Green Space at THIS IS NOT MY COUNTRY

Green Space

Published by deviousdiva May 24th, 2006 in Odds and Ends.

Today is European Day of Parks but we will not be joining the festivities because none have been planned. Athens offers just 2 square metres of green space per resident, the smallest amount in Europe. Compare that to Amsterdam, where people get 57 square metres each.
Via Kathimerini

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4 Responses to “Green Space”

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1 melusina May 24th, 2006 at 6:46 pm

Not to mention Amsterdamians-ites get additional “green space” in the form of coffeeshops. Still, everywhere you turn there is a park. They’d have happy citizens in SimCity.

Thessalonians get 5.52 square meters per person, so at least it is a bit better here, but according to that article, not livable. Still, I had a bee in my apartment the other day, the green situation can’t be THAT bad if I have a bee in downtown Thessaloniki!
2 kassandra May 24th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

Apparently Athenians don’t care much for green space. I was living in Ambelokipi right next to this huge fantastic park - it had mini horses, and all kinds of strange birds that I’d never even seen before! - and being at the time unemployed I was at liberty to hang out there quite a bit. But I only ever saw one or two other people in the park, max. It was kind of sad and deserted (and this was in October so the weather was still really nice). Apparently nature isn’t enough to draw out the city folk - there needs to be a cafe as well, or they just can’t appreciate it.
Athens does have a lot of very nice plateias, though, and many little slivers of green space with really nice flowers (I think Greeks are some of the best gardeners in the world - what they do with flowers blows the little manicured, geometrically arranged plots I’m used to from back home out of the water!)
But I think the best solution would be if everyone built roof gardens on tops of their apartment buildings. A few trees and vines would go a long way to hiding those unsightly satellite poles, and just think how nice the city would look from an airplane! Maybe the EU should be petitioned to give us money to do it, or something… yeah right. nice dream though.
3 deviousdiva May 24th, 2006 at 9:59 pm

I am one of the truly fortunate in Athens. I have a garden! With trees! And flowers! I also completely admire the balcony gardeners here. It’s amazing the amount of plants and flowers that people grow on their sometimes minuscule balconies. And they are so beautiful. Maybe parks are just not as attractive to the population as plateias (squares) which are so full of life here.
4 Laurelin May 25th, 2006 at 12:04 pm

I remember the park in central Athens- I loved it there. When I go back I’ll have to check it out again. But other than that, there was very little green space. I think we have quite a bit more in London. All we need now is for the weather to clear up so we can actually make use of the damn parks!