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Salzburg Global Fellow Dr. Kalliopi Amygdalou explores how socio-spatial shifts redefine pluralism and equality in Greece and Turkey

Photo Credit: Markus Winkler from Pixabay

This op-ed was written by Dr. Kalliopi Amygdalou, who attended the Salzburg Global American Studies program "Beyond the Nation-State? Borders, Boundaries, and the Future of Democratic Pluralism" from September 19 to 23, 2023.

The built environment we inhabit reflects, but also conditions, the ways we work, consume, perform identities, pursue politics, practice social relationships, and participate in social mobility. As such, it is a core field through which we can record, uncover, study, and undo established and emerging boundaries that undermine equality and pluralism. Such tangible and intangible borders and boundaries can be traced in both urban and rural spaces.

The importance of cities cannot be understated – more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and this percentage is predicted to increase to 70% by 2050. Cities have historically been mechanisms of transcending barriers as well as spaces of mobility and emancipation. However, unequal access to nature and public transport, degradation of life quality because of the presence of industry or mega-infrastructures, the lack of public spaces and social infrastructures such as schools and hospitals, and other spatial parameters create internal divisions within the city. Such intangible, and sometimes tangible borders (such as fences and highways) often end up impossible to surpass once crossed, and drastically limit social mobility. Low and middle-income urban populations are frequently internally displaced because of uncontrolled real estate pressures. As a result of this, poor areas are gentrified, land and rent prices go up, and tenants are driven out of their neighborhoods (some examples from southeast Europe include Exarcheia and Metaxourgeio in Athens, where hundreds of apartments were purchased en-masse by local and foreign companies during the economic crisis, and Sulukule in Istanbul, where a whole Roma neighborhood was razed to the ground and replaced by high-income urban villas).¹  Lack of control over land use can also result in such displacements, for example when whole areas are taken over by profit-driven, consumption-based land uses (such as bars, cafes, entertainment, and short-term accommodation services), while residential, educational, production facilities, and public services are pushed further away.  

Meanwhile, rural areas are also facing drastic transformations as a result of climate change, pressure from the tourism industry, and depopulation, among other things. In Greece, the impact of tourism on local rent prices on many islands is such that public servants assigned to serve in local schools and hospitals cannot afford to stay anywhere and have sometimes ended up sleeping in camping sites. On the other side, these islands, whose physical boundaries and insular character once used to produce distinct cultures and historical trajectories, have now been homogenized to offer the expected “Greek summer”, one that does not require the crossing of any cultural borders; this one is already within the realm of the familiar and is easily and uniformly consumed no matter where the visitor disembarks the ferry.  In Turkey, whole villages on the western coast that used to be inhabited by populations who moved to Turkey from Greece with the 1923 population exchange (hence victims of the drawing of national borders) have now been targeted by tourism and real estate companies to convert “traditionally renovated” homes into hotels and summer houses for European pensioners (see, for example, the Karaburun area in Izmir). The old owners, who usually earn a living from agriculture and the tourism service sector, have now retreated to other, less “desirable” villages nearby until the latter attracts the interest of investors. In other instances, the privatization of beaches by large hotel complexes deprives locals of access to the sea. 

The above thoughts suggest that in the urban and rural landscapes that we inhabit, the problem is not boundaries per se – in some instances, it is the lack of them that creates inequality. As national borders are now eliminated by market forces, state intervention (or cross-state, such as EU legislation) seems to be the only way to limit inequality. New boundaries are needed, not to divide internally but to limit those mechanisms that create inequality; these should cap uncontrolled profit, identify permissible land uses, and limit land speculation. The state, which used to be the one enforcing borders, is now called upon to lift these new boundaries by intervening in space either directly (by creating social housing or new infrastructures) or indirectly (through legislation). 

1:  A wider change in social housing policies – wherever they exist – by which subsidizing ‘brick and mortar’ is now replaced by subsidizing rent, intensifies this exodus. This means that rather than providing housing in state-made structures located all over the city, the state gives tenants financial support to rent wherever they choose. As a result, poverty-line populations cluster in specific areas where rent is cheap and create ghetto communities.

Dr. Kalliopi Amygdalou is a senior researcher at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. She is an architect and principal investigator of the ERC Starting Grant HOMEACROSS. She has previously worked as a Marie Skodowska-Curie Individual Fellow (Programme REPLICIAS, 2017-2019), and her research interests include questions of space, architectural history, and cultural heritage in southeastern Europe.

Dr. Kalliopi Amygdalou attended the Salzburg Global American Studies program on “Beyond the Nation-State? Borders, Boundaries, and the Future of Democratic Pluralism” from September 19-23, 2023. The 2023 Salzburg Global American Studies Program focused on the contestations and renegotiations of boundaries beyond the nation-state, and how they are changing the representation of democratic pluralism.