infra-demos during 2018 and 2019 published 3 reports. Most recently the Preliminary report on the extraction of hydrocarbons in Epirus (Greece) which is part of the field-site studies on infrastructural gap and new infrastructural contestations in Greece and two reports on the eviction of ADM community in Amsterdam which was part of the international comparison strand of infra-demos with alternative infrastructural arrangements abroad. The first of the two reports was used by the ADM community in their interim measure requests from the United Nations Committee of Human Rights.

The three reports are available in the infra-demos PUBLICATIONS sector.

On the weekend of 13 and 14 April 2019 the conference under the title ‘No Time To Waste’ took place in Athens. The conference was organized by collectives and individuals active in environmental issues in the country and was concerned with the current predicament of waste management in Greece.
 
The conference organizers explained that this is a particularly critical period for waste management in Greece. The country has one of the lowest recycling rates in EU and its highly dependent on land-filling as a method of municipal waste disposal. At the same time, while the only legal landfill that has been serving for decades the needs of Athens and the wider region of Attica has by far exceeded its capacity, there are currently no other waste infrastructures ready to accommodate the capital’s garbage. By pointing out the imminent threat of a waste crisis, the organizers also noticed the need for societal participation in finding answers to this problem.
 
The conference aimed at bringing together a variety of people and collectives to discuss possible alternatives practices and processes that would contribute towards a public decentralized model of waste management. Hence, the conference hosted contributions by workers, activists, academics, researchers, and institutional representatives as a way of creating an interdisciplinary dialogue to highlight diverse political practices, collective actions, community struggles, and local initiatives that have emerged around issues of waste. Infra-demos participated with a presentation by Yannis Kallianos which discussed critical interconnections between infrastructure and waste in relation to the Attica waste management paradigm but also within the context of the wider capitalist industrial system.
 
Over the two days of the conference more than 30 presentations, which composed the conference programme, discussed issues touching upon a variety of thematics. The current situation of waste management in Greece and Attica was discussed and examined in relation to its historical development. Other presentations focused on processes of waste reduction and practices of reuse. Contributions also discussed the role of institutional frameworks at state and local government level within the context of waste management. Another important discussion that took place concerned the emergence of diverse participatory processes and community struggles around waste and wider environmental issues throughout Greece. In addition, during the two-day conference an art exhibition was organized featuring installations and art pieces based on various recycling, upcycling and reuse practices by artists, academics, and students.
 
The conference is, yet another, important indication of the proliferation of collective struggles, initiatives, and contestation around infrastructures in Greece, and waste infrastructures in particular, in times of crisis.

For infra-demos research on urban waste see:
Dalakoglou, D., & Kallianos, Y. (2018). ‘Eating mountains’ and ‘eating each other’: Disjunctive modernization, infrastructural imaginaries and crisis in Greece. Political Geography, 67, 76-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.08.009 

Blog by C. Giovanopoulos

The inquiry and development of participatory forms of social infrastructure has been one of the main objectives of the infra-demos project. In this context it has embarked in a close collaboration with the Solidarity Schools Network of Greece. One of the results of this collaboration has been the development of an interactive platform which will visualize the ecosystem of the solidarity schools. This does not imply just a presentation of quantitative and qualitative information about each school. In addition, it includes the role of other actors and agents that facilitate the solidarity schools’ operation, or, whom the latter is able to mobilize.  

The development of the platform (still ongoing) follows a participation action research and co-design methodology. The initial discussion of the proposal for such mapping occurred in the coordinating assemblies of the solidarity schools and was followed by a first round of data collection through semi-formal interviews. During this process the issue that arose again and again was the following: what is the best way to represent the solidarity schools network according to its decentralized logic and principles? The deliberation, comments and suggestions that were made informed the platform’s final design and layout.

 The resulted interactive map shows thus the span of the schools social relations, mobilized resources and the reach of their transformative practices. It also provides an initial glimpse into their social infrastructural capacities. It manifests, how those transcend a net pedagogical perspective as the network expands in various scales and fields; from the local to the international and from meeting educational needs to nurturing structures and processes of education communities (and of education) as ‘expanding commons’ (Stavrides, 2017). In that respect it provides an entry, and the data, into the integrative function of the solidarity schools as participatory social(ized) and welfare infrastructure.   On Saturday 16/03/2019 a ‘draft’ version of the platform was presented for first time (photos) and for deliberation to the teachers, students, parents and volunteers who participated in the assembly of the ‘Mesopotamia’ Solidarity School, in Moschato - Athens.

The presentation  occurred within discussions already taken place in the school about their infrastructural needs and capacities, which had also been one of the main topics of the assembly’s agenda. In addition, due to the pre-election period, candidates for the Municipality of Moschato were also present and participated in the discussion, responding to the demands expressed by members of the solidarity school. Thus, the presentation of the platform engaged in and informed also the debate and a policy making process. The assembly initiated thus a new round of co-design meetings with other members of the Solidarity Schools’ Network for feedback towards the final design of the platform.   

The public launch of the platform, in both Greek and English, will take place in the first public event that the Solidarity Schools’ Network organize for this year next Friday, 12 April 2019, in Thessaloniki. It forms part of the presentation of the expanded Solidarity Schools’ Network which organizes a round of public events and meetings until the end of the current academic year, starting from a two-days event in Thessaloniki on 12 & 13 of April, which will be followed by two more public events, in Corfu and Athens in June.
 
 
References
 
Stavrides St. (2016) Common Space: The City as Commons. London. Zed Books

 

infra-demos PI just published a new article on Airbnbization of Europe, Mobility and Property.

infra-demos is presented on Nov 9th in the international workshop on infrastructures and mobility organised by the Catalan Institute of Anthropology and the University of Barcelona in Barcelona.

For more information follow the link

A new article by Dimitris Dalakoglou and Yannis Kallianos of infra-demos team was published in the journal Political Geography. The article titled: 'Eating mountains' and 'eating each other'' and it  talks about the relationship between political imaginary and infrastructures in Greece since the 1990s. 

The article is available to be downloaded for free for 50 days following this link 

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Professor Dimitris Dalakoglou, infra-demos' PI,  just got published an op-ed in the Dutch daily newspaper het Parool on the commercialization of urban real estate and its impact infrastructures and public interest.

The full article is available here