Camila Sanchez Rodriguez

Recovering Abandoned Heritage: Commercial Arcades as An Opportunity for Sustainable Development in the Commercial Triangle of Athens

Urban Strategies and Design - MSc

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

camilaszrdz@gmail.com

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CSR CV.pdf (124.95 KB)

Collage representing the essence of the project.

Summary

Due to its cultural distinctiveness and historical significance, Athens experiences high levels of tourism. The Parthenon, sitting atop the Acropolis of Athens, is a view many can recall and easily picture in their mind. However, beyond the picturesque view of the city, many tourists get to experience, there is another less colourful one in which local needs have been overlooked, excessive tourism threatens the heritage of the city, and the multifunctional diversity of the Athenian city centre has been weathered, all in the pursuit of profit from tourism. Utilising social and heritage lenses, my work examines the current development approaches within the Commercial Triangle, a historic urban centre within Athens, using the Commercial Triangle as a case study area to explore the reuse of historic commercial stoas as a solution to preserve the cultural and historical identity of the Athenian city-centre, while also allowing development to take place in a sustainable way.

Tourism Trends and Athens

- Tourism is the most profitable industry in Greece, allowing the country to economically recover from its financial crisis in 2008.

- Athens is a dense city, being the densest within the Municipality of Athens; as such is important to make efficient use of current its current urban areas.

- Tourism has been a profitable industry within the city, but they it has achieved a scale that makes it have more negative than positive impacts, especially for locals.

- The historic urban centre of the city is made up of Plaka and the Commercial Triangle, and the latter finds itself in a limbo between a fully touristified centre and a functional commercial area of a dense urban area.

‘Stop Airbnb and Tourism’ Graffiti in Athens (Plantzos, 2020)

The Commercial Triangle and the Rise of Commercial Voids

- The increasing number of ‘commercial voids’ is the biggest challenge impacting the Commercial Triangle.

- Commercial voids have been caused by a range of changes in economic flows, social patterns, and legislative frameworks not only within the area, but also at a city and global level.

- Commercial voids impact the economic vitality, functional diversity, social capital, and cultural distinctiveness of the Commercial Triangle. However, their associated challenges do not exist in isolation, and as such, proposed interventions need to acknowledge this complexity and multidimensionality

- Commercial voids can affect whole buildings or parts of them, as well as different commercial properties within the Triangle, and each built typology has subsequent opportunities or challenges contributing to their abandonment or potential reuse

- Among all the built typologies within the Triangle, commercial arcades are the most abandoned built typology, contributing to the challenge of ‘commercial voids.’ Thus, they are a key concern for any proposed interventions and outputs of this study

Diagram showing the fabric of the Commercial Triangle in relation to Omonioa, Monastiraki, and Syntagma Square. Property of (Ntrenogianni et al., 2015)

Diagrammatic map of the Commercial Triangle showing vacant buildings in the area. Property of (Ntrenogianni et al., 2015), annotated by (Author, 2025)

Map showing the presence of commercial voids and arcades within the Commercial Triangle. Property of (Ntrenogianni et al., 2015), annotated by (Author, 2025).

Formulating A Solution at City and Local Level

Many of the challenges regarding arcades originate from the lack of involvement and power local citizens have in shaping the development of the places they inhabit. Historic urban centres, and consequently the Commercial Triangle, are part of a wider urban network, affected by development decisions and occupied by residents. Therefore, to formulate a proposal to bring arcades back into use, it is important to look at both the city and local levels, contemplating the role participatory decision-making mechanisms have.

As part of the proposal of this study, two strategies were proposed. The first one, was targeted towards allowing greater civic engagement in development, allowing citizens to have a say in the processes that shape their city. As such, it was proposed to adjust the decision-making hierarchy, and meet the current top-down system at least halfway with bottom-up approaches. Allowing decision-making power to be more evenly distributed across governance tiers, while also establishing a knowledge-sharing dialogue between institutions and civic society, which results in informed decision-making. This strategy would also complement the effort of current civic-led initiatives in the Commercial Triangle, such as FOTA (Friends of Trigono Athens), which do extensive work to preserve the commercial nature of the Triangle.

Vision: Planning systems in Athens will encourage citizen participation to guide urban development in the shaping of places that are economically competitive, respond to the needs of their residents, support the diverse functions of the wider urban network, and preserve their heritage both through tangible and non-tangible forms.

Diagram showing the implication of the proposed restructuring of decision- making mechanisms across the different governance scales. Property of (Author, 2025)

Diagram showing a comparison between the current decision-making system and the proposed one. Property of (Author, 2025).

The second strategy focused on a specific commercial arcade within the Triangle, The Merchant's Arcade, which has sat vacant for decades and has previously been involved in projects to be brought back into use. The strategy was designed to build upon the work of the previous “Traces of Commerce Initiative,” which took place in 2014, but instead of consisting of a short-term intervention, it will seek to combine the first strategy for decision-making mechanisms at a city level with local efforts to allow for long-term change. It will be implemented in 3 different stages, allowing for the restoration of the building, the leasing of the commercial units to local business-owners, and the creation of community events to draw both attention and pedestrian traffic to the arcade. The strategy was also design with replicability in mind, allowing its frameworks for action to be adjusted to the other 170 commercial arcades in the Triangle. Thus, enabling change at a bigger scale.