| Περίληψη: | Sprawling beneath the Acropolis, modern Athens is commonly viewed in negative terms: congested, ugly and monotonous. Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens questions this stereotype, reassessing the explosive growth of postwar Athens through its most distinctive building type: the polykatoikia (a small-scale multistory apartment block). Theocharopoulou re-evaluates the polykatoikia as a low-tech, easily constructible innovation that stimulates the postwar urban economy, triggering the city's social mid-twentieth-century transformation. The interiors of the polykatoikia apartments reflect a desire for modernity as marketed to housewives through film and magazines. Regular builders became unlikely allies in designing these polykatoikia interiors, enabling inhabitants to exert agency over their daily lives and the shape of the postwar city. Theocharopoulou's reading draws on popular media as well as urban and regional planning theory, cultural studies and anthropology to examine the evolution of this phenomenon and, in light of Greece's recent financial crisis, considers the role polykatoikia might play in building an equitable and sustainable twenty-first-century city.
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