The seven billion drachma project covering 275 acres will create a continuous, semicircular green belt stretching from the National Gardens to the Keramikos Cemetery, a distance of over three kilometers.
The virtues of the plan are manifold: it will mean demolishing no important landmark, ancient or neo-classical; it will redirect through traffic efficiently; and it will allow scope for extensive development of urban landscaping. The major asset of the plan, however, is that it will integrate the ancient monuments and the paths and gardens around them which have been created in the past into a single, organic and continuous whole.
Until now most of the classical sites of Athens have existed in semi-isolation made more so by the steady increase of traffic along the avenues that divide them.
For example, Ardittos Hill into which the Stadium is cut, has been, in effect, closed to the public for years; the large area around the Temple of Olympian Zeus is rarely frequented because there is hardly any point where the avenues surrounding it can be safely crossed; and the ancient cemetery of Keramikos is cut off from the Agora and the Thesion area to which it archaeologically belongs by railroad tracks. Even the Acropolis appears today to be more like an island or an oasis in the center of the city rather than a major urban focal point.
Work on this extensive project will begin in September with the creation of a new and spacious square bridging the tracks in front of the Keramikos Cemetery, an area which will be greatly expanded to include the property of the city Gas Works whose installations (a major factor in pollution) are being moved to Aspropyrgos. In the Olympeion area, a series of pedestrian under-passes, overpasses and a 450-meter tunnel under part of what is now Syngrou and Queen Amalias Avenues will integrate the archaeological sites to the east. Finally, in the central area, with the completion of a walkway around the Acropolis (already under construction), the transformation of Dionyssiou Areopagitou into a pedestrian way, the incorporation of the Makriyannis Barracks area with that part of the Plaka leading to Hadrian’s Arch, the aims of the scheme will be fundamentally achieved. At the same time, a series of garages and parking lots for pullman buses has been worked into the plan, set strategically but at some distance from the Acropolis. And, finally, the funnelling off of through traffic by widening avenues south of Philoppapou and the Hill of the Nymphs, will largely help solve the practical considerations.
While long overdue, the plan is anything but a Utopian one fated to remain forever on a city planner’s drawing board. The basic merit of the whole conception is that — while costly — it is economically and practically feasible and it should give this city, now suffering a crisis in confidence, new grounds for hope.
A Clouded Future
A businessman who travels, regularly between Rome and the Middle East once anxiously asked the air stewardess what the meteorological meaning was of a sinister, bulbous bilious-colored phenomenon below that appeared to be approaching from the north. ‘Oh, it’s nothing,” she replied, reassuringly, “it’s always there. It’s just Athens.”
That was in 1977. Back then, the nefos was only appearing occasionally in cameo roles in the overall Athenian drama and often as the butt of jokes, but lately it has emerged as the star villain in what appears to be turning rapidly into a melodrama. It is a miasma of pollution, and the only pure thing about the nefos is that it is the word for “cloud” in Katharevousa. At first it came and went, appearing mainly in summer when the heat caused atmospheric pressures that trapped the polluting material in the Athens valley, confined as it is by mountains to the west, north and east. Since then, the nefos has been coming more than going at all seasons, settling ominously lower and more persistently over the city.
A spring rain in early April contained such a high content of sulphuric acid that it led one to believe that April showers might not bring May flowers this year because “it isn’t raining rain, you know, it’s raining vitriol.” Since then public opinion, in regard to the official attitude towards the cloud, has itself grown increasingly vitriolic.
Having suffered peril from below — it is estimated that twenty-five thousand dwellings, including forty apartment blocks, will have to be pulled down because of seismic damage — Athenians are now primarily facing a peril from above.
Although they have reluctantly accepted living with earthquakes because they are unavoidable, they are not so willing to accept living indefinitely with the nefos. However permanently it appears to have settled onto the landscape, it is anything but a natural phenomenon, and officialdom’s tendency to shrug the matter off as a situation Athenians will just put up with is not meeting with public favor.
The pollution content of the nefos is produced mainly by factories, poor quality heating fuel, and the exhausts of vehicles — the trucks, buses and private cars that clog the city’s streets. Government reaction to public alarm has been largely confined to threats of limiting the circulation of automobiles. It has been proposed that the odd-even ban on weekend driving be extended to include workdays. It has been announced that if air pollution reaches a dangerously high level, all private vehicles will be banned from the center of town.
