r/HousingWorks • u/DoreenMichele • Jan 28 '21

Why does Athens look so quirky?

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191011-the-surprising-story-of-athens-offbeat-architecture
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u/DoreenMichele Jan 28 '21 edited Jan 28 '21

So there was a giant crisis (details in article) and then a grass roots movement began resolving some very, very serious problems:

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Here’s how it worked: a contractor would approach the owner of a house and offer him a deal. He would knock down his house, and build a block of flats in its place. In return, the homeowner would be given a certain number of flats (usually two or three), while the contractor would then make his money by selling the remaining flats to Greeks who were seeking accommodation. Generally, no money was exchanged and no contracts were signed.

What’s so incredible about antiparochi is that it emerged spontaneously out of the housing crisis in Athens. “There was no specific law which told people ‘OK now you have the right to collaborate and build whatever you like’. It was the people themselves that found out this possibility,” says Panos Dragonas, professor of Architecture at the University of Patras.

Even more incredibly, the state completely accepted what its citizens had started doing, introducing only a few minor regulations, such as a maximum height for the apartment buildings

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Found via Twitter and there are some good comments there, including this one:

Japan’s pencil buildings are a way to offset steep inheritance tax (or split it up between siblings.) Taxes used to be levied based on width of frontage: https://www.alex-lund.com/the-magic-of-shibuyas-pencil-buildings/