Athens: Urban social division during the transition from the city under Ottoman rule to the capital of Greece

Therefore, it is worth remembering that the new urban plan prepared for the capital (Kleanthis and Schaubert plan, 1834) did not per se have the power to impose specific forms of spatial division and thus any forms of social spatial division observed in the first post liberation decades are not due to it.

Two of the capital’s new main avenues, Athinas Street and Peiraios Street, would bear the brunt of a (new) social spatial division a few decades after the attempts to implement the first urban plan of Athens had started in earnest. Incidentally, the plan had officially been rejected despite its original approval. Although both avenues were included in the original plan, each avenue had its own particular dynamics, arising both from its contribution to the process of reproduction of spatial and social differentiation and from the point in time after which each of them started to integrate forms of separation.. Athinas’ Street undeniable ideological role in the Kleanthis plan, due to the symbolic connection of the seat of power with the prestige of antiquity, often obscures its importance as a host of functional changes. That role prevailed when the planned Palace was shifted elsewhere. Specifically, as the new production setting and the new (social) relations of production took hold, the previous feudal structure started to crumble. The various craft/artisan production uses and the commercialisation/exhibition of the produced goods changed: their earlier presence in a single spatial unit and their connection to the same person were soon replaced by production areas and “linear” spatial elements (commercial axes, product display and exhibition areas), with specialised promoters for each process. This was the role of Athinas Street with respect to the areas behind or near it, such as the Psiri area and the “traditional” bazaar. In fact, it was anticipated that its commercial role would be enhanced by the “hosting” it would provide to shopping centres at its northern end. Athinas Street thus assumed a crucial role, which originally served mainly as a trigger of urban/functional differentiation and not for social segregation purposes.

A few years later, Peiraios Street played a synergistic role to that effect. It was originally intended to connect the capital with its (new) port, in the shadow of the “Long Walls”. However, it acquired a new character in the mid-19^th century, after the Metaxourgeio was built at a short distance from the street (to its west), close to Omonoia Square. The Metaxourgeio was originally intended to be a shopping centre but eventually became a silk factory. Α few years later, the foundations for the new partitioning of the capital were laid when the 19^th century’s inherently revolutionary presence of industrial activity manifested itself in Athens with the gas factory, at the junction of Peiraios and Ermou Streets. Athinas Street now served as a “border”. The western part of the city, the part to the west of Athinas Street, was an industrial zone and a low-income residential area. The first social housing soon emerged around Metaxourgeio and the gas factory. The eastern part of the city, the part east of Athinas Street, was the area for services and middle and upper social class residences.

However, this situation was not static. The border of functional and social segregation is not consolidated in space and time – it exists only for as long as there are reasons for the continuous reproduction of this role. The key planning interventions of the second half of the 19^th century are therefore more intelligible if they are viewed from that perspective On the one hand, the new Pireaus-Athens railway terminated at Thissio; the recreation area of the Faliro Bay was integrated into that operation, and industrial activity was promoted in Piraeus and along Peiraios Street itself. On the other hand, the hegemonic role of a newly established urban character was reinforced, either by creating a particular architectural style or with inner avenues, such as Alexandras avenue, defining individual areas. Both of these practices were echoing similar attitudes to architectural and urban design in 19^th century Europe. These observations are repeated further if one looks at two residential areas which were incorporated into the city plan during the last decade of the 19th century: the indifferent, Hippodamian plan for Kolonos to the working class west, and the elaborate, almost Renaissance style, plan for Vathrakonissi (Pagkrati) to the east.