NEW FORMS OF GEOGRAPHICAL INEQUALITIES AND SPATIAL PROBLEMS IN GREECE

Abstract

The dynamics of the restructuring of capital over the last fifteen years produced new territorial realities. One fundamental aspect of this evolution, in the case of Greece, is the relative decrease of interregional inequalities and the strengthening and/or appearance of new intraregional disparities. A second group of developments consist of the intensification of a series of spatial organisation problems that affect both urban and nonurban areas (land-uses' conflicts, environmental conditions, traffic). As far as the future is concerned, the determinant framework of the 1990s will be the process of European unification. Although the implications of the spatial dimension (regional policy, environmental policy, projected urban policy) of the EC policies will generally be beneficial, the broader implications of the above process seem much more ambivalent. The main fields of concern are: difficulties in the participation of Greek regions in the emerging Mediterranean arc of development; retardation of growth in rural areas (as a result of the new CAP) and the increase of intraregional inequalities; and aggravation of the conditions in the fields of land uses and the urban environment (because of the increasing competition between the southern European regions, and between the European cities).