Athens is the capital of Greece with a population reaching four million. At the same time is a historical city since archaic years. Many fabulous monuments of Athens were built 2,5 thousand years ago and they are still visible to the local residents and impress the tourists. The Acropolis, along with the Parthenon, Pnika, Thesio, and the long walls of Piraeus not only do remind the city's past, but also they are cultural and architectural reference points even today.

On the same time, Athens is a noisy city with traffic in its roads, not much green space and increased environmental pollution. Generally, it contains most of the negative characteristics of a city which don't really benefit their inhabitant's lives. However, the need for car drivers to serve themselves guides to the cancel of any other plans made for the city.

The last years, the economic crisis has made the living conditions worse in our city and has shown how important and necessary is the introduction of new plans. The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation took the initiative to provide funds to an international competition. The goal of this competition is the instruction of a new renaissance plan for the center of Athens which will greatly enhance it and will improve the living conditions of its inhabitants.

This international competition, called 'Rethink Athens' was completed a few months ago. At the moment, the center of Athens becomes a huge exhibition of the ideas and plans which were proposed by the participants. The winner of this competition was 'OCRA', a Dutch company which cooperated with Greek, French and German specialists on the issue.

The proposal, suggested that the most central road of Athens, Panepistimiou Ave., which is the keystone of the traffic network, should become a huge sidewalk. Also, tram rails will be constructed in the position of the Avenue in addition to the Metro and to the cycle paths. This will solve the people?s need for transport in the center of Athens.

As a result of this plan, the cars will disappear from that part of Athens, much space will be available for other things, such as  activities being organized or for charity purposes, many trees will be planted and many historical buildings will be revealed as there will be a significant reduction in smog's and other gases' emissions . Therefore, the center of Athens will become once again friendly to people and the visitors will be able to enjoy a walk full of beauty under the famous Acropolis and Parthenon.

This is an ambitious project that will be completed before 2016, and will greatly change Athens. As expected, there are some reactions with their own arguments, but none of them seems to be taken seriously.

 I believe that this project will guide to the improvement of the local environment and surely will upturn our lives as well as teaching us how to enjoy our city with less traffic. In my opinion, this idea could also be applied to other cities so that people would be encouraged to use public transport instead of their cars.