Athens: Co-creating the arrival city (2019)

The Athens summerLab aimed to offer a contribution and reflection on the potential role of refugee-focused housing programmes and self-organised small-scale initiatives in creating opportunities for an inclusive and just city. It explored how such opportunities could impact not only refugees and migrants but also the city as a whole. The summerLab sought to identify and discuss the potential of a series of existing housing practices and to formulate possible alternative strategies.

Participants were exposed to a variety of urban actors and practitioners to critically explore the different roles and relationships between local authorities, private entities, grassroots organisations, NGOs, activists, migrants, and refugees. Through city walks, participants examined the effects of the economic crisis on different urban and building types. They familiarised themselves with the geography of both formal and informal responses to the so-called refugee crisis and explored the visible and less visible ways in which the static presence of migrants and refugees altered the urban landscape.

Revealing and reimagining the city’s available urban and housing stock indicated potential room for constructing an inclusive vision of urban transformation. The outcomes of the workshop were presented in a final meeting with summerLab’s partners and local actors.