Piraeus 1951-2011: demographic stagnation within a vibrant metropolis

The difference in population trends between the two centres appears to be that while the centre of Athens was totally coordinated with, and largely contributed to, the rapid population growth in the 1950s and the 1960s, the population in the centre of Piraeus remained rather stable and without any important fluctuation in the course of 60 years. This difference is clearly reflected in the building dynamic that characterises the two centres: the centre of Athens was massively built between 1946 and 1970 using the flats-for-land system (antiparochi) [2] and became the main concentration area of modern housing for the city’s middle and upper-middle strata. The centre of Piraeus followed a decade later, when the negative impact of this housing production system had started to become clear, and the housing preferences of middle and upper-middle strata had already turned massively to suburban locations in the north and the south of the agglomeration. Figure 4 shows clearly Piraeus’s lagging behind in the process of modern housing production.

Figure 4: Percentage of residents in house buildings in the Municipalities of Athens and Piraeus by the period these buildings were produced (2011)

Source: ELSTAT, Population census 2011 (https://panorama.statistics.gr/)

If the stability in the evolution of the population of Piraeus during the period of the dynamic growth of the metropolis (19050-1980) is due to the reasons mentioned above, its rather small decline after 1970 should mainly be attributed to the particular sectors of the economy located almost excllusively in Piraeus (e.g. related to shipping and the port) and to the fact that the move to the suburbs was more difficult for the middle-classes of Piraeus than for those of Athens. The broader periphery of Piraeus has very few residential areas desirable for its middle and upper-middle classes, while those in the norther and southern suburbs and in eastern Attiki are quite distant for commuting.

Commuting for work, for example, towrds the Municipalities of Athens and Piraeus in 2001 from suburbs highly ranked in terms of land values, [3] reveals the following situation: 38.651 towards Athens and 4.806 towards Piraeus (almost twice as large a flow to Athens taking into account the respective population of the two municipalities). Another facet of this comparison is shown in figure 5, where the greater difficulty to commute towrds Piraeus from the northern suburbs is clearly demonstrated.

Figure 5: Number of commuters moving daily for work to the Municipalities of Athens and Piraeus by 1.000 inhabitants and by municipality of origin (2001)

Source: ELSTAT, Population census 2001 (https://panorama.statistics.gr/)

The breadth  of migrant groups’ inflow during the 1990s is one more feature differentiating the demographic stability in Piraeus with the marked changes in the Municipality of Athens. The population decline in the latter between 1991 and 2001 (-2%) occurred in spite of the important inflow of migrants from Eastern Europe and from developing countries outside Europe whose percentage reached 16,2% of the Municipality’s population in 2001. On the contrary, the population increase in the Municipality of Piraeus during the same period (5,3%) depended much less on the increase of migrants who reached 8,4% of the Municipality’s population in 2001. The two Municipalities showed similar trends in the 2000s. Migrants (excluding citizens of developed economy countries) in 2011 reached 20,8% in the Municipality of Athens and 9,4% in the Municipality of Piraeus.

It is obvious that what appears as demographic stability or stagnation in Piraeus during the last decades is a phenomenon depending on multiple factors which cannot be examined in isolation from trends in the rest of the metropolis. It is also obvious that devising policies aiming at a new growth  –not only in demographic terms– cannot rely also on unidimensional analyses and assumptions.

Map 1: Percentage population change in the Municipalities of the Region of Attiki between 1991 and 2011

[1] A previous version of this text was published at the first volume of ‘Π’ (Piraeus) magazine, March 2011, p. 7-9.

[2] The flats-for-land system is a barter system based on an agreement between a land owner and a builder-contractor to construct a building and split the ownership of the apartments and/or offices and shops built, as per an initial contract describing each side’s level of participation in the relevant investment.

[3] Commuting to the Municipalities of Athens and Piraeus was registered, using the 2001 Census, from the Municipalities of Kifissia, Psychico, Filothei, Ekali, Ag. Paraskevi, Chalandri, Amarousio, Glyfada, Vouls and Vouliagmeni.