between housing disaster and forgotten suburbs | EUROtoday

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The nice European cities inform tales of prosperity and development, but additionally of profound inequalities. Milan, Paris, Athens and Madrid present how financial and cultural facilities can coexist with suburbs marked by housing precariousness, issue in accessing providers and social marginalisation. From the Parisian banlieues to the Milanese working-class neighborhoods, from the Athenian suburbs to the Madrid outskirts, a standard thread emerges: city improvement typically advances sooner than the social material, producing “two-speed” cities the place alternatives aren’t distributed equally. Analyzing incomes, entry to housing, transport and public areas, these experiences provide a comparative take a look at how the suburbs of European metropolises expertise a double actuality, between wealth and fragility. After the episodes on Milan and Paris, under is the reportage on Athens.

Athens is a metropolis of contrasts, the place the traditional coexists with the trendy, and the place fable is intertwined with on a regular basis life. It is the cultural and political capital of Greece, the center of the nation’s thousand-year historical past, but additionally a laboratory of anarchic city planning, marked by a long time of arbitrary constructions and a continual lack of public planning. Under the shadow of the Acropolis, amongst historic alleys and renovated neighborhoods, hidden suburbs the place visitors, social inequalities and housing crises make day by day life a continuing problem.

A metropolis that grew anarchically

The lack of public land, mixed with intense and sometimes improvised city planning for the reason that nineteenth century, has reworked Athens right into a metropolis with out clear guidelines. This constructing anarchy is mirrored each within the central neighborhoods and within the suburbs. Even right this moment, occasions comparable to floods reveal how the city planning selections of the previous proceed to weigh on the lives of residents. Nine years after the floods that killed 23 folks in Attica, one other tragedy struck Glyfada, a district on the southern coast, the place a girl was overwhelmed by the waters on January 21, 2026. The floods don’t solely outcome from unlawful constructions in areas as soon as occupied by the Ilissos and Kifissos rivers, but additionally from the absence of prevention plans, public works and civil safety funds, issues which were recurring for many years.

Traffic and entry to providers

The contrasts between middle and periphery manifest themselves day by day within the difficulties of touring and accessing well being providers. In the suburbs, journey occasions can multiply: to succeed in a public hospital, many residents face congested roads or lengthy journeys, with extra prices for taxis or personal automobiles. An aged man from Petroupolis, within the western suburbs, says he has to spend as much as 60 euros to succeed in the Alexandra hospital the place he receives most cancers therapy, as a result of he can’t drive.

The lack of public hospitals and clinics within the suburbs, mixed with much less frequent transport hyperlinks than within the centre, makes entry to healthcare a privilege for these residing in central neighborhoods and an insurmountable issue for a lot of within the western and northern suburbs.