Athens / Opportunities and challenges

Posted by on Friday, July 13, 2012 · 

A rich food culture

Greece is well known internationally for its rich and tasty cuisine. In particular the traditional Greek food is emblematic of the famous Mediterranean diet reputed for being one of the healthiest diet in the world. Although this traditional cuisine is still very vivid and appreciated, industrial products, junk food and low quality ingredients are developing increasing the level of malnutrition and obesity among all the population. On top of that situation, the Greek emigration diffused abroad a cheap and low quality version of souvlakia/gyros restaurants blurring the image of the healthy Mediterranean diet. The huge touristic activity in all the country and especially in Athens generates the emergence of a large range of tourist taverna serving more of less good quality food.

| Traditional taverna and quality organic restaurants | Athens offer of restaurants is huge and is ranging from traditional tavernas that still serve original Greek cuisine to more modern restaurants leveraging on Mediterranean diet fusion menus. All of them celebrate the quality of ingredients and excellent cooking. 
 

The violent economic crisis reduced dramatically the frequentation of restaurants by the most affluent part of the population whereas lower incomes claims for access to cheaper food products.

This situation pictures perfectly the two-fold etymology of the word crisis and can be seen as both a threat and an opportunity for introducing sustainable food.

On the one hand, the economic crisis coming on top of general trends toward more convenient industrial, pre-prepared food may lead to vicious circled effects in term of quality. The challenge is certainly to give access to cheaper food without promoting more industrial fat and sugar intensive unhealthy products. Organic local quality products may then only appears as a luxury for happy-few.

On the other hand, the same situation could be seen as an opportunity to invert the current bad nutritional trends and promote healthy sustainable diets. The same population who tries to find less expensive food products to buy is at the same time still seeking for quality. The pathway toward a Mediterranean diet based on simple local ingredients, cheaper low-meat menus and less dairy products appears a challenging but promising alternative.

Engaging in local farming

Athens is lacking green spaces and its very densely built urban fabric, lying mainly on limestone, is suffocating under frequent heat waves during the hot season. Greening actions towards the generation of climate-altering ecosystems is for sure an important issue to take into consideration. Beyond the recent focus of the National Strategic Reference Framework on green roofs and the apparently mixed results obtained until now by pilot green space on rooftops of schools in Athens, a wider action towards a more systematic greening of any available spaces in the city is needed. Within this context, urban food production is increasing the attractiveness and possible benefits of green spaces for the population. The Municipality of Athens is supporting a large action towards reclaiming available urban space for growing food either implementing real urban farms on the larger pieces of land (see Eleonas’ urban farm) and urban gardening on smaller plots. The use of public parks and even the very symbolic conversion of a couple of streets into green spaces have been approved and is in process to be implemented(cf. Green streets).

| Plato’s Academy Green streets | Two streets in Plato’s Academy neighbourhood are about to be turned into green orchards. One was planned to be turned into a pedestrian area and the other was foreseen as a street in the urban plan. In both cases a consultation process with local population reveal a garden would be more appreciated. These are only two streets but in a city relaying heavily on car such as Athens, turning streets into gardens is of highly symbolic value!
 

A particular consideration is made on schools. Some of them have already developed their own educative gardens (see Kids classes visiting university and Urban gardens in schools) and the Municipality intends to generalise such activities in all schools located within the city of Athens.

Give visibility to what exists

The topic of sustainable food is emerging within the Municipality of Athens. The Athens University of Agriculture is an important knowledge centre that gathers data and is able to generate information on the food chain in Athens and the Attica region.

Interesting and promising initiatives in terms of urban agriculture, organic markets, food education, etc. are developing but no clear and synthetic overview and systematic assessment of all food-related issues seems to be available yet. Such a state of the art may help to orient action toward a sustainable food system. It may also give visibility on what already exists in terms of good and promising practices around food and would probably give the Athenians a better image of their food system than the one they tend to have.

| Urban gardens in schools | In order to foster knowledge and interest in local quality food for young generation, the Municipality of Athens intends to support primary schools initiatives to organize small educative vegetable plots within the schoolyards. More than just the cooling effect of green roofs, such garden maintained by the pupils are the occasion to organize many teaching activities around sustainability, local ingredients, healthy cooking…, and then raise awareness and shift eating habits.
 

Engaging participation

The culture of public authorities tends to be very top-down starting first with approval at political level, to be then implemented in the administration and finally proposed to citizens. No real space is left for participation. Public authorities intend to keep control. The population is placed in a passive posture: citizens expect the public authorities to take action first and participation is not trusted and considered. This situation result in public action often disconnected from citizen practices and usages (see Market in the park…). Engaging participative bottom-up processes is a strong challenge both for the public administration culture and for the population.

| Market in the park | The “Traditional Open Air Market and Craft Units and Agro tourism” is a recently build park in the mixed industrial area of Eleonas near the Plato’s Academy neighbourhood. The park has apparently been built to host an open-air market of traditional products and services, mainly in the field of craftsmanship and tourism. Big buildings from large institutions and companies surround the area. Disconnected from users it is unlikely that such development projects take place and have success there. 

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