Reality Makes Things Fantastic: Modern Movement and Tourism

David Goodman, Densities, Eleni Gigantes, Elia Zenghelis, Essay, Formats, Middle Density, Politics and economics, Territory and mobility, Topics, Uncharted, Urban Paradigms

Athens, Debate, Effects of tourism, Essay, Europe, Future cities, Future tendencies, Global Awareness, Greece, History, History of Architecture, Mobility, Notes towards a History of Urbanism, Planetary urbanizations, Social infrastructure, Space-time relationship, Sustainable tourism, Territorial dimension, Territory, Tourism, Urban growth, Urban mobility, Urban Paradigms

This essay is an excerpt of "Uncharted" byJuan Elvira, David Goodman, Pablo Oriol, Roger Paez, Fernando Rodríguez, Lina Toro, published by Actar Publishers -- https://actar.com/product/uncharted/

I meet with Eleni Gigantes and Elia Zenghelis in the inevitably spectacular golden haze of a late Athens afternoon. My hosts are waiting for me in the terrace of a bar across the street from the Athens Hilton, and I arrive a bit out of breath after having walked too briskly from Plaka, across Syntagma Square—where the entire Greek National Police force seemed to be marshaled in anticipation (or provocation?) of anti-Troika protesters—past the presidential palace and the remnants of the 1896 Olympic games, down a busy boulevard choked with smog and French hatchbacks, and through a quiet neighborhood of sturdy and dignified neo-modernist 1960s housing blocks, where roughly half of the street-level storefronts stand empty and for rent.