Planning tools and building regulations towards greening densely-built greek cities: scales of "urban green grabbing"

Abstract

“Green” urban development is the dominant "paradigm" in spatial planning and is determined by changing overarching concepts such as sustainability, resilience and more recently climate neutrality.  As the Greek spatial planning system has incorporated the objectives of “greening” cities, the paper highlights the need to assess new tools of urban development and planning regulation in Greece in terms of their cumulative impact on the urban landscape, both in terms of the image of the city and their actual contribution to the pressing goals of improving environmental conditions and adapting to climate emergency. The paper activates the concept of "urban green grabbing" (Garcia-Lamarca et al. 2022) that studies green urban development through a socio-political lens and highlights the grabbing of urban common resources that is promoted in the context of environmental protection and energy conservation.  

Green grabbing (Fairhead, 2012) is related to land privatized, enclosed or otherwise exploited for environmental goals, such as energy transition (wind farms and photovoltaic parks, energy plantations, CO₂ sequestration etc). “Urban green grabbing” as introduced by Garcia-Lamarca et al (2022) refers to the credibility and extra value added residential real-estate developments, through the incoroporation of 'green' strategies and/or their location in 'green' areas, as well as to the related forces of “green gentrification”. The paper suggests extending the use of the term to discuss urban green grabbing that is facilitated, through planning tools and building regulations that give incentives to investors to incorporate “green” features to their developments.

Through this perspective, the paper studies a) the environmental incentives of the greek New Building Code as introduced in 2012, and b) major urban development projects promoted through Special Urban Plans that can bypass existing regulations in force, inter alia, on the grounds, of environmental protection and the management of natural disasters.

The period of the economic crisis, which started in Greece in 2010, was rich in the production of laws and regulations for space and land development.  Despite their often environmental objectives, the dominant aim of this period was to accelerate the implementation of urban plans, to facilitate land development and to "improve the business climate".   Environmental incentives given to private investors, during the crisis are mostly related to increased plot ratios and permissible building heights or to legitimizing exceptions to regulatory plans in force.  As construction activity was frozen during the crisis, the effects of the new planning tools and building codes and regulations have started to become visible in cities only after 2020.  It is argued that, in both scales of urban space, i.e. of the development of the individual urban plot and that of large-scale urban interventions, different versions of locally produced urban green grabbing is legitimized, with negative impacts on the urban landscape and the environmental conditions of everyday life in the city.

The paper first delves into the idea of urban green grabbing.  Then, presents the nature of environmental incentives and planning tools related to environmental protection that were introduced during crisis. Finally, it discusses the outcomes of such tools in the urban environment of densely built greek cities. It is argued that through such legitimate green grabbing, it is not only land that is being usurped but also, urban commons, like the urban landscape and the image of the city.