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In search of urban reform: co-operative housing in inter-war Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Kiki Kafkoula
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Abstract

In spite of the campaigns for social housing conducted by its most ardent supporters, at the beginning of the century Greece completely lacked the various low-cost housing organizations that were quite common in Europe. During the inter-war period, progressive governments took various steps to rationalize the provision of housing, aiming, among others, at encouraging the formation of housing co-operatives. Under the provisions of appropriate legislation, housing cooperatives acquired land on favourable terms either in or outside the city of Athens. The proposed schemes, which were meant to be supported by state funds, were, however, inadequately administered, mainly because of the political instability and economic hardships of the inter-war period. As a result, the function of the housing co-operatives was gradually restricted to providing small investors with cheap land, on which they would build individually at a more convenient time. The happy exceptions to the rule were co-operative housing schemes which owed their implementation to the higher economic and social status of their members.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 49 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Mainly during the Liberal Party's first, second, and third terms of office (1910–15, 1917–20 and 1928–32) and to a lesser extent from late 1922 to 1928 when governments of liberal origin were in power. The Liberal Party was founded by Eleftherios Venizelos in 1910 and was first in power from 1910 to 1915 at the command of the leaders of Goudi military revolt (1909), who expressed the new-born Greek capitalism's need for modernization. For an interpretation of modern Greek political history see Mavrogordatos, G.T., Stillborn Republic. Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922–1936 (University of California Press, 1983).Google Scholar

2 The new attitude towards urban management was expressed in the formation of the Ministry of Transport in 1914, which was responsible thereafter for all urban development, housing, public works, transport and communications; the enactment of appropriate legislation for co-operativism and agrarian reform in 1915 and 1917 respectively; the setting up of new schools of architecture, topography and chemical engineering in 1917; state intervention in the replanning of Salonica after the fire of 1917; the rebuilding of Macedonian towns and villages after the First World War; the establishment of the Technical Chamber of Greece in 1923; and various other measures administering governmental planning decisions.

Particularly instrumental in dealing with all aspects of town planning and building was the legislative decree of 27.7.1923, ‘Concerning the plans of the country's cities, towns, and settlements’, the cornerstone of all planning legislation ever since, which was influenced by the planning laws of France (1919), Germany (1918) and Switzerland (1911 and 1915). Yerolympos, A., The Replanning of Thessaloniki after the Fire of 1917 (Thessaloniki, 1985), 207–9Google Scholar (in Greek).

3 Agapitos, S., ‘Cheap housing’, Erga (technical magazine), 90 (28 02 1929), 499 (in Greek).Google Scholar

4 After the disastrous Asia Minor campaign (1919–22), the exchange of populations brought 1,222,000 refugees from Turkey into Greece. The population of Greece in 1920 was 5,536,000. Scarce national resources had also been allocated for military expenditure in the previous years, since Greece was involved in the Greek-Turkish War (1897), two Balkan Wars (1912–13), the First World War, and the Russian Campaign (1919).

5 The only towns which may rightfully be called ‘company towns’ were Lavrio, for the workers in the iron mines in the southern part of Attica (plans drawn up in 1867 and 1898), and Poseidonia for the employees of the company that constructed the Corinth canal (plan drawn up in 1884). For the planning practice of the nineteenth century see Hastaoglou, V., Kafkoula, K. and Papamichos, N., ‘Making new cities for a new state: town planning in 19th century Greece’, Planning Perspectives, 3 (1993).Google Scholar

6 The population of Athens increased as follows:

The refugee population from Asia Minor, 225,000 people by the end of 1926, should be added to the last figure, which thus becomes 642,000.

7 Within the city area, the size of the self-contained lots had to be 100–160 sq. m. This resulted in 25–40 houses per acre, net, i.e. exclusive of roads. In numerous cases, land outside the city limits was also subdivided and sold, and planning approval was granted subsequently, under pressure from the buyers. (All such figures presented henceforth will also be net figures.)

8 In the first quarter of the century most of the leading figures of the radical thought (G. Skliros, D. Glinos, N. Yannios, Al. Delmouzos, K. Hadjopoulos and others) were connected with Western culture, as were the socialists of late nineteenth century (P. Panas, R. Hoidas, A. Oikonomou, S. Kalligas, PI. Drakoules). In 1909 the ‘Sociological Society’ was founded in Athens by a number of social democrats, among which was A. Papanastasiou (later Minister of Transport and Prime Minister).

