Processes of social integration and Urban development in Greece: Southern challenges to European unification

Abstract

In the controversial process of European integration, the Maastricht Treaty stands out as a landmark point after which the terms of integration are institutionalized, a philosophy is outlined and the rules are set, within which different social agents will be acting in the years to come. It would be fair to say that this philosophy and the policies deriving from it tend to draw, almost exclusively, on development experiences and prospects of the ‘successful’ parts of the European North. They often have little relevance for different places and social groups in the South — which are treated as ‘deviations’ from a dominant and prospective model. The latter is true for most aspects of development and domains of policy, including urban development and planning on which this paper focuses. The paper discusses processes of urban development in Greece, as an example of such local ‘deviations’ in the changing conjunctures of European integration. These processes have resulted, it is argued, in an urban environment which, along with its very real problems, entails complexities and qualities that (North‐biased) discourse and planning tools ignore or actively combat. More specifically, the paper focuses on three interrelated themes: the primacy of small ownership (of land and capital) as a major element in the process of urban development and as a quasi‐successful mechanism of social integration; the importance of the family and the power differences within it (along the lines of gender and age) which are, implicitly or explicitly, a condition of existence of this process; the largely positive features of an urban environment resulting from ad hoc decisions of a multitude of social agents and bearing little resemblance to the assumptions underlying ‘official’ planning.