- Socio-Spatial Differentiations and Second Home Settlement Development: The Case of the Evoikos Coastal Area in Greece.   18 kb by    Deffner, Alex & Sayas, John & Panayotatos, Elisabeth | adeffner@ prd.uth.gr    Short Outline The central theme of the paper is the social and spatial changes brought about by the second home settlement development using as a case study of the Evoikos coastal area Abstract The topic of the paper is the socio-spatial changes brought about by the second home settlement development in the Greek coastal areas. Second home development in Greece emerged as a mass phenomenon during the last two to three decades. This development took place within the framework of a much less developed market for tourist products and services. The latter is directly connected with some attributes of a potential demand that could be characterised as “idiosyncratic”, in comparison to similar conditions in the developed industrialised countries. The low percentage of wage earners and the limited development of the welfare state constituted inhibiting factors for the development of capitalist practices within the limits of income potentials. The latter phenomenon was fostered by other practices, which managed to combine the desired outcome with some kind of individual/family security. The relative absence of the welfare state and the anaemic, often idiosyncratic, development of the classic market forms of production and circulation of products and services fostered the development of alternative structures and practices. The aim was to deal with needs that, due to the proliferation of the means of communication and the internationalisation of the capitalist prototypes, tend to become unified, irrespective of their geographical location. However, the main argument of the paper, employing a production of space/production of nature approach, is that considerable local differentiation exists, and it is the variety and complexity of modes of articulation of the social and the spatial which should be a central consideration of research and planning for ‘big bangs’. The organising construct of the paper is the demonstration of the spatial and social differentiations related to the settlement structure of a wider area, through the identification of a socio-spatial typology based upon the changing social and professional composition of their population as related to long term settlement development. The analysis of the different types of areas that emerge will demonstrate the varying modes of articulation of social and spatial factors. The source material of the paper is based on an extensive research project conducted in the Evoikos coastal area in Greece by an interdisciplinary team from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and the National Centre for Social Research in Athens (NCSR). In the conclusions of the paper the main findings of the research, emphasising the complex interdependencies in space and time affecting wider geographical areas, are connected with the theme of the congress, in the sense that second home settlement development is a par excellence pulsar effect. It is argued that ‘pulses’ constitute a typical example that supports the need for a change of focus on time planning, a new tendency with most of the work concentrated in Europe. The implications for further research are also analysed, since the adopted methodology can provide for comparative research between wider geographical areas in Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean basin that is clearly an attractive pole for second home settlement development. The interest of the paper is threefold: it is a subject with limited international experience and a relatively novel research issue for Greece, it supports the need for a change of focus on the new tendency of time planning, and the applied methodology is useful for comparative research in Europe and particularly the area of the Mediterranean. Keywords Second homes settlement development, Socio-spatial articulation, Evoikos coastal area in Greece Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2002: The Pulsar Effect   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper