Greek Cities and Formal Planning

The development process of modern cities is complex, multi-parametric, and may have effects on virtually every sphere of human activity. Modern Greece is a country with a long urban planning tradition going back to the foundation of the state. The impact of urban planning on city development fluctuates depending on the historical periods and circumstances and also evolves to meet the changing needs of the institutional environment. Against this background, the current work aims to get insight into the role played by institutional planning, and in particular, the institutional tool called “Schédion Póleos” (City Plan), in the development of medium-sized cities. To reach that goal, seven functional urban areas (mid-sized cities) taken from the Copernicus Urban Atlas were selected and observed following a fourfold approach. The years 1945, 1975, 2006, and 2018 were chosen considering data availability and the existence of reliable material (official plans, city maps, satellite images, etc.). GIS technology was the main technological environment for data organization and analysis. This work includes, among others, a series of annotated thematic maps showing the urban changes in medium-sized Greek cities in relation to their respective institutional and spatial framework.