City form and its transformations : the case of Thessaloniki

Abstract

The study views the city as a system of built forms and spatial relations which is additively produced over time through successive transformations resulting from redefinition by different social groups of their physical domain. This framework of thought is applied and explored in a detailed case study. In the introduction, the topic and the basic ideas of the approach are set. The choice of Thessaloniki as a working example is explained and the concepts and structure of its analysis are presented. An introduction to the city is given by an outline of its history and presentation of its privileged geographic location and topography. Historical periods corresponding to circles of the city development are individually analyzed in sections covering historical context, prevailing functions, description of built form and concluding remarks where a synthetic view on change factors and transformation outcomes is taken. The division in periods, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern, traces the successive rebuilding of the city upon the same territory from its foundation in the 4th century B.C. until the recent past. In the conclusion, the ideas evoked by the analysis are reorganized around the themes of permanency, change and their dialectic synthesis in the phenomena of city transformation.