Socio-spatial changes in the neighborhood scale: methodological and theoretical considerations

The neighbourhood of Kessariani, one of the first refugee settlements built in interwar Athens, encapsulates a century-long genealogy of housing, social struggle and urban transformation. Established after the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe as part of the first- and arguably last- comprehensive social housing programme in Greece, it evolved from modest brick dwellings and stone units to polykatoikies, reflecting shifting relations between welfare, self-construction and capitalist urbanization. Within this trajectory, demolition appears not only as a physical process but as an institutional strategy. The post-war antiparochi system dismantled significant parts of the original refugee housing in favour of market-oriented apartment buildings, while also producing the social mixture characteristic of the Greek model of urban development. Today, housing financialization continues this dynamic, while the chronic absence of maintenance acts as a silent form of demolition, eroding material continuity and memory. Under these conditions, publicly subsidised housing- rather than being maintained or reimagined for future generations- is increasingly demolished, turning social infrastructure into an expendable asset. Demolitions thus operate as mechanisms of commodification, facilitating the erasure of lived histories and reshaping what is rendered valuable or expendable in the urban landscape. Through the physical traces of dismantling, layering and re-inhabitation, one can read a silent social archive: refugee heritage, gendered and collective practices of maintenance and everyday resistance to commodification and erasure. Thus, Kessariani’s residents- despite internal tensions- have asserted their right to inhabit through repair, care and informal construction. Their interventions sustain the memory, scale and social fabric of the neighbourhood, extending the project of Greek modernity beyond official architectural narratives. The presentation reads Kessariani as both a product of modernist planning and a site of endurance shaped by everyday negotiation. It reframes demolition as an instrument of urban transformation, and everyday life as its plural counterforce.

Gentrification remains a persistent theme in discussions of urban restructuring, particularly in relation to housing affordability and residential displacement. Global urban capitalism, the role of the state, and touristification play significant roles in Mediterranean metropolises such as Athens, revealing ongoing gentrification processes. A part of the academic literature examines the social, economic, and physical impacts through both qualitative and quantitative studies, yet comprehensive methodologies remain elusive. Computer vision, machine learning, and Google Street View now provide new tools to identify gentrification in urban areas by capturing expansion through specific visual indicators. In this context, we present a novel methodology to identify signs of gentrification in the Koukaki area, integrating primary and secondary data and employing AI assistance alongside manual validation. Our methodology combines street- level panoramic data collected with LiDAR scanner and historical imagery from Google Street View, comparing present-day panoramas captured in the field with historical imagery from Google Street View (2009), to establish signs, patterns and urban transformations associated with gentrification. Our findings reveal substantial transformations in the economic and physical landscape of the study area, where façade renovation, food and beverage expansion, upgraded commercial uses, and possible Airbnb activity are evident. The presentation documents how and in what terms gentrification visual cues are linked to the growth of touristification in the Greek context, exposing a series of interconnected changes that are transforming the neighbourhood’s profile and offering a near real-time estimation.

Contemporary socio-spatial transformations are increasingly reshaping urban neighbourhoods across Europe, where processes such as touristification, real estate investment and commercial restructuring interact within the same local spaces. These dynamics have been particularly intense in Southern European cities in the aftermath of economic crises and austerity policies, profoundly affecting housing conditions, commercial activities and everyday life at the neighbourhood scale. This paper proposes and tests the PRG Index (Potential Risk of Gentrification) as a multidimensional analytical tool for assessing neighbourhood-level socio-spatial change. The PRG Index is designed to identify structural conditions that favour processes of urban revalorisation, integrating economic, social, symbolic and environmental dimensions within a synthetic framework. Rather than focusing solely on observable outcomes, the index aims to capture underlying pressures that shape trajectories of neighbourhood transformation. The empirical analysis is based on a comparative framework including four European cities representing different urban regimes: Copenhagen and Berlin in Northern Europe, and Madrid and Athens in Southern Europe. Within each city, two types of neighbourhoods are examined—those where processes of revalorisation are already consolidated and those where such dynamics are currently unfolding. This design allows for a dual assessment of the index: ex post, by evaluating its capacity to reflect established transformations, and prospectively, by assessing its ability to identify emerging patterns of change. The results show that while similar dynamics—such as capital inflows, shifts in commercial land uses and pressures on housing—are present across all contexts, their intensity and configuration vary significantly depending on local structural conditions, including housing regimes, welfare systems and regulatory frameworks. By focusing on the neighbourhood as a space of coexistence where multiple dynamics intersect over time, the paper demonstrates the analytical value of the PRG Index for capturing the complexity of contemporary socio-spatial change and enabling systematic comparison across diverse European urban contexts.

The paper focuses on the long-term relationship between the structure of urban space and social inequalities, highlighting issues of social polarization, residential segregation and uneven geographies of development in the urban and metropolitan area of Athens. Drawing on census data from 1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021, it analyses changes in the city’s socio-spatial structure through the lens of contemporary processes of urban restructuring. The analysis of the metropolitan area indicates that historically established patterns of east–west socio-spatial differentiation remain identifiable, while intermediate zones of heightened social fluidity are simultaneously emerging, where tendencies of upgrading, decline, and investment pressures coexist. The research investigates these zones as critical sites for understanding the mechanisms through which socio-spatial inequalities are reproduced or transformed. Within this framework, the neighbourhood is approached as a critical analytical scale, with particular emphasis on the cases of Akadimia Platonos and Kypseli. The two areas express different dimensions of broader metropolitan transformations: the former as a site of uneven land valorisation and investment-led restructuring, and the latter as a space of complex social recomposition and shifting housing dynamics. The study argues that the mechanisms transforming these areas are closely linked to capital flows, spatial policies, and processes of selective development that reshape the conditions under which inequalities are produced. By combining longitudinal census analysis with comparative investigation at the neighbourhood scale, the research seeks to illuminate contemporary forms of uneven urban development and the role of spatial planning in shaping them. Key words: Social polarization, Residential segregation, Uneven development, Metropolitan Athens, Neighborhood scale