9 Which addressed economic, technological and aesthetic issues. This was a common view, shared by the architects and civil engineers of the time (S. Leloudas, K. Kitsikis, S. Agapitos, P. Kalligas and others), who published their ideas in the technical journals of the capital throughout the inter-war period (Archimedes, Technica Chronica, Ergasia, Erga).

10 See Kafkoula, K., ‘The replanning of the destroyed villages of eastern Macedonia after World War I: the influence of the garden city tradition on an emergency programme’, Planning History, 2 (1992).Google Scholar

11 Which was introduced to the Greek public by Platon Drakoules, a socialist who had lived in England, knew about Howard and had visited Letchworth. In 1924 he formed the Society for Agropoles (the equivalent of the Garden City Association) and led a campaign for the financial support of his proposals, which were envisaged as providing remedies for both the overpopulation of the urban centres (in fact Athens) and the neglect of the country.

12 The first to address the problem was radical lawyer and writer S. Theodoropoulos in 1909, in a speech on ‘Social solidarity and the housing problem’, in which he told the public about the exemplary achievements of the Société des cités ouvrières in Mulhouse and also of the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Labouring Classes and the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes, founded in London in the early 1840s. Theodoropoulos, , Social Solidarity and the Housing Problem (Athens, 1909) (in Greek).Google Scholar

13 Agapitos, S., Working People's Homes (Athens, 1918), 27–8Google Scholar (in Greek). English and German laws were less applicable to the Greek case, as they assumed that strong local government would lead the implementation of comprehensive housing schemes. Management of the urban space in Greece had always been a more centralized affair.

14 Agapitos not only imitated the French laws, but also copied the arguments of the housing reformers of the 1850s. See for instance in Agapitos' foreword: ‘The father who can not stand living in the one and only room, where all the members of the family, healthy and ill, young and old, males and females eat and sleep together, goes off in anger to seek pleasure in the tavern.’ (Agapitos, , Working People's Homes, p. 3).Google Scholar Compare with Dr Achille Penot's report submitted to the Société des cités ouvrières in Mulhouse, in 1852: ‘A man who finds when he gets home only a miserable slum, dirty and untidy, where he breathes nauseous and unhealthy air will find no pleasure there and will abandon it to spend much of his spare time at the cabaret.’ Bullock, N. and Read, J., The Movement for Housing Reform in Germany and France 1840–1914 (Cambridge, 1985), 321.Google Scholar

15 All information contained in this paper may be found in Kafkoula, K., The Garden City Idea in Greek Inter-war Planning, Ph.D. thesis, Yearbook of the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, vol. 12, supplement no. 4. 1990 (in Greek).Google Scholar

16 Actually it did not specifically rule them out, nor did it provide for other categories of co-operatives. So the only people who made use of compulsory land acquisition were civil servants: as it appears in the fifty-two decrees from 1923 to 1925, the members of all forty-five co-operatives in Athens which acquired land in this way were civil servants, as were the members of five co-operatives in other parts of Greece, which also made use of the 1923 decree. It seems that a few other people made use of the decree, without being able to take advantage of the land acquisition powers. They were not working-class people: for instance, the lawyers' co-operative in Evriali was able to use building materials imported duty-free in 1924. In 1925 the housing co-operatives in the country exceeded 200.

17 Maximum sum was 250,000 dr. per family, when the cost of a decent one-family house was around 150,000 (according to the available evidence in the daily press of the time). The house, or flat, could not be bigger than 180 sq. m. In 1935 civil servants' monthly salaries ranged from 6,500–10,400 dr. for those of higher rank (10,400 dr. was a minister's salary) to 800–1,800 dr. for those lower down the scale. Encyclopaedia Heliou, published in the early 1950s, under ‘Salary’ (in Greek).

18 Namely: Neo (New) Psychiko, next door to its homonym, i.e. the private suburb, for the Co-operative of Civil Servants and Army Officers was planned in 1929; Tsakos for the Co-operative of the Panhellenic Association of Reserve Officers in 1929; the development in Galatsi for the Co-operative of Non-Property Owners in 1932; two projects in Penteli for the Co-operative of Reserve Officers and War Widows and Orphans, and another one of unknown identity in 1932 and 1933 respectively; the development for the Co-operative of the Veterans (the exact site of which has been impossible to track down) in 1932; the developments for the civil servants' co-operatives in Helioupolis (referred to as ‘Popular’ Co-operative) in 1932. Voula in 1934, and the resort of Varkiza in 1936; last not least, Philothei, the jewel of the co-operative settlements, was founded by the National Bank Employees in 1933.

