Capitalizing Crisis

Urban Extractivism in Athens Amidst Neoliberal Restructurings

Bibliographic Data

ID23309682
AuthorsKonstantinos Zafeiris (0009-0006-7443-361X, corresponding author), Chryssanthi Petropoulou, Petropoulou Chryssanthi (0000-0001-8144-1382), Mara Zacharaki
Year2026
Publication date2026-07-29
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0309-1317 • E-ISSN: 1468-2427
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-2427.70122
OpenAlexW7171825239
LanguageEN
References cited36

In this article we examine the post‐2009 transformation of Athens through the analytical lens of urban extractivism. We argue that the Greek sovereign debt crisis did not operate as a temporary disruption, but as a durable political condition that enabled the institutionalization of extractive urban governance. We draw on critical theories of extractivism to conceptualize crisis as a privileged historical moment through which economic, political, and spatial restructurings, often facing resistance under normal conditions, become feasible and socially legitimized. We move beyond resource‐based understandings of extractivism to advance urban extractivism as a spatial logic of accumulation in which urban land, housing, infrastructure, and collective assets are mobilized as exhaustible resources embedded in transnational circuits of capital. Empirically, we demonstrate how this logic has been articulated in Athens through a multiscalar regime comprising, first, crisis‐driven institutional and state restructuring; secondly, the reconfiguration of urban governance and the enclosure of public space and urban commons; and thirdly, the financialization and commodification of housing. We show on the basis of legislative analysis and four years of ethnographic research in neighbourhoods undergoing rapid transformation how extractive logics have been normalized through exceptional planning regimes, privatization mechanisms, and real estate financialization. By situating Athens within broader debates on crisis urbanism and extractivism, the research in this article contributes to rethinking southern European cities not merely as sites of austerity‐induced adjustment, but as territories systematically reorganized for repeated cycles of urban value extraction.

Commodification · Corporate governance · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Politics · Real estate · State (computer science) · Technocracy · Urban planning · Urbanism · Urbanization · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Urban Planning and Governance · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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