This paper examines socio-spatial change at the neighborhood scale through an ethnographic study of Kypseli, a densely populated and historically heterogeneous area in Athens. It advances a conceptualization of belonging not merely as an affective attachment or discursive claim, but as a social mechanism with material effects, actively shaping the production and transformation of urban space. Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and spatial methods, this research traces how these struggles over belonging leave material traces in the built environment. In this sense, belonging is approached as a mediating process that connects everyday practices, social relations, and the physical shaping of the neighbourhood. Historically, Kypseli has been a site of convergence of different mobilities: internal Greek migrants from the provinces in the 1960s, Balkan, African, Asian and Middle-Eastern migrants after 1990, refugees and asylum seekers during and after the 2015 European "migrant crisis", and since the pandemic a new stream of foreign nationals seeking not only economic opportunities but also a lifestyle of cosmopolitanism and proximity to a vibrant urban environment. These dynamics have been accompanied by growing foreign real estate investment, spurred by state-driven policies such as tax incentives for investors and the Golden Visa program. Ultimately, by treating belonging as a social mechanism with material effects, this research shows how competing claims to belonging are inscribed in the social production of space, shaping the built environment in which all these categories co-exist. In doing so, it highlights the neighborhood as a key analytical scale for understanding how socio-spatial change unfolds through the entanglement of lived experience and material transformation.

Cities in Southern Europe are undergoing profound transformations shaped by the interplay between housing crises, tourism expansion, and new forms of transnational mobility. In contexts historically characterized by limited public housing provision, strong reliance on homeownership, and informal welfare mechanisms, these pressures are contributing to the reconfiguration of socio-spatial inequalities, a dynamic particularly visible at the neighborhood scale. This paper investigates these processes through the case of Kypseli, a central neighborhood of Athens marked by high density and longstanding social and ethnic diversity. The neighborhood is approached not as a bounded entity, but as a space where local specificities intersect with global processes — such as touristification, transnational gentrification, and housing financialization — reshaping both social composition and the everyday use of residential and commercial space. Particular attention is paid to temporary populations — international students, digital nomads, neo-tourists — situated at the intersection of tourism and migration, as key actors driving recent transformations. Their presence, amplified by the platform economy and short-term rental markets, reconfigures housing uses and everyday practices, generating material and symbolic fractures between long-term and more recent residents. These dynamics are furthermore reflected in the transformation of Kypseli's commercial landscape. Drawing on mixed methods, systematic on-site recording of business openings and closures between 2019 and 2025, combined with questionnaires and interviews along two commercial streets (Sporades and Zakynthos), this paper traces a gradual shift from diverse, locally oriented retail toward standardized, tourism-driven services. This pattern of functional homogenization points to a broader process of commercial upgrading tightly entangled with the neighborhood's new social composition. Together, the two research strands reveal how global pressures are rearticulated through context-specific trajectories, making Kypseli a particularly valuable lens for understanding contemporary urban change in Southern Europe.

This paper analyzes the complex transformations of urban identity and inhabitation in Fokionos Negri, Kypseli, from the Covid-19 pandemic period to the present. The primary objective is to investigate the imprints left on housing and the "right to the city" through the strategic scale of the neighborhood. Fokionos Negri is selected as a case study as it constitutes a "microcosm" of the broader pressures characterizing South European cities: touristification, shifts in land use, rising rents, and changes in social composition. As a site with a long history of social heterogeneity and dense public life, it emerges as a distinctive field where multi-scale processes intersect. The ongoing research is based on a qualitative methodology (urban ethnography, on-site observation, semi-structured interviews) with residents, professionals, and street users. Public space is approached as "lived space," where everyday practices negotiate broader urban shifts. Preliminary findings indicate a displacement of the pedestrian zone from a space for the neighborhood's residents into a space of consumption. The study documents how the "Situated Imaginaries" of the inhabitants function as bulwarks against commodification. The daily coexistence on public benches, the survival of traditional small-scale businesses, and the collective memory of the inhabitants constitute a "poetics of inhabitation" that resists the logic of profit. This presentation explores how the lived experience of diverse subjects undergoes a violent hierarchy, where the imposition of an investment-driven imaginary and a monothematic image threatens to rupture the bonds that allow the city to remain a place of coexistence. From this perspective, the neighborhood emerges as the preeminent field where the right to the city is reclaimed as a living practice against new mechanisms of urban inequality.

The article aims to investigate the multi-layered impacts of touristification on the urban fabric of Athens, with a particular focus on its historic center. The Commercial Triangle has been selected as a case study, as this area constitutes a representative example of the socio-spatial and economic changes experienced by the broader Athenian center under the influence of tourism and the 2009 crisis. In recent years, the rapid increase in tourist flows, combined with the spread of short-term rentals such as Airbnb and the growth of tourism-oriented land uses, has significantly contributed to the transformation of the area's character. These changes affect not only land uses but also the social composition and economic dynamics of the city center, leading to a restructuring of the relationships between visitors, residents, and business activities. Therefore, touristification constitutes a complex process that reshapes the identity of central Athens, influencing both its physical characteristics and its intangible dimensions. The study examines these transformations by analyzing the causes and consequences of touristification, focusing on the shift from a space of production to a space of consumption—particularly the displacement of traditional shops and professions—along with changes in land use and the broader role of tourism in shaping urban space.