Pop goes the city

popupcity.net/2013/04/three-inspiring-examples-of-greek-crisis-urbanism

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The Greek financial melt down has gotten tossed around like a pinata a birthday party.  It's been held up by potential higher office seekers for political gain and by pundits who use it as a scenario of doom or as "a teaching moment."   Yet Vivian Doumpa, the author of "Three Inspiring Examples of Greek Crisis Urbanism,"  has managed to find something good in all this Greek tragedy.  Pop-up urbanism.  Why not.  We have pop up stores, pop up restaurants, pop up events, so why not pop up urbanism.  What is this phenomena?  In the case of Greece, it a response to the rampant mis-management by poor public-led urban planning strategies that took place before the economic explosion.  In the midst of all of this, there is a clarion call for bottom up initiatives that would be able to improve the urban condition.  Non-governmental organizations, citizens, private agencies, and institutions have begun to engage in urbanism initiative-slowly, place by place.  In doing so, each is attempting to conquer the negative mood and stimulate public dialogue through interesting projects that "pop up" in around the Greek poli and the periphery.  Ms. Doumpa presents three examples of inspiring efforts of bottom-up urbanism that hope to combat the negative mood inspired by the Greek melt down.

The first example is the Argallios project by the Athenian architecture firm Kolletivemind* (kolleketivemind.com
).  This is a public installation located on the fence of a primary school in a less privileged area of Chania on the island of Crete (I'll refrain from any Minotaur references).  The project was based on the island's traditional weaving patterns.  The colorful needlework was recreated on the fence by using 2,100 recyclable plastic bottles, cleaned, painted in six traditional color, and placed in the diamond-shaped holes of the fence.  This project was initiated by Kollektivemind* who invited the local community to participate in the project.  Other than recreating a landmark for a neglected area that holds ecological and cultural meaning, it was an effort to prompt the residents to engage in a community practice as well as raise awareness of the reclamation of public space.  All right I can see it, gather the community and various agencies, engage them in large-scale project.  It sounds like fun for about a day but what about long-term public engagement?  How is public space reclaimed?  What is inspirational about this?  To quote, Robert Harris, the great one of the USC School of Architecture, "So what?"

My general critique about projects like this is that they're great and bring the all the segments of a community together but how does this translate over the long-term?  In other words, how does this help address the real needs of a community-i.e. housing, health care, education, transportation, infrastructure, and so forth?

The next example is Syn-oikia Pittaki (Neighborhood Pittaki).  The project was undertaken by the creative studio Beforelight (www.beforelight.gr/)  and the non-profit group Imagine the City (www.imaginethecity.gr/), founded in 2010 and well-known firms in the cities of Athens and Thessaloniki.  Their  Syn-oikia Pittaki project took place in the downtown area of Psirri, which was seriously affected by the economic crisis and now faces the problems of crime and urban decay.  The result of these issues has given way to dead public spaces such as Pittaki Street.  In order to bring the spaces back to life, the group decided to gather up old lamps, repair them during an open workshop, and install them as new lighting infrastructure.  Great idea, because not only does provide something aesthetically pleasing but also something that was able to bring people out into the streets.  The street and the project have become a symbol of community power in Athens in the darkest times of the crisis.

Now this is a project that has some real impact.  On a pragmatic level, it introduces lighting into formally dead public spaces which help combat the criminal element.  Second, using lighting helps bring citizens out into the streets so they can experience the place and interact with each.  Quite literally, strangers become friends.  It also raises awareness of the space, thus, community members can take action to reclaim the space by improving it aesthetically and design-wise.  Last, by holding open workshops to repair the lamps, the architects are giving local artisans a chance to practice their skills and gain exposure.  Now this is inspiring.

The last example cited is Atenistas (http://atenistas.org/), an open community of Athenians who love their city.  They believe that their initiative offer a choice for citizens to the express their desire for a better quality of life through real action.  These choices include pop-up parks, cleaning and refurbishing public building (mostly schools), flash-mobs (sigh, eye roll), artistic interventions, social-related seminars, urban walks, and charity events.  By keeping costs down, their funding is derived from crowd-sourcing, and using a DIY approach to design, they involve the local population in each and every step of their actions.  Further, the collective runs a "civil" group which serves as an intermediary between the citizens and local government in order to foster more efficient public dialogue and problem solving.  Atenistas has become an urban movement all over Greece.  Presently there are almost twenty similar programs, on the mainland and the islands.  The common, but most important, thread is citizen participation.

Overall, none of the projects cited here can be considered successful and sustainable without citizen participation.  Yet, of the three, the last one has the most promise for short and long term sustainability because its work has a wider scope.  Instead of a one-off project, Atenistas is intent on becoming a very serious urban initiative that has the potential to overturn the poor planning policies of the past.  This is how bottom-up initiative work, public dialogue, citizen participation, and long-term thinking is the way to pull a society out of crisis.