Cohousing-L Mailing List: City Plan of Athens

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

There is a wonderful documentary on city planning in Athens — how the planners 
designed the city to express and reinforce their democratic values. The center 
of the city was a large common space — as large as 6-8 football fields. They 
used hectares  for the exact measurements which I have not a clue about and 
since it was a British film, I’m not even sure what kind of football. But 
basically the commons was very big. And there no church or palace in the center.

Around the center were homes — now just foundations — of equal size built on a 
grid. To stress equality, the homes were the same size.

I found this on Amazon Prime Video and haven’t looked around to see where else 
it can be found. It’s not impossible that some libraries have it. Or it may be 
on the BBC website.

Building the Ancient City: Athens. 2016. "How city planning reflected and 
supported the open government." BBC.

No, the democracy didn’t include women or slaves, but it was very strong and 
thoroughly argued and expressed in the city governance. 

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org