Urban planning and revolt: a spatial analysis of the December 2008 uprising in Athens

This chapter does not constitute yet another more or less chronological narrative of December’s events. This would have been impossible, despite the appreciable efforts that have been made to conceive the span and recurrence of the events in their entirety. Rather, it roams the Athenian metropolis before and during the revolt, attempting to illuminate those angles that ignited December’s conflict. It sees space as a derivative of human relations, and cities as places of coexistence that can function as fields of resistance and as sites where everyday life can be reclaimed. Through a tour of Athens’s particular urban characteristics, the chapter presents the territorial spread of conflict, examining the relationship between urban space and the events that took place in December and their consequent feedback into the city’s vast web.