Urban Planning and Inadequacies of Implementation: The Case of the City of Larissa, Greece

Urban planning in Greece is identified by two characteristics: the domination of the legislative/legal level on the policy-making one, and the “implementation gap” between laws and plans, and related implementations. In fact, the most frequent reason for the implementation gap is the inability of local administration to compensate landowners. An additional reason for the non-implementation of Urban Plans is that if the expropriation/compensation is delayed for more than a legally specified period, the landowner can ask the lifting of the expropriation. Larissa faces such difficulties. Due to lack of money for expropriations, its¾years-old Urban Plan has been implemented only by 77%. In the city, there are nearly 120 of cases to be expropriated/compensated, and the total amount needed is estimated to 150 million Euros. Obviously, the municipality is impossible to afford this amount, and the Urban Plan is in serious risk of not being implemented. In that context, the paper suggests a re-examination and a re-classification of the prescribed spaces based on three critical factors: the “urban importance” of each “prescribed space”, the economic affordability of financing its expropriation, and the legal characteristics of property rights.