Improvisational Athens

By Michael Kavalar, AICP

Athens is a city of chronological superlatives. Founded 3,000 years ago, its central Acropolis — from acros for "high" and polis for "city" — still rises as the defining feature above the lock-step march of its dense, gray-white blocks. A thousand years before the dissolution of the Roman empire into a foundering Western one and a millennial, Greek-speaking Eastern one — known today as Byzantium — the Greeks had already laid the foundation stones of Western civilization.

It is a reality that makes Athens an undeniably ancient city, even while the modern Greek state, established around the time Chicago was founded and after a protracted war of independence with the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s, remains a surprisingly young one.

I traveled to Athens last October as a sort of linguistic tourist — a seemingly natural progression following two years of self-study and countless afternoons subjecting Greek shop owners in New York City to the infinite ways one can fail to stick the landing on almost every consonant-vowel combo in their language. But I had also come as a city planner, to see post-austerity Athens — an Athens one rarely sees portrayed on the walls of the Greek grocers and cafes that dot Astoria.

Mario Chatzidamianos stands in front of his Creators of Kosmos storefront, dedicated to live action role playing. "We want to create a LARP Silicon Valley," he beams. Photo by Michael Kavalar.

Morning view looking north from the foothills of the Acropolis. Beyond the densely clustered blocks of central Athens is Mount Lycabettus. Photo by Michael Kavalar.

The end of austerity

In August 2018, Greece officially emerged from nearly a decade of austerity measures enacted by the Hellenic Parliament as a condition of $330 billion in bailout funds from the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

The official end of austerity measures — feted by the central government — came two months before my arrival. But unemployment still hovered near 20 percent and the commercial hearts of Greek cities remained pocked by empty storefronts and deferred maintenance. Official figures provided by the city of Athens place the number of vacant retail spaces at more than 1,700, or 27 percent of all retail space in the city. Walking the streets of Athens, I quickly lost count of the ubiquitous ΕΝΟΙΚΙΑΖΕΤΑΙ ("For Rent") signs posted in windows, usually in a neat, sans serif font.

To address these ongoing challenges, Athens has embarked on a pilot program of small, targeted investments known as ΠΟΛΗ² (Polis², pronounced "Polis squared"). Developed by the city under the auspices of the Athens Development and Destination Management Agency, the program's core mission is to "create and showcase the city's identity," principally through the revitalization of shops and through small-scale, citizen-driven improvements to the public realm centered on what's known as the "Athens Triangle" (roughly located in the area marked out by Omonia, Syntagma, and Monastiraki squares).

Polis² — motto, "Small Interventions, Big Impacts" — explicitly models itself after a kind of "urban acupuncture" promoted by Brazil's Jaime Lerner (famous for the institution of Curitiba's Bus Rapid Transit program). Polis² centers on two major approaches. The first, "Interventions in the City," offers financial and technical support to residents to implement proposals for small-scale interventions in the city that run the gamut from street furniture to guerrilla-style parks improvements. The second, known as "Shops in the Center," seeks to revitalize abandoned shops and, by extension, adjacent neighborhoods.

My visit was timed with the launch of the second category, specifically of seven new program-supported stores around Theatrou Square, in the frayed edges between Athens's Psirri and Omonia neighborhoods.

The day before the official launch of Polis², staff members of Coco Mat — a sustainable bicycle rental store aimed at tourists — finishes setting up shop. Photo by Michael Kavalar.

Polis² launch

On an overcast October morning, I arrive at Theatrou Square through the narrow, bustling, stone-paved streets that lead from the Monastiraki subway station. Just blocks from the touristic heart of the city, the din of visitors quickly cedes to that of a different Athens: working class, with sidewalks piled with the goods of hardware stores, paint shops, and the like. Many storefronts sit silent, gated, with a smattering of empty boxes visible behind their dusty glass. Shops in the Polis² program are easy to spot: Square signs reading ΠΟΛΗ (or "Polis") in architectural font glow a peppy, neon green amid the wash of gray and off-white facades.

As I arrive, the ADDMA press team hurriedly directs the installation of a Polis² poster in the front window of one shop looking out over Theatrou Square. The shop, Book and Play, is dedicated to games for the elderly and refugees and includes a multilingual library. This storefront will be the backdrop for Mayor Giorgos Kamini's remarks about the Polis² launch, and film crews from local news stations have already assumed their spots. The square's other six new shops include a design lab, a nonprofit cultural events organizer, an Athens urban advocacy space, a performative cultural space, a bicycle rental shop, and a live action role playing organizer.

