Urban Resilience, Changing Economy and Social Trends. Coping with Socio-Economic Consequences of the Crisis in Athens, Greece

Urban Resilience, Changing Economy and Social Trends. Coping with socio-economic consequences of the crisis in Athens, Greece Frank Othengrafen Konstantinos Serraos (eds.) Editors Frank Othengrafen Konstantinos Serraos Bibliographic Information of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutschen Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutschen Nationalbib- liografie; detailed bibliographical data can be downloaded from the internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de. This work is protected by copyright. All rights reserved, including reprinting, reproduc- tion, storage in data processing systems and translation of the entire work or parts thereof. ISBN 978-3-925658-37-2 Printed in Germany by DruckTeam, Hannover Contents Preface Part 1 Introduction: 9 Southern European Perspectives when Dealing with Socio-economic Consequences of the Crisis Laura Chocontá 1. Political Resilience in Times of Economic Crisis and Local Government Reforms 13 Yannis Psycharis, Dimitris Kallioras, Evangelia Psatha 2. Athenian Urbanism and Urban Resilience 31 Thanos Pagonis 3. Community Resilience through the Influence of Grassroots Initiatives 49 Filip Śnieg, Lena Greinke, Frank Othengrafen 4. Struggling Against Entrenched Austerity 61 Simone Tulumello 5. Grassroots Economic Activism in Hard Times 81 Riccardo Guidi Part 2 Introduction: 101 Coping with Socio-economic Consequences of the Crisis in Athens Laura Chocontá, Filip Śnieg 1. The Past of Things to Come 107 Zoe Hatziyannaki 2. The Four Concepts of the Summer School a. Make Exarcheia’s Housing Affordable Again 121 Alina Ehlers, Carola Wilhelm, Dimitra Vreda b. Dignifying Life Beyond the Streets 135 Laura Chocontá c. Community Empowerment through Establishment of a Local Food Supply Chain 149 Helia Molla Ahmadi Dehaghi, Diego Vizcarra Ganoza, Spyridoula Driva d. Enhancing Community Cohesion in Exarcheia, Athens: Focussing on Temporary Uses 159 Jana Brenner, Hanna Jordan, Evdokia Valli Preface The development of resilient cities is the crucial factor for sustainable development. Resilient cities are cities that are prepared to absorb and recover from any shock or stress (natural hazards, human-made shocks such as a financial crisis, etc.) while maintaining its essential functions, structures, and identity as well as adapting and thriving in the face of continual change. “Building resilience requires identifying and assessing hazard risks, reducing vulnerability and exposure, and lastly, increasing resistance, adaptive capacity, and emergency preparedness” (ICLEI 2017). To contribute to building resilient cities, we are very happy that the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst) and the German Fe- deral Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) grant our joint research project or exchange “Resilient as Challenge for European Cities (HeKris): Developing urban planning strategies and concrete projects” from 2017 to 2019. The project is based on a part- nership between the National Technical University of Athens – NTUA (Faculty of Ar- chitecture) and the Leibniz University of Hanover – LUH (Faculty of Architecture and Landscape). The primary objective of HeKris is to train Greek and German students as well as young researchers to develop integrative strategies and creative approaches for resilient cities, including new and robust governance arrangements between public, private and civil stakeholders (governance structures). This book is the result of the Athens Summer School 2018 on resilient European cities that took place from 24th to 29th June 2018. The summer school focused on “Urban resilience, Changing Economy and Social Trends” and asked the participating interdisciplinary student groups to develop strategies and approaches to cope with the economic, social and demographic changes and the financial crisis in the urban area of Athens. This volume thus presents (1) contributions from scientists that were involved in the summer school and other external experts, explaining socio-economic phenomena and various communal approaches enhancing social resilience; (2) the output of an exhibition of a futuristic scenario to question a post-crisis sequence of events; and (3) the ideas, concepts and strategies that the students developed to deal with social and economic issues. With this book we hope to contribute to the dis- cussion on building more resilient and sustainable cities – a debate we will continue with the following summer schools and exchanges. Frank Othengrafen and Konstantinos Serraos Hanover and Athens December 2018 5 Part 1 Introduction Southern European Perspectives when Dealing with Socio-economic Consequences of the Crisis Laura Chocontá Leibniz University Hannover The late 2000s crisis has