom of the occupational ladder. It has rather brought segmentation and increased inequalities among the higher occupational categories. These changes in the occupational structure were accompanied by changes in the residential patterns of the main

occupational categories that also followed complex forms. Residential patterns of occupational categories have been changing and are reproduced following the changes in the different urban milieus produced by housing systems, building activity and the residential location choices of unequal and diverse population groups in the city’s housing market. These residential patterns should be examined not only at the neighbourhood level. The level of micro-segregation is significant in Athens, with the important presence of vertical social and ethnic segregation within the city’s apartment blocks in the central neighbourhoods.

Today, the transformations in residential patterns are accelerated and mainly induced by new developments in the city’s real estate market and by the transformation of housing from a use value to an investment product.

This chapter focuses on the interconnections between recent migration and sociospatial change in Athens. It discusses how migrants settle and create new urban social dynamics and how the urban space is reconfigured by and through migrants’ settlement. We summarize international mobilities in the metropolitan area of Athens from the 1990s until today by highlighting migrants’ self-

settlement practices, asylum accommodation at the margins, and the spatial implications of a prevailing racialized social system. We argue that migrants’ habitation in the city has been determined, on the one hand, by simultaneous yet open and dynamic processes of social coexistence and spatial proximity and, on the other, by marginality and exclusion.

This chapter discusses the structural transformation of housing provision in Athens since the 2008 public debt crisis. After a collapse in supply during the 2010s, housing production never really picked up significantly. Investment in housing development is attracting around 1/6 of the capital flows it used to before the crisis. This is largely due to the drop in income and savings of Greek households and the tax regime and institutional issues which make long-term asset ownership and long-term rental unattractive.

The combination of low supply with growing foreign direct investment in residential real estate which is attracted by the significant short-term rental and capital appreciation opportunities has propped up housing prices and rents significantly. This conundrum has led to a brewing affordability crisis. It is still early to say what impact recent measures aimed at supporting households to access owner-occupation had. However, given the causes of the current affordability issues in Athens, a significant increase in the supply of housing for owner-occupation and (social) rental might be needed.

The labor immigration which has characterized Southern Europe since the 1980s is primarily oriented towards large cities and the tertiary sector. Its diversity, its significant rate of feminization, its presence in numerous sectors of the labor market modifies the social geography of contemporary metropolises. At the end of the 2000s, the migratory landscape in most southern European cities underwent profound transformations. Migration mobilities undergoes a double process, quite contradictory in certain aspects.

On the one hand, the countries of southern Europe remain open to European citizens and citizens from neighboring countries. On the other hand, they show an increasingly closed response towards other groups. These are the paradoxes of a double standard migratory model which filters and encourages the installation and movement of some while preventing the arrival and legalization of others. Indeed, it is the positioning of metropolises and metropolitan actors in this context of migration crisis that will be discussed in this chapter.

While the bursting of the speculative bubble in the property markets in 2008 could have slow down on the dynamics of financialization, almost fifteen years la- ter, housing is still one of the most prized commodities. This chapter describes how the commodification of housing has operated over time in Southern Europe. After a brief period of falling property prices, the recomposition of investment logics led to an

acceleration of touristification in numerous metropolises such as Lisbon, Bar- celona and Athens. The particularly strong intensity of the phenomenon, especially as regards short-term rentals, is analyzed in relation to the combination of socie- ties, states and markets, including the strong prevalence of property as insurance against crises and the importance of neoliberal employment and urban policies.