Created by 6th City District, Municipality of Athens, Greece
How might we strengthen the social fabric in under-privileged, downtown Athens districts while creating safe and welcoming neighbourhoods for all?
The City of Athens in Greece, a venerable yet intricate city of near 700.000 residents, within a 3.75 million people metropolis, has been facing a serious socio-economic crisis for a few years now.
Following an open tender, the Municipality of Athens has allocated the use of the abandoned space of the Municipal Market of Kypseli for community activities. Entering the second phase of this procedure, there is a quest for innovative solutions that will activate civic engagement and innovation into social issues at the centre of the local community life.
The scope of the challenge is to strengthen the social solidarity among those living in the neighbourhood, ensure safety in all districts, foster the feeling of belonging, and increase civic participation and engagement for the improvement of the cities, where citizens take responsibility, work, demand and deliver actions towards a better living.
In order to have a resilient city, that survives and thrives against all odds, we need to have a strong social fabric where all citizens feel as and actually are part of. Social integration is a necessary way to go, if we want to ensure Athens survives the multiple hits of this multi-layered crisis - financial, political, economical, cultural, humanitarian. Hate speech, non participation, apathy, resignation, criminality and fear are symptoms of what, eventually, is the result of a disconnected society.
We are looking for ways to strengthen the social fabric of our city and increase social cohesion through active participation. Characterised by extreme differences between the social groups, it’s critical to find ways to bring people together, help them express, share and connect through non-invasive and creative ways.
Recently, we renovated the old Municipal Market of Kypseli, which we would like to turn into a community centre. We are looking for tested or successfully implemented solutions to strengthen civic participation of vulnerable groups and social cohesion.
The challenge is located at the 6th District of Athens, the most densely populated. The majority of the inhabitants are in social risk. During 2010-2013 the City of Athens mobilized funds to renovate abandoned city property, as the Municipal Market of Kypseli.
Historically, the area of Kypseli was inhabited by upper middle class Greeks in the ‘50s and ‘60s and was considered the epicentre of the Athenian artistic scene. Throughout 1930 – 1980 the Market of Kypseli functioned as a vibrant and essential hub for the local community, a place of social and commercial exchange.
The target group are the Kipseli citizens:
a) the younger generation of Athenians who return to live at the city center and compose the creative, upcoming force of the city/country as professionals, activists and entrepreneurs.
b) the older in age, but also hardly hit by the crisis, middle class who have already been living there and are more reserved towards change, migrant groups and poorer Greeks.
Due to the serious socio-economic crisis that our city faces, we are focusing our efforts to ensure that the city will not only survive, but will be able to adapt and transform into a more creative and collaborative one. In May 2016, Athens was officially selected as one of the 100 Resilient Cities Programme of the Rockefeller Foundation. This programme allows us to call on the insights and expertise of hundreds of stakeholders, from opinion leaders and academics, to women, migrants and homeless people, in order to create our “Resilience Strategy”. This is a set of practicable actions which first of all strengthen and scale up what has made our city stronger: formal and informal networks and alliances.
Through the EU Social Challenges Platform we are hoping to reach out to even more professionals from the field, social entrepreneurs and innovators, that can help us transform our city into a long term, resilient city.
Through the district activities, and the different offices (education, sport, green etc) of the Municipality, we are supporting and organizing numerous activities that aim to make our city alive and social. Though at this stage we are looking for innovative solutions that take into consideration the constant changes of the current situation, we are committed to support the selected projects with:
• promotional channels
• leads with sponsors and investors for the development of the project
• physical spaces to host activities (open schools in neighbourhoods, rehabilitated public spac-es/buildings, Kipseli Municipal Market)
• access to beneficiary groups through the city’s programmes
• acceleration of permissions to implement the proposed activities