transformed Europe. Especially in the south, governmental efforts to face the situation become visible in institutional changes in favour of austerity and which, at the same time, were detrimental for the welfare state, the democratic representation, and labour relations, finally set off social protests (ZAMORA-KAPOOR, A. & COLLER, X. 2014). The implemented policies reduced the state’s participation in the economy, which lowered the economic activity, increased un- employment rates, reduced consumption, and sank the image of the governments (ibid.). In such dire political and economic scenario, citizens’ increasing disaffection towards their traditional democracies and the handling of the crisis encouraged the rise of alternative forms of conducting politics: such as the surge of new political actors and innovative alignments of communities to deal with the socio-economic issues (ibid.). Civil Societies Organizations, for example, had to develop tactics of interaction, different tools of communication and be more flexible in management skills to solve pressing problems (EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE 2013: p. 3). The transformation of the socio-economic relationships inside Learning about communities in Southern Europe and their perspectives when resilience dealing with the crisis can be an opportunity to rejuvenate planning and enable different and potentially more productive and cooperative approaches to decision-making processes. The 9 Southern European Perspectives when Dealing with Socio-economic Consequences of the Crisis following contributions provide insightful and critical examina- tions of some context in Southern Europe, their processes and some lessons to learn about resilience: In Greece, the economic crisis and the fiscal consolidation pol- icy resulted in deterioration of service delivery and caused se- rious discontent towards the local representatives. As a result, the local political system and the representatives were unable to sustain the political discontent of the local people who vot- ed against them. „Political Resilience in Times of Economic Crisis and Local Government Reforms“ written by Yannis Psycharis, Dimitris Kallioras and Evangelia Psatha presents the case of the Municipality of Volos, Greece and examines the resilience of the local political system under the pressures for reforms and the implementation of restrictive policies during the period 2010-2014. Using the city of Athens to carry out the argumentation, the pa- per „Athenian Urbanism and Urban Resilience“ written by Thanos Pagonis discusses the relations between the concepts of urbanism and resilience. By understanding “urbanism” as a collective condition that shapes the production of built space and social relations formed around it, the article claims that deep understanding of urbanism in a particular place is crucial for urban resilience planning. In both Greece and Germany, the importance of initiatives has risen significantly in the last years. The third contribution from Filip Śnieg, Lena Greinke and Frank Othengrafen „Commu- nity Resilience through the Influence of Grassroots Initia- tives“ shows how these solidarity movements can increase ro- bustness and adaptability to various crises in their local context. It suggests that future practice and science should focus even more on the contribution that initiatives can make to community resilience and sustainability on different scales in cities. „Struggling Against Entrenched Austerity“ by Simone Tulu- mello provides an overview of the housing politics in contem- porary Lisbon, Portugal. By reflecting on housing crisis and struggles, the chapter takes two conceptual steps. First, it explores the entrenchment of austerity in the field of housing by 10 Laura Chocontá building on an understanding of austerity as the downloading of vulnerability to risk from the economic to the social sphere. Then, it questions the capacity of emerging social movements’ potential to fight the social vulnerability brought by austerity and establish themselves as a ‘resilient’ alternative to the dominant models of economic development. The fifth contribution „Grassroots Economic Activism in Hard Times“ written by Riccardo Guidi explores and questions “alternative forms of resilience” that citizens of Southern European countries have developed in response to the crisis. First, it illustrates the “alternative forms of resilience” perspec- tive; then, it re-frames it into the more complex possible trends of grassroots economic activism in the shadow of crisis; finally it uses the case of alternative food networks in Italy in hard times to test the “alternative forms of resilience” hypothesis against competing ones. Although limited, the analysis shows that grassroots economic activism in times of crisis present a complex intertwine

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