Private cars probably are responsible for about half the pollution overhanging the city. There are, however, other considerations which are upsetting private citizens. One phenomenon that arouses public ire daily is the clouds of noxious smoke emitted by the more decrepit vehicles of the public transportation system and by commercial trucks. There is also the question regarding the use of filters in factories in the Athens area. Officials have argued that industrial filters are costly and their installation will require consumers to pay more for the products of these factories.
Another bone of contention is the quality of petrol which, at one more drachma per liter of super, now selling at forty drachmas, could be lead-free. Finally, the argument that private cars are responsible above all because the level of pollution drops dramatically on weekends when there is little traffic is not quite convincing because there is also less commercial traffic at this time and the factories are mainly closed. The most publicized aspect of the nefos is that it is eating away the marble monuments on the Acropolis and the second is that it is having an adverse effect on tourists’ coming to Athens.
Far above all, however, it is a matter of national health, as it affects the lives of over one-third of the country’s population. Other cities have solved, or greatly reduced, their air pollution and Athens must, too. It is as if the government had crossed Athens off as Greece’s ailing, ugly duckling and it may be symptomatic of this that among the three hundred and twenty photographs that comprise the National Tourist Organization’s beautiful publication Greece ’81, Athens appears exactly once and in a photo which is itself scrupulously edited. This is not only a deliberate case of putting on blinders; it is also untruthful. Athens may no longer be beautiful, but its setting, for the most part, still is. It is a pity that it cannot be seen more often and more clearly.
Ten Commandments
If taxi passengers in Athens generally believe that they are being improperly treated, forced to share fares with others without being asked, being driven to their destination by a circuitous route, blasted by bouzouki music, suffocated by cigarette smoke, overcharged or short changed — in brief, if they feel that they are being “taken for a ride”, they can take heart in a new code of behavior for taxi drivers published on April 15 by the government’s official newspaper The Gazette. The code establishes that the drivers of these vehicles have specific obligations to the public. While some taxitzides do indeed follow them, keep spotless cabs, are friendly and helpful, and can make an ordinary ride into a positive pleasure, most do not, and it may come as a surprise to many riders that the driver is expected to comply with the following rules:
1. He shall be polite, courteous and always willing to serve.
2. He shall be always presentable and properly dressed while on duty.
3. He shall pick up and discharge the passenger’s baggage to and from the curb.
4. He shall carry out the instructions of the passenger unlet;:’ the latter is drunk or under the influence of drugs, and even do so under these circumstances if the passenger is in need so long as he does not endanger the operation of the vehicle.
5. He shall lower the flag saying ‘Free’ when the cab is engaged, except when road conditions are dangerous.
6. He shall be fully familiar with the areas in which he circulates.
7. He shall not annoy the passenger by playing the radio or cassettes, nor control the opening and closing of windows other than the one next to him, nor smoke except with the permission of the passenger.
8. He shall stop the meter at the request of the passenger if the latter should wish to shorten the trip originally requested.
9. He shall always carry sufficient quantities of change.
10. He shall stop for the person who hails him unless he is on call or in case of urgency.
Counting Noses
The census which took place on April 5 had been postponed for several weeks. In the wake of the earthquakes that struck in February and March, it was felt that so many people had fled their homes to live in tents that this might have an ill effect on the accuracy of the statistics being gathered. In spite of the postponement, there was still some doubt whether the census was as precise as it could have been. Some of the census-takers were greatly overworked and others were inexperienced. In a Kolonaki flat, for instance, a head of household was asked if he kept any sheep and goats; if so, where they were stalled; and, if he had a toilet, whether it was situated inside or outside the apartment. It was not only some of the questions, but the style in which they were phrased that caused either confusion or disfavor. Some people were taken aback by the word archigos which is not so much “the head of the house” as “the lord of the manor”, causing resentment amongst liberated families. Some householders stayed at home for twenty-four hours and were never counted, while others, who were obliged to leave, were requested to have themselves counted in at certain census centers. The widest margin for error and misinterpretation probably lay among those Athenians who went to their weekend and summer homes in small villages. Village councils wanted to have their summer residents counted in along with the locals because by swelling their population they are able to ask for larger benefits from the government. As a result, more than the usual number of crowded buses were seen travelling along the country’s highways on this particular Sunday. In this case, a fair number of persons must not have been accounted for at all. For the National Statistical Service, however, this should add another, unexpected piece of factual knowledge to its archives, namely, that a great many people, mainly Athenians, reside almost as long in vehicles as they do in their offices or at home.
