Unregulated Urban Regeneration in Athens: Greening and Taxation of the Built Environment as Impending Levers of Increasing Inequalities

Thomas Maloutas, Stavros Nikiforos Spyrellis () and Fereniki Vatavali
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Thomas Maloutas: Department of Geography, Harokopio University, 17676 Athens, Greece
Stavros Nikiforos Spyrellis: National Centre for Social Research, Institute of Social Research, 10552 Athens, Greece
Fereniki Vatavali: National Centre for Social Research, Institute of Social Research, 10552 Athens, Greece

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-29

Abstract: Access to housing in Athens during the first postwar decades protected a broad range of low-means social groups and enhanced their social mobility. Eventually, the city’s housing market was dominated by neoliberal policies, producing a very different social effect. Since the mid-2010s, the changes in the housing market were also interconnected with the rise in demand for housing (some of it related to tourism and other forms of ‘external’ demand for accommodation), the boom in the construction sector, the change in property taxation, the increase in housing prices, and the need to improve built properties. The analysis of three different datasets in this paper confirmed that the unregulated city’s housing market is following the spatially differentiated demand and reproducing socio-spatial inequalities. It also confirmed that the few policy initiatives developed since the early 2010s have not faced the housing needs of the most vulnerable groups because they were weak and because these needs were not their primary target. Athens seems to be one of the most unregulated cities in Southern Europe, where housing policies are far behind the needs and issues raised by increasing inequalities, and difficulties for vulnerable groups look like unavoidable outcomes.

Keywords: housing stock; construction activity; segregation; inequalities; greening; energy performance; urban regeneration; urban policies; property taxation; Athens (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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