Theatrou Square was once a traditional center of artisanship and a beloved meeting point. Today it is less a discernible square than a donut of roadbed and parking lots centered around an industrial crafts school. With most of the square's shops shuttered in the mid-2000s, today it feels largely forgotten despite its proximity to thriving Monastiraki Square. The location of seven new shops around its perimeter and adjacent streets sends an important symbolic message: that despite a decade of extreme austerity measures and the loss of 100,000 residents — nearly 15 percent of the city's population — a program of targeted investments can bring spaces like this back to life.

Mayor Giorgos Kamini speaks to reporters during the program's official launch. Photo by Michael Kavalar.

While waiting for the mayor's remarks, I speak about Polis² with Alexis Galinos, managing director of the ADDMA, who supervises the program. He tells me entrepreneurs with a social mission are invited to apply. Those selected get free retail space and electricity on a six-month trial basis set to expire this month (April 2019). Agile by many municipal measures, the Shops in the Center program took about a year and a half to set up.

Galinos describes, in only ever so slightly accented English, overcoming two major hurdles: "the need to develop a viable prototype methodology ... and the formal contracting of the shops, which took the longest." He points to the complexity of tracking ownership in a city with a history of emigration, noting that in the case of one storefront, six separate relatives — one of whom lived in Australia — held ownership claims.

Galinos is sanguine but realistic in his expectations for the program's success. "Six months won't be enough," he confides, pointing to the challenges posed by everything from the pull of malls on the outskirts of the city to the continued out-migration of young, college-educated Greeks — as many as 200,000 nationally since 2010.

He also highlights the outsized role played by the national government in advancing local initiatives. "In Greece," — a country whose population, at 10 million, only slightly outnumbers that of New York City — "local government has extremely limited authority," Galinos explains. "We can't take action without approval of the central government."

When I chat with the owners of two shops, another potential impediment to their ventures' success becomes clear: the inability on the part of the ADDMA to clear the administrative hurdles that would have allowed them to serve coffee and confections.

On this afternoon, however, many seem optimistic. From conversations with locals at area bars and shopkeepers, including the Bangladeshi owners of a small convenience store now flanked by two sprightly Polis² storefronts, I get the general feeling that things have been improving. Private investors have also begun to purchase buildings around the square, including a long-abandoned hotel complex.

When I passed by the day before the launch, I encountered Mario Chatzidamianos, founder of Polis² shop Creators of Kosmos — from ΚΟΣΜΟΣ, meaning simply "world" in Modern Greek — and his team practicing a live-action role playing scenario in the narrow street. A row of older men watched from the arcaded sidewalk of a cafe just feet away. A former war reporter and cancer survivor whose cane lends him an authoritative air among his young staff, Chatzidamianos was already planning an expansion into the floors above his shopfront and stresses how critical the six months of free rent were to this. "We want to create a LARP Silicon Valley," he beamed.

Yet Galinos and the Polis² team also recognize the larger forces currently buffeting Athens. "We're taking our chances here basically," Galinos confides. Seeking to articulate one growing challenge with visible impacts in the area's narrow, labyrinthine streets, Galinos pauses before haltingly asking, "What's the politically polite term in English for junkies?" (One member of the Polis² team implored me to avoid wandering into areas a stone's throw from Theatrou Square.)

The neon program logo is visible on the restored storefront. Photo courtesy This Is Athens.

Faros program

Another challenge for the city: Greece's role as an epicenter of immigration in recent years, largely for vulnerable refugee populations. At the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that nearly one million refugees arrived in the European Union, with the vast majority (816,752) arriving by sea in Greece, typically on islands just off the Turkish coast. While most were Syrians fleeing the civil war there, this number also includes significant Afghani (20 percent) and Iraqi (seven percent) populations. Today these numbers have declined, but immigration remains a key issue generating significant needs in the country related to housing, resources, and care for these vulnerable populations. While some of the Polis² shops seek to serve these needs, the scale of the challenge is clearly beyond the program's scope.

Toward the end of my stay, I arrive at a nondescript street near Greece's National Archaeological Museum in the Exarchia neighborhood. I've come to meet with staff at the Faros Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping refugees in Athens, with a growing focus on unaccompanied minors. It's a sunny October morning when I arrive, light streaming into the large common conference room of the foundation's second-floor offices. I'm met by Finance and Program Director Kenneth Brant Hansen, an affable Danish man with a soft demeanor.

