‘You can’t have a lovely villa within dreadful surroundings’
According to militant architect-town planner Rena Kloutsinioti, people are taking up more space without gaining a better quality of life. «Until the mid-1980s there were housing needs, but today the available evidence shows that we don’t have the same needs. Instead of building better-quality homes, we are building worse ones. In Greece, the prevailing view restricts the concept of the home to the four walls, but you can’t have a lovely villa within dreadful surroundings.» As for any guarantees provided within current legislation, Kloutsinioti said that protection requires methods and tools that the state could first of all use to intervene in the city as it exists. «If the law provided incentives to improve the area around buildings and loans to refurbish old buildings, people would not look for homes elsewhere. Banks keep asking us to take out loans for a new home, so people are moving from western to eastern Athens, with everything that entails. No building code can help if the state doesn’t decide on a housing policy.» We asked whether incorporating an area into the town plan protects it from illegal building. «It simply restricts its extent within the area, but more goes on outside its limits. As town planners, we have asked for money to be invested in areas being included in the town plan so that common space can be set up with some quality standards. That has never happened.» She pointed out that including an area in the town plan does nothing to correct what has already been done illegally. «The problem is a complex one. All the provisions in the law refer to future actions, so often people justifiably wonder what they have to gain by it,» said Kloutsinioti. «In the 1980s, for every Athenian there was 30 square meters of built environment; now there are over 75. More than enough. Athens has large empty spaces, such as Elaionas, the industrial port zone from Drapetsona and Keratsini to Perama. If resources are directed toward those areas, in restoring the urban environment and improving the existing housing potential, things would be different,» said Kloutsinioti, pointing to what had been done successfully in the city center. «We could revive the soft underbelly of Athens – I am not only talking about Elaionas or Kerameikos but Kallithea and Patissia.» However, Kloutsinioti has no illusions about the future, and fears that soon the Mesogeia plain will no longer be as we know it. «Although there is a zone of housing control, there is no provision for the town’s cohesiveness. All municipalities are pressing to extend their boundaries. (Public Works and Environment Minister Giorgos) Souflias could declare an end to any more extensions of the town plan and order the demolition of illegally constructed buildings.» This article first appeared in the April 9 issue of K, Kathimerini’s color supplement. Photographs by Dimitris Michalakis.
