ABSTRACT
Greek landscapes have been plagued by much neglect, misuse or even irreparable destruction, throughout the country’s history (Beriatos 2009; Manolidis 2008; Kizos and Terkenli 2006; Terkenli 2004; Doukellis 1998) and especially since Greece’s era of rapid urbanization (1950s and 1960s) (Kizos et al. 2007; Terkenli 2004; Simaioforides 1989). Moreover, the country currently finds itself in the uneasy position of being at the receiving end of any and all international postmodern globalizing trends in urban and regional planning and spatial organization. The latter processes of external, top-down impacts of the workings of a new global cultural economy of space (Terkenli and d’Hauteserre 2006; Terkenli 2002) are coupled with long-standing tensions between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘novel’, in all aspects of contemporary Greek life. This pseudo-dilemma, namely ‘traditional’ vs. ‘novel’, takes on many forms in the case of the Greek landscape: between the continuation of age-old productive uses of the rural landscape versus its museumization as an object of cultural value and aesthetic pleasure, or between its trading as a commodity in various consumption industries versus its reverence as a place of family or ethnic roots, an object of contemplation through the arts, etc. In the meantime, for all practical purposes, the landscape has been absent from most expressions of everyday private or public life in Greece, at the same time as, in most European countries, it has repeatedly been attributed properties of an essential context and product of high quality in life. Indicatively, although it has signed the ELC, Greece has been stalling its ratification ever since.
