Urban planning

The parliament has approved a law that aims to speed up the process of urban transformation in areas that face earthquake risk.

The prices of newly built houses in the high-demand districts of Athens have now risen above the all-time record set in 2008.

In the southern suburbs the prices of new constructions are 30% higher compared to 2008, while in the center of Athens and in the northern suburbs the increase amounts to 20% over 2008 prices.

As heatwaves - like the ones Greece has experienced this summer - become longer and more intense, modern cities like Athens need to develop new strategies in order to shield the city and its inhabitants from rising temperatures.

The Council of State's decision to suspend the construction of two hotels in downtown Athens has revived the discussion about the serious shortcomings of urban planning laws.

The prices of second-hand homes have been rising at a faster pace than those of newly built properties over the last six months.

Turkish technical consultancy firm HISE GLOBAL has signed a strategic alliance agreement with French design and architecture company Arte Charpentier, aiming to develop sustainable urban planning and construction projects on a global scale.

In the 1940s, one bank of the Ilisos River in Athens was a large slum, with shacks set up there by refugees who arrived after the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe. Alexander Tzonis, an architect and professor emeritus of the Delft University of Technology who grew up nearby, was deeply fascinated with the ingenuity of the community and sought to immortalize it in photos.

The spread between the taxable rates of properties, known as "objective values," and market prices is widening again, just two years after the last adjustment of the former, which started applying from January 2022.

This development is recorded mainly in the expensive areas of the center of Athens and the southern and northern suburbs of the capital.

Academics from Istanbul University have found a solution for the mucilage problem in the Marmara Sea with a mixture obtained from beneficial bacteria.

The Parliamentary Earthquake Commission has requested for a zoning amnesty to be limited to urban transformation in order to solve the property problem of illegal structures.

The Commission also reported that around 6.7 million houses need to be retrofitted or rebuilt.