- Urban Cmpetitiveness and Sprawl as conflicting Planning Priorities: the Olympic legacy of Athens    1439 kb by    Pagonis, Thanos & Chorianopoulos , I. & Koukoulas , S. &, Drymoniti , S. | apagonis@geo.aegean.gr    Short Outline This paper investigates the relationship between urban competitiveness and sprawl in the context of spatial planning and governance of metropolitan areas. It focuses on Athens, which hosted the 2004 Olympic Games, and examines the impact of large-scale infrastructure projects on the changing patterns of land development in the urban periphery. Abstract This paper brings together two seemingly distinct discussions on urban planning and policy that focus on European metropolitan areas. The quest for urban competitiveness has played a key role in the reorientation of spatial planning priorities towards economic development goals, triggering a vibrant debate among researchers and planning professionals the last two decades. Discussion stresses the uneven impact of competitiveness-oriented local development strategies by highlighting an increase in disparities both at inter and intra-urban level. Sprawl is one of the celebrated themes in planning theory, especially in the USA. Lately, however, there has been an increasing interest also in Europe in mapping the emergence of urban landscapes over ever greater areas and in reviewing established understandings of sprawl in the European context. The paper explores through theoretical analysis and case study research, the relationship between these two distinct processes, viewed from a spatial planning and policy perspective. It looks at Athens, a city with notoriously weak land management structures, which hosted successfully the 2004 Olympic Games. It examines by means of satellite imagery and GIS the impact of large-scale infrastructure projects on the changing patterns of land development in the eastern part of the metropolitan area. Olympics-related infrastructure investments, such as the metro and the new international airport, facilitated the efficient execution of the Games and improved significantly the functional aspects of the city. Evidence, however, presented in this paper suggests that Olympic undertakings are also materializing in a case of uncontrolled land-use change in the urban periphery. Keywords competitiveness, sprawl, Athens, planning, Olympics Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2008: Urban Growth without Sprawl   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper