[ΓΦ4500] Specific topics of Geography (5 ECTS credits)

Central District of Athens (pale yellow) | Northern District of Athens (red) | Western District of Athens (magenta) | Southern District of Athens (green) | District of Eastern Attica (light grey)| District of Western Attica (pink) | District of Piraeus (purple) | District of Islands (including the islands of the Argo-Saronic gulf: Salamina, Aegina, Agkistri, Poros, Hydra, Spetses, and parts on Peloponnesian coast in fron of them, and the island of Kythira (historico-geographically one of the Ionian island) as well (aquamarine).

Link to the english version of the official website which is still under construction... on 2024, May 31.

See on the website of EuroGeographics, an independent international not-for-profit organisation representing Europe’s National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authorities: https://eurogeographics.org/member/hellenic-cadastre/ 

The Hellenic Cadastre INSPIRE Geoportal:  https://www.ktimanet.gr/geoportal/catalog/main/home.page 

Also a description in English from the Linkedin profile (!!!): The NATIONAL CADASTRE & MAPPING AGENCY S.A. company is a Legal Entity of Private Law and its mission is the study, development and operation of the Hellenic Cadastre. The company was founded with a joint decision of the Minister of Economy and Finance and the Minister of Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works (Decision 81706/6085/6-10-1995/Government Gazette 872Β/19-10-1995). NCMA S.A. operates according to the rules of private finance and the provisions of article 5 of Law 2229/1994, of the coded Law 2190/1920, of Law 2308/1995 and Law Ν.2664/1998, as these stand today. Furthermore, the company does not fall under the class of organizations and businesses of the broader state sector; regulations that concern companies directly or indirectly owned by the State do not apply to NCMA S.A.

Official EU's Commission website of INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe)

Greek website in English version (description only - no tools): Geospatial Data INSPIRE Geoportal of the "Hellenic Cadastre"

The Hellenic Cadastre INSPIRE Geoportal: https://www.ktimanet.gr/geoportal/catalog/main/home.page

geodata.gov.gr provides open geospatial data and services for Greece, serving as a national open data catalogue, an INSPIRE-conformant Spatial Data Infrastructure, as well as a powerful foundation for enabling value added services from open data. Unfortunately, the geodata.gov.gr service has been suspended [most probably in Spring 2018]: https://ellak.gr/2015/12/to-neo-geodata-gov-gr-anikto-logismiko-gia-anikta-geochorika-dedomena/  2018-12-04 OPERATING AGAIN !

link to the web page of the State company ATTIKO METRO S.A. with maps of current metro lines in Attica and those planned. Interesting matter for a geographer !

Council of Europe, Directorate General of Democracy and Political Affairs, Directorate of Democratic Institutions. Series:  Structure and operation of local and regional democracy. - The publication takes into account the "Law 3852/2010 (OG 87 A) ”New architecture of Decentralised Administration and Self-government – the Kallikrates Programme” restructuring the administrative organisation of the country for first and second level local government (municipalitiesand regions) and establishing seven Decentralised Administration Authorities as single decentralised state administration units, which automatically and without any further formality enjoy all the rights and responsibilities /obligations of the abolished regions."

Local and regional democracy in Greece   CG/2015(28)8FINAL  26 March 2015

Monitoring Committee, rapporteurs: Artur TORRES PEREIRA, Portugal (L, EPP/CCE), Gudrun MOSLER-TÖRNSTRÖM, Austria (R, SOC), Recommendation 372 (2015) 2   Explanatory memorandum 5

Hagemans, Iris and van Hemert, Patricia and Meerkerk, Joachim and Risselada, Anne and van Winden, Risselada (2020) ABCitiEs Policy Evaluation Report. Research Report. European Union, Brussels.  

Website of the presentation of the project (funded by INTERREG programme) https://projects2014-2020.interregeurope.eu/abcities/ 

Municipality of Athens, Action Plan https://projects2014-2020.interregeurope.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/tx_tevprojects/library/file_1599228997.pdf 

Find also conferences and lectures on https://www.youtube.com/@EcoleFrancaisedAthenes

A European research team, headed by Utrecht University is conducting a comparative study in 13 European cities [Athens is one of them]. Research will also be carried out in Toronto (Canada), one of the world’s most diverse cities. Four years from 1 March 2013 to 28 February 2017(European Commission 7th Framework Programme). On 2018-11-26, the project main webpage was blank, but many handbooks were available as workpackages wp: A HANDBOOK FOR GOVERNING HYPER-DIVERSE CITIES https://www.urbandivercities.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DIVERCITIES-Handbook-Digital.pdf now on https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316656064_A_Handbook_for_Governing_Hyper-Diverse_Cities || HANDBOOK OF ATHENS (2017) https://www.urbandivercities.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Divercities-City-Book-Athens.pdf  || Now, 2021/22, handbooks are no more available on the official project website.  This EU FP7 project closed in 2017. See final report: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/319970/reporting (2017).

... in Paris and the Ile-de-France region, London and Athens through real and virtual walks. The project was devised as part of the European Union's Culture 2000 program, A.R.V.H.A. (Association for Research on the City and Habitat), the project's French co-ordinator, in collaboration with British architects and academics from A.T.A.P. (Anne Thorne Partnership Architects) and Greek architects from OMADA 80 architects and planners consultants, Sotiris Papadopoulos, Architect. Athens (English) http://www.culture2000.tee.gr/ATHENS/ENGLISH/main2.html  Athènes (Français) http://www.culture2000.tee.gr/ATHENS/FRENCH/main2.html              

The project (funded by EC Horizon 2020 see https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/727058), in continuity of DIVERCITIES, ended in 2021. Greece was of the case studies: https://www.cohsmo.aau.dk/index.php/greece/  Selected areas, all in Attica: The central Municipality of Athens (located in the centre of Attica Basin), the suburban Municipality of Pallini (located in the north-eastern suburban zone) and the rural Municipality of Marathon (located in the north-eastern “periphery” of the region of Attica). See here documents. || COHSMO final handbook is dowloadable at https://build.dk/Pages/COHSMO.aspx 

Eight-part podcast series produced for "This is Athens - Athens visitor's Guide" (of which the link is here given) with Sofka Zinovieff, British anthopologist, journalist, author. the podcasts can be accessed from https://soundcloud.com/user-46820274-209698857/sets/athens-unpacked 

"Rethink Athens is a vision for the redesign of the inner city of Athens. It was developed by OKRA Landscape Architects and won first place in a competition held by the Onassis Foundation. The OKRA vision for Athens provided a multi-disciplinary redesign that accounted for traffic flows, cultural and social exchange, and enhanced sustainability using green and blue technologies."

"Together with OKRA Landscape architects (Utrecht, NL) and Werner Sobek Green Technologies (Stuttgart, D), the ENVI-met team analyzed the capacity of the OKRA design proposal to improve air temperature, thermal comfort and building energy usage within the city of Athens."

The ISTOPOL research project investigates apartment blocks in Athens as locales of social and ethnic cohabitation, but also of segregation among the different social and eth[n]ic groups of their residents. 

FAIRVILLE: Facing inequalities and democratic challenges through co-production in cities. see https://www.fairville-eu.org/ 

"Mapping the Commons of Athens[1] took place at the end of 2010, at the year when Greece started losing its financial independence. (...) Inspired by the thought of Hardt and Negri, the workshop ‘Mapping the Commons, Athens’ aimed to study and empower these emerging forms of resistance, by focusing on the city’s most significant wealth, its commons."

"Athens Naked Truth" is a campaign that aims at:
a) raising awareness on the subtle promotion of discrimination and inequality on the one hand, and
b) highlighting how community, solidarity and sisterhood can be the key in creating collective solutions and proposing concrete alternatives to the existing normalisation and institutionalisation of violence.

The booklet: results of the Athens Naked Truth: Counter-Cartography Workshop https://interaliaproject.com/event/athens-naked-truth-a-counter-cartography-workshop/ 

Commonspace is recognised as "a network of experts and scientists involved in Urban and Spatial planning and Environmental Management, combining research work and study projects." "So far, the network has collaborated with Universities, Educational Institutions, Public Benefit Institutions, Municipalities, Regional Governments, NGOs and various Enterprises."

"Commonspace has created a specifically structured methodology and a set of tools regarding Participatory Planning of Public Space. Our main goal is to promote and empower Participatory Planning as a design paradigm that emphasizes involving the entire community in the strategic and management processes of public space planning."

European Middle Class Mass Housing COST Action. "The short documentary presents a small selection of the interviews that have been conducted within the research program. It is a short and selective story of antiparochi that arises on the one hand through the personal and subjective views, narratives and memories of the ‘protagonists’ of the phenomenon and on the other hand through the views of antiparochi’s scholars, focusing on the case of Athens." (Prof. Th. Maloutas, [currently emeritus])

CHALKIAS Christos et al. (2016)

Coordinated by [now emeritus] Prof. Kostis Hadjimichalis, a team of scientists promotes the subject of Radical Geography to Greek academic and to general public, primarily through organizing seminars in Radical Geography and Political Economy with participation of university academics. Seminars are conducted in Greek but also in the (foreign) language of the guest from abroad. The videos of the edition 2021 which was on-line due to covid-19 pandemic restrictions, are availble on the FB account of "Radical Geography Notebooks". Here is the link of the FB account.

Some of the participants from abroad: David Harvey – CUNY New York, USA| Erik Swyngedouw - University of Manchester|

Coordinated by (now emeritus) Prof. Kostis Hadjimichalis, a team of scientists promotes the subject of Radical Geography to Greek academic and to general public, primarily through organizing seminars in Radical Geography and Political Economy with participation of university academics from Greece and abroad. Seminars are conducted in Greek but also in the (foreign) language of the guest from abroad. Here is the link to the specific webpage  http://radicalgeography.gr from where videos of the different editions are available (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018).

Some of the participants from abroad: David Harvey – CUNY New York, USA| Mike Edwards - UCL, UK |Nuria Benach - University of Barcelona, Spain | Camille Schmoll – Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot, France | Pelin Tan -  Mardin Artuklu University, Turkey| Richard Walker – University of California, Berkeley, USA|  Bernd Bellina – University of Frankfurt, Germany | Ray Hudson – University of Durham, UK| Eric Clark – Lund University, Sweden| 

INDIGO is an inter- and transdisciplinary project, which puts the discussion about shared land uses, land property and use rights within the interdisciplinary context of ownership regimes and the ‘governance of the Commons’. INDIGO partners jointly examine contemporary concepts of land use, ownership and the Commons and ways to govern them. 

With English subtitles. Available until We. 30.04/2025 23:59 - Directed byMarina Danezi

The documentary "SPLENDID CITY - Athens Urban Stories" highlights the unwritten story of the capital. Men and women, ordinary people and iconic personalities, restless artists and hard workers, young and not so young ones, authentic urban residents and internal emigrants, locals and refugees, share their stories, their various perspectives, their minor or major achievements and their special signs of communication in the common urban environment.

'Imagining Greece' is an evolving research-based exhibition that explores how social, political, and cultural forces have shaped Greece's image as a tourist destination.