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Betting against mono-centrism? The impact of economic crisis on city vertical profiles in metropolitan Athens, Greece

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Abstract

The present study investigates the inherent transition from compact to sprawled morphologies in European cities, focusing on metropolitan Athens, Greece. Using building permits’ data from 1981 to 2020, the research examines long-term and short-term changes in the vertical profile of central and peripheral settlements in Athens, controlling for the impact of socioeconomic factors and territorial backgrounds. The empirical findings reveal that Athens’ growth followed a classical mono-centric model for several decades, while experiencing a significant transformation in settlement structure and dynamics since the early 2010s, as an indirect effect of the great recession. The study highlights the crucial role of specific territorial factors, rooted in economic and socio-demographic origins, in shaping this process of urban transformation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Methods and Models for Economics, Territory and Finance (MEMOTEF), Faculty of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161, Rome, Italy

    Emma Bruno & Luca Salvati

  2. Department of Management and Quantitative Studies, University of Naples Parthenope, Via Generale Parisi 13, 80132, Naples, Italy

    Rosalia Castellano

  3. Department of Economic and Legal Studies, University of Naples Parthenope, Via Generale Parisi 13, 80132, Naples, Italy

    Emma Bruno & Gennaro Punzo

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  1. Emma Bruno
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  2. Rosalia Castellano
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Correspondence to Gennaro Punzo.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Fig. 6.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Mantel autocorrelation profile (left: multivariate periodogram; right: scalogram) of the time series derived from selected PCA by lag

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See Tables 6,

Table 6 Non-parametric Spearman pair-wise correlation coefficients between the average number of floors (authorised in the respective building permit) in each municipality of metropolitan Athens and contextual variables*
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Table 7 Biplot of a principal component analysis reducing the m-dimensionality of redundant time series (see Table 1 for acronyms)
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7, and

Table 8 Autocorrelation coefficients of (first and second order) time series derived from PCA by lag
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8.

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Bruno, E., Castellano, R., Punzo, G. et al. Betting against mono-centrism? The impact of economic crisis on city vertical profiles in metropolitan Athens, Greece. Ann Oper Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-024-05956-z

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