The City Plaza Hotel in Athens’ Vic­to­ria dis­trict stood emp­ty for a long time. In April 2016, an ini­tia­tive, togeth­er with strand­ed refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syr­ia, and many oth­er places, occu­pied the build­ing. They trans­formed the 126-room ex-hotel into a res­i­den­tial com­plex and man­aged it them­selves. In doing so, the project is a demon­stra­tion of the prac­tice of eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty with refugees. Thus, it was also a cen­ter for the fight against racism, bor­ders, repres­sive migra­tion poli­cies, and social exclu­sion. After thir­ty-six months, the exper­i­ment came to an end in 2019. Despite the project’s brevi­ty, this build­ing in cen­tral Athens, as well as the activ­i­ties that unfold­ed there, rep­re­sent crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant top­ics to all of us—and not only in times of crisis.

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That the hous­es assem­bled here seem to be thrown togeth­er is because the indi­vid­ual build­ings, as they stand there, do not nec­es­sar­i­ly exist as built struc­tures. They are mem­o­ries mixed with visions of one’s future four walls. Built by refugees from Iran, Syr­ia, Moroc­co, and Pak­istan, World City, as the project is called, was cre­at­ed togeth­er with Berlin-based asso­ci­a­tion Schlesische27 and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions. This glob­al city of a dif­fer­ent kind is both spec­u­la­tion and dream: about a future with­out bor­ders, the city as a process of dia­logue and its polypho­ny, of which there’s still too lit­tle to date.

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For­mer may­or Domeni­co »Mim­mo« Lucano of the south­ern Ital­ian munic­i­pal­i­ty of Riace was co-founder of the asso­ci­a­tion Cit­tà Futura—City of the Future. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with aid orga­ni­za­tions, he took in refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Pales­tine, and Lebanon. With this came state sub­si­dies that were then also invest­ed in the village’s infra­struc­ture, which—many today believe—would like­ly have died out with­out the new res­i­dents. And so, togeth­er with the locals, aban­doned hous­es were repaired. The new­com­ers were also intro­duced to local tra­di­tions of glass mak­ing, ceram­ics, and embroi­dery. But from the begin­ning, there was resis­tance to what was seen as an idio­syn­crat­ic approach, which final­ly led to the project’s col­lapse a few years ago. Lucano was accused of mal­prac­tice, abuse of his posi­tion, and had to leave Riace. In the mean­time, how­ev­er, he’s back forg­ing new plans.

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