Can Athens be saved from decades of chaotic urban development?

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For anyone who has walked done Athens, the archetypal vision for the metropolis tin look astir similar subject fiction.

In 1833, architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert designed a neoclassical superior with geometric streets, wide avenues, unfastened squares, parks and strict readying controls. But their program was lone implemented for a fewer months earlier being abandoned amid backlash implicit onshore expropriations.

Nearly 200 years later, the consequences of that determination proceed to signifier regular beingness successful the Greek capital.

From the covering of the Ilissos River successful 1939 to the post-war factual enlargement driven by antiparochi, Athens has grown successful ways that present intensify the pressures of clime change, inequality and biology degradation.

A metropolis under pressure

The utmost heatwave of July 2025 offered a stark reminder of the city’s vulnerabilities.

Thermal imaging recorded roadworthy temperatures of up to 70°C and rooftops reaching 100°C, while greenish areas remained importantly cooler astatine astir 25–30°C.

Research from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens revealed a increasing inequality: residents successful wealthier, greener suburbs were acold little exposed to utmost vigor than those successful densely built areas lacking vegetation — neighbourhoods that efficaciously trap heat.

Flooding has besides exposed structural weaknesses. In January 2026, dense rains sent debris rushing down from Mount Hymettus into the streets of Glyfada, resulting successful the decease of a woman and renewed scrutiny of the region’s buried waterways, which present transcend 800 kilometres successful length.

At the aforesaid time, delays successful municipality readying reforms hazard important fiscal consequences. Up to fractional of a €214 cardinal European Commission backing bundle for section municipality plans could beryllium mislaid owed to bureaucratic setbacks.

Is there anticipation for Athens?

Despite these challenges, designer Eleni-Stefania Kalapoda believes Athens still has the imaginable to reinvent itself.

Having studied architecture successful Athens and municipality plan successful New York, and precocious serving connected planetary plan grant juries crossed much than 50 countries, Kalapoda says the aboriginal lies not successful rebuilding cities from scratch, but successful transforming what already exists.

“The astir successful cities are not those that physique anew,” she told Neos Kosmos, “but those that larn to transform with respect, imaginativeness and technological knowledge.”

Rethinking the city: Build less, reuse more

A cardinal rule shaping modern municipality thinking is simple: the astir sustainable gathering is the 1 that is ne'er built.

Reusing existing structures preserves the embedded vigor and materials already invested successful them, resources that are permanently mislaid done demolition.

Athens, Kalapoda notes, has hundreds of vacant ground-floor spaces, abandoned concern buildings and post-war structures waiting to beryllium reimagined.

The transformation of the Piraeus Tower stands arsenic a model: erstwhile an abandoned landmark, it has been converted into a modern, multi-functional hub while preserving its past and importantly reducing its biology footprint.

Small-scale interventions, she adds, tin beryllium conscionable arsenic powerful.

“A school, a neighbourhood square, a pedestrian street with bioclimatic plan tin enactment arsenic catalysts for wider change,” she says.

With fractional of the buildings that will beryllium successful 2050 already standing today, the existent question is not what cities will build, but what they will take to sphere and transform.

Designing for clime resilience

Following caller floods, the request for climate-responsive plan has go urgent.

The contented is not lone utmost weather, Kalapoda explains, but besides the dominance of impermeable surfaces that forestall water from being absorbed into the ground.

Internationally, cities are turning to the conception of “sponge cities” municipality environments that integrate greenish infrastructure such arsenic rainfall gardens, permeable pavements, municipality parks and water retention systems.

Cities similar Rotterdam person transformed nationalist squares into “water squares” that relation arsenic mundane gathering spaces but person into water basins during dense rainfall.

For Athens, these solutions are not unrealistic.

“They don’t necessitate monolithic infrastructure,” Kalapoda says. “They necessitate wide planning, the close materials, and the will to treat nationalist space arsenic infrastructure, not conscionable decoration.”

The aboriginal is green, without starting from scratch

Green buildings, she emphasises, are not simply astir adding plants.

They are structures designed for vigor efficiency, earthy light, aerial prime and minimal biology interaction — spaces that respect some radical and the planet.

The cardinal for Athens lies successful retrofitting existing buildings alternatively than demolishing them.

Vacant commercialized spaces tin beryllium transformed into originative hubs with earthy ventilation. Older buildings tin beryllium upgraded with insulation, reflective “cool roofs” and solar panels — each without altering their outer character.

Even residential buildings tin grow sustainably utilizing lightweight materials such arsenic cross-laminated timber (CLT), avoiding dense operation and preserving existing structures.

“In today’s world, demolition is not neutral,” Kalapoda says. “It is simply a determination to suffer energy, materials and past that cannot beryllium recovered.”

Greening the metropolis from above

In a metropolis with constricted space for parks, rooftops connection untapped potential.

Rooftop gardens tin trim the municipality vigor land effect, amended aerial quality, supply insulation and make caller greenish spaces without requiring further land.

Projects such arsenic Brooklyn Grange successful New York — the largest rooftop workplace successful the United States, show however unused roofs tin go productive ecosystems and assemblage hubs.

Could Athens follow Australia’s assemblage plot model?

Community gardens connection different applicable solution.

Widely established successful Australia, these shared spaces transform vacant onshore into areas for municipality cultivation, while strengthening κοινωνικά cohesion and improving intelligence wellbeing.

European cities such arsenic Rome and Vilnius person already adopted akin models, creating regulatory frameworks that let communities to negociate nationalist onshore for temporary use.

Kalapoda believes Athens could travel suit.

Municipalities person the capableness to allocate unused onshore for assemblage use, creating a decentralised web of greenish spaces crossed neighbourhoods, without large investment, but with wide governmental will.

A metropolis worth saving

Despite its challenges, Kalapoda remains optimistic.

“Athens has each the ingredients to go a exemplary Mediterranean metropolis of the future,” she says.

The question is nary longer whether alteration is needed, but whether the metropolis tin enactment successful clip to reshape its future.