Going toward resilience? Town planning, Peri-urban landscapes, and the expansion of Athens, Greece

Samaneh Sadat Nickayin, Antonio Tomao*, Giovanni Quaranta, Luca Salvati, Antonio Gimenez Morera

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalComment/debate

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The long-term expansion and the evolution of town planning of a contemporary European metropolis (Athens, Greece) has been analysed in this study in order to evaluate how sustainable urban growth has been taken into account in sequential strategic master plans. During the last decades, the mostly unplanned urban growth and massive housing construction have favoured a slow evolution towards a less compact and mono-centric spatial asset, typical of several Mediterranean cities. Despite efforts to guide urban growth, a series of structural challenges have remained: (i) a gap between planning and implementation; (ii) a gap between spatial planning and socio-economic planning; (iii) a relevant pressure on natural environment; (iv) a lack of participatory planning. In order to face these problems, current strategies for the city of Athens try to foster city resilience providing guidelines for more sustainable management of the built and natural landscape. In particular, the Resilience Strategy for 2030 proposes a list of actions to improve the well-being of citizens and to increase sustainability at the urban and territorial levels. A major role was given to the enhancement of the environmental quality of the metropolitan area and to the involvement of inhabitants in the various phases of decision-making.

Original languageEnglish
Article number10471
Pages (from-to)1-18
Number of pages18
JournalSustainability (Switzerland)
Volume12
Issue number24
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Other keywords

  • Demographic pressure
  • Greece
  • Green belt
  • Green infrastructure
  • Strategic master plan
  • Urban expansion

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