Rethinking participation: lessons from a municipal market in Athens

The paper aims to propose (re)thinking participation, a much-debated issue in urban studies, planning and development, both in its grass-roots and its institutional versions.

The paper draws from two phases of people’s participation concerning the re-use of a former municipal market in Athens, the Agora, in the neighborhood of Kypseli. The two phases represent two different approaches to “participation”: an initiative of local groups implementing participation as a site of radical possibility and an invited or induced process, in which the municipal authorities initiated the whole exercise.

The radically different starting points correspond to equally different perspectives with regard to the stakes and meanings of the respective participatory process, as well as the individuals and groups who are involved.

The paper approaches participation as a spatial process, producing interactions among people, creating emotional or material connections, exchanges and inevitably conflict, re-configuring (public) space and extending (urban) citizenship.