Athens is facing growing pressures in its housing sector, yet empty dwellings remain a persistent and largely unresolved feature of the city’s urban landscape. Since 2008, vacancy has increasingly become a focus of public debate, often linked to the real estate market crisis and concerns about the “decline” of central neighborhoods. More recently, amid a mounting housing affordability crisis, vacant housing has been framed in policy and public discussions as a dormant resource that could help alleviate shortages if properly identified and reactivated.
Despite this, vacancy remains widespread throughout the city. This talk presents the hypotheses and emerging questions of an ongoing book project examining the persistence of housing vacancy in Athens. It builds on my earlier research into the everyday production of empty housing in the Athens central neighborhoods and incorporates insights from preliminary fieldwork conducted during a recent return to the area. The project treats vacancy as a socio-spatial process shaped by property relations, everyday practices, and governance structures, moving beyond approaches that consider it solely as an indicator of housing supply.
The discussion focuses on how vacancy is understood and problematized in contemporary policy debates in Greece. It reflects on the processes that sustain vacancy, how these processes are shaped by the local property regime, and what this phenomenon reveals about the broader governance of property in contemporary Athens.
Ifigeneia Dimitrakou
Hybrid seminar
Join in situ: National Centre for Social Research, 9 Kratinou str., 10552 Athens (4th floor)
Join online: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/371529155760177?p=4vkwKab2tGW1pt1yCN
Meeting ID: 371 529 155 760 177
Passcode: ih2cW9fL
The presentation of Ifigeneia Dimitrakou is part of the seminar series Cities Lately of the LaSTcity which aims to contribute to the contemporary dialogue about cities as places that never cease to change. We engage in discussions with researchers from Greece and abroad about the shifting urban landscapes and their dynamic impacts on social organization and social life. We raise questions about new inequalities, divisions and displacements; about the redefinition of the city’s boundaries and its relationship with nature; about the economy of the city and the forms of its crisis; about spatial justice and the forms of its claims; about the new processes of producing the built environment; and about institutions and mechanisms of urban governance. About cities that suffocate, cities that breathe, and about everything… that is transforming (again) in cities lately.