ATHENS

The Municipality of Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece, with a population of more than 600.000 inhabitants (approx. 2.7 million in the urban agglomeration).
In 2017, the Municipality of Athens adopted a plan for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions, setting a target of reducing emissions by 40% by 2030, a plan for adapting to climate change and a resilience plan. The City of Athens has identified the environmental challenges and focuses the recent years in the creation of a greener city enhancing the indicator of quality of life as a crucial urban target. Since Athens is a city that suffers from heat waves, floods and poor air quality, the need of a cultural change to understand, support, and promote its green environment is primordial. To this end, Athens launched its Resilience Strategy in 2014 that mapped the city’s needs and suggested a set of practical actions for implementation towards an open, proactive and green city. Athens aims at reducing the level of stationary energy consumption targeting sources such as buildings’ interventions (near zero energy buildings, smart grids) starting from institutional sites and facilities (municipal) and with the vision to expand to others as well. Generally the city is on its pathway towards digitalization of its services and management of urban assets, introducing smart city solutions in its operation.
Actions foreseen include infrastructure improvements e.g. building renovations, cool pavements, green roofs, street smart lightning etc. Other measures include a research on the increase of green spaces and percentage of shadowing with tree and vegetative cover e.g. pocket parks in order to tackle the urban heat island effect. Finally the above are directly correlated with the vision of citizens’ and visitors’ raising awareness and behavioural change.