Since its founding in 2014 — at which point it had one social worker; occupied one room and a small day center; and primarily offered soccer games and free food — Faros has steadily grown. In 2015, at the peak of the refugee crisis, Athens's Victoria Square became an infamous squatting ground. Unprepared for the needs of the refugee population, the city was slow to react. While trash and clothes dropped off by concerned Athenians piled up in the square, refugee women struggled to find sanitary restrooms for themselves and their children. In response, Faros expanded its modest program to include a drop-in center — a place to get warm, wash up, and share a cup of hot tea with other women.

Faros has since expanded to three centers: one focused on unaccompanied minors, a women's and children's center, and a new educational center. The programs seek to have what Hansen terms the "full package of street work": meeting basic needs, helping refugees to apply for asylum, and organizing family reunifications. The program has also expanded its focus to include addressing the long-term realities of integration and job preparedness.

Meanwhile, the city has stepped up its efforts. "One of the good outcomes [of the refugee crisis]," Hansen says, "is that there is more cooperation with the city of Athens." This includes data sharing and the establishment of various working groups organized by the city and focused on addressing refugee needs. Greece has also since established a formal accommodation program that rents 20,000 units throughout the country for refugee families, as well as a cash distribution program. Faros acts as a key connection point for both.

Migrants sit outside their tents in Victoria Square in 2015. Many stay in Athens temporarily before trying to continue their trip to more prosperous northern European countries. Photo by AP Photo/Fotis Plegas G.

But while Greece remains an important point of entry into the EU, sitting out at its watery, southeastern-most edge, Hansen notes that many immigrants intend to move on to countries such as Germany and France. Family reunification — which generally implies reuniting refugees with family in western and northern European countries — has become an increasingly important focus, a reality reflected in instruction. Classes invariably include English; Greek is far from a given. Kenneth draws the comparison between Greek and his own language, Danish. "Greek is a small language," Hansen explains, "and English is the important one." (The prevalence of English in Athens, from cafe signs to the English-only motto of the ADDMA — "This is Athens!" — can seem at times almost pathological, but the abundance of Greek-language bookshops that dot the city suggests a savvier kind of diglossia at play.)

In addition to English, Faros offers courses in the languages of important EU destinations, principally German. "We're trying to focus on classes that make sense in this context," Hansen says.

Like Polis², one could understand Faros in the larger context of targeted, urban acupuncture-like interventions in the city. It is a response to extraordinary circumstances and few resources, the "big impacts" in this case extending well beyond the compact metropolis of Athens.

Members of Faros's streetwork team speak to an unaccompanied migrant youth about its services. Photo courtesy Faros.

Improvisation

The character Karaghiozis originates from Turkish shadow theater, one of the many legacies of the centuries-long Ottoman occupation. Shutterstock image.

Sitting in a traditional Greek cafe one morning, I look up to see a series of two-foot-tall figures hewn from translucent plastic. I've encountered versions of them throughout the city, as ubiquitous as the decorative "Greek key" that adorns almost any Beaux-Arts structure in the U.S. (and even many coffee cups in New York).

The older man working this morning kindly explains that the figures are characters from traditional Greek shadow theater, the central protagonist of which is Karaghiozis. Like much here, the shifting and porous history of borders in the region manifests itself in most every aspect of Greek society. Karaghiozis has his origins in Turkish shadow theater, one of the many legacies of the centuries-long Ottoman occupation.

In the scene in front of me, Karaghiozis, a poor Greek peasant who lives in a hut, stage left, is juxtaposed to the local pasha, or Ottoman official, who occupies a palace, stage right. The basic structure of each story varies little, with Karaghiozis almost always assenting to some task for which he is ill-prepared: Karaghiozis the Cook, Karaghiozis the Doctor, Karaghiozis the Singer, and so on. One reading of the tradition is that of a comical figure, a dishonest and deceitful clown who persists in getting himself into trouble.

Yet for many Greeks, Karaghiozis symbolizes something more: cleverness and improvisation in the face of forces beyond one's control. Having seen the improvisation at work with both the Polis2 and Faros programs and having witnessed in the streets the aplomb with which Athenians have adapted themselves to the ebbs and flows of regional and world forces, this reading feels instinctively right to me. Karaghiozis is not merely a figure acted upon at the edge of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, but the very expression of that crossroads itself.

The seven new shops around Theatrou Square send an important symbolic message: Targeted investments can bring spaces like this back to life.

Michael Kavalar is a city planner, amateur linguist, and compulsive walker based in New York City.