Four stories for sustainable mobility in Greece

Abstract Modern Greek cities experience socio-economic changes that result to their urban form and to their urban transport systems. More specifically, throughout the last five years, Greeks have been trying to find the most economic way of urban transport while, at the same time, people worldwide have been interested in making cities more sustainable and environmentally friendly. The vision of a “sustainable” and “economic” city seems to be the most important goal for policy makers, nowadays. As a result, the term “compact city”, which seems to represent this vision, is cited in a growing number of studies and policy papers concerning urban planning. However, there are researchers and urban planners who express strong doubts about that, as well as about the applicability of the model in Greek cities where urban sprawl is a common phenomenon due to the fact that housing developments are constructed in areas outside organized city plans and without permission. Thus, the question that commonly rises is if the model of “compact city” is the ideal city form that can meet the needs of locals. Even in that case, how can we manage the transport transition from a car-centric city to a sustainable and economic city? This paper attempts to answer these questions and to provide a guide of good practices to mitigate the generated traffic and urban problems resulted by the transformation process. To achieve this objective, four medium sized Greek cities which, despite their similarities, differentiate as far as concerning urban life and their morphology have been selected as case studies. Through examining the transformation and comparing them we aim to realize the results of the implementation of a sustainable urban transport system. As these four cities have been assessed as examples with an important sustainable impact, we took the advantage of these cases and created a guide of good practices in order for anyone is interested to be informed about the process and the benefits from the implementation of sustainable urban mobility schemes.