Abstract
Greece is at a critical juncture in its history. Significant changes are needed in its cities' development to ensure a sustainable economic, social and environmental perspective. In this study, we investigated the possibility of introducing the transit-oriented development (TOD) principles to a typical suburban municipality of Athens. We aimed to determine how the general planning guidelines, which have already been applied in US and European contexts, could serve as a comprehensive land use and transport plan. Significant adjustments to local conditions are required to reverse the chronic pathologies of an urban landscape that incorporates Western suburbanization trends and domestic planning failures.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Thanos Vlastos, Professor at the National Technical University of Athens for his comments on earlier drafts of this paper and Polyvios Moukoulis, Ph.D. candidate at the same university for his assistance with the maps in this paper.
Notes
2. Older master plans (such as in the case of Agios Stefanos) refer to gross residential density. The calculation of net residential density was performed using a factor of 1.25.
3. Bus accessibility: BA = Σi (LiFi)/UAi (Li: length of bus routes within the municipality, Fi: frequency, UAi: area of urban land uses within the municipality).
4. Agios Stefanos has also been merged with several other neighbouring municipalities as a consequence of Athens' new administrative plan. We expect such a change to facilitate the TOD implementation process as regional level interventions (e.g. inter-municipal bus) could now be easier to promote.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 5th International Congress on Transport Research in Volos, Greece, 27–28 September 2010.