Becoming European: Spatializing Authoritarianisms in Athens’ City Centre

From being imagined as the ‘cradle of democracy’ a brief walk around the centre of Athens while discussing with some local residents will soon persuade the wanderer otherwise. It is very difficult not to wonder why the city centre looks like a continuous construction site or like a fragmented barricade wall of tall metal plates or if there is something dangerous going on judging by the omnipresence of armed police on foot and on motorbikes. Although these images have become almost banal for people working and living in the city centre, it doesn’t mean that they are not commented and challenged.

Present-day Athens has little to do with residents’ participation in the decisions that concern its production and governance of space and urban life. Rather, one might argue the city centre has been overwhelmed by multiple often entangled authoritarianisms. The ever-presence of riot, special and other police bodies around Exarcheia square, with the pretext of protecting the metro works, is probably the most visible aspect of authoritarian urbanism producing its own spatialities, materialities, embodiments and violence. Yet authoritarian urbanism is encountered in many other, less explicit ways in the city. It can be found in the Mayor’s insistence of going ahead with a planned semi-pedestrianization without considering any critiques and reactions voiced. Or, in the ways that companies and foundations can get a fast-tracked go-ahead with neoliberal redevelopment aspirations and plans bypassing regulations and residents. In more invisible ways, authoritarian urbanism is also reproduced through the discursive constructions of neighbourhoods that in turn legitimize authoritarian interventions upon them.

Drawing on analysis and reflections from the city of Athens, this contribution discusses the entangled authoritarianisms that (re)produce the city’s spaces, affect the lives of those living and working in it, and are implicated in everyday as well as institutional power articulations.