19 In the city of Athens, the area designated for development covered 791 acres at the end of 1878. Over the next twenty years successive approvals for expansion schemes increased the area by 3,494 acres! The overall density fell from 49 people per acre in 1880 to 39 in 1907. The expansion plans were submitted by big landowners, who had laid out private streets and consequently subdivided the land and sold small individual lots. In 1909 the Minister of the Interior asked Parliament to prohibit the expansion of the city for about fifteen years, because it was ‘impossible for the city to be administered’. Biris, K., Athens from the 19th to the 20th Century (Athens, 1966), 274 (in Greek).Google Scholar

20 D. Diamandidis in Psychiko, and S. Agapitos in Ekali. Diamandidis (1871–1926), well known for his involvement in the construction of Stilis harbour, was one of the many distinguished civil engineers who had studied in Europe. He was mostly instrumental in setting up the Ministry of Communications, and became the first Minister.

21 As shown in the decrees that approved their plans, the minimum size of the individual lots was at least 550 sq. m. or eight houses per acre in Psychiko, and 1000 sq. m. in Ekali. The company, which had previously bought the land, was obliged to give up the development rights on land designated for public use, before selling the individual lots. Also it was responsible for the installing the basic equipment of the communal areas. Houses would be built on the basis of individual contracts between the owners of the small parcels of land and the company.

The provision of public spaces was quite a substantial change in common practice ofthat time: the implementation of any new plan on formerly underdeveloped land was threatened by the inability of local authorities to compensate the owners of the land designated for schools, open spaces, etc. This was due to a permanent lack of funds and also to the fact that the compensation had to be paid at full market prices. As compensation was long delayed, the gradual implementation of the plan, by building individual houses, inflated the land prices. If local authorities could not afford the increased prices, then the allocation of land for public use could be abolished. The building up of Psychiko and Ekali proceeded slowly: their population was respectively 390 and 206 in 1928 and 2,377 and 708 in 1940.

22 In regard to the fulfilling of the contracts signed by the firms, I should add a couple of points here, which may not have been obvious so far. The planning of new developments did not involve the approval of Athens Local Authorities. Instead it fell directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transport, like any other form of development. Controversially enough, the individual plans for all new developments on hitherto agricultural land (‘country settlements’ and co-operative housing alike) did not have to conform to directives regarding greater Athens area: the last plan for Athens, finalized in 1924, was concerned with the layout of the road network (amending the existing system), and made no statutory provisions about the undeveloped surrounding land. Therefore, the evolution of the new suburbs did not have any modernizing influence on long-term regulatory planning, but was merely a piecemeal attempt to radicalize physical planning.

23 The initial capital for the co-operative was raised through the subscription of 5,000 dr. from each member (lower ranking civil servants paid 3,000). In the early 1930s 5,000 would buy no less than a quarter of an acre of agricultural land at the outskirts of the city.

24 I arrived at these approximate figures by measuring the actual plans. The smallest piece of land (22 acres) was bought by the Co-operative of Non-Property Owners. It is unknown how much land was bought by the remaining co-operatives, as their plans were not found in the Record Office of the Ministry of the Environment, Planning, and Public Works.

25 The so called Deposits and Loans Fund does not seem to have approved any collective mortgage schemes. But it did approve 354 mortgages to individual civil servants between 1932 and 1941 and 128 to pensioners. How far needs were met is clear if one compares the number of the loans granted to the total number of 45,000 civil servants at that time. Vasileiou, I., The Public Housing (Athens, 1946), 91 (in Greek).Google Scholar

26 Architect Nicos Zoumboulidis was trained in the School of Fine Arts in Konstantinople, and also in the Technical University of Berlin. From 1920 he was in charge of the Technical Service of the National Bank.

27 The foundations of the first houses were laid in 1933 and 250 houses were completed with mortgages from the bank. The bank also financed the water and electricity supply, tree planting, roads and public buildings (Vasileiou, , Public Housing, 93Google Scholar). In 1928 Philothei had 488 inhabitants and in 19401, 173.

28 Here ‘comprehensive’ should not be taken to imply uniformity. The company, when asked to build the individual houses, was expected to cater for individual needs and tastes.

29 Particularly since in the post-war era co-operativism gave way to more individualistic attitudes promoted by housing policy: plot ratios in all urban centres were raised substantially, and small property owners made use of their development rights in order to acquire a considerable amount of the eventual development. Piecemeal yet massive urban renewal has coped ‘sufficiently’ with housing demand.

30 The other two are Psychiko and Ekali. Philothei and Psychiko are no longer out of town, as the areas between them and the former urban fringe have been developed in the last thirty years.