Contribution of Civil Protection to the Urban Economy: Evidence from a Small-Sized Greek City

Civil protection has attracted considerable attention due to its role in disaster management and preparedness, being essential in alerting the public about potential disasters and crisis recovery measures. However, there is limited research on civil protection and its vital role in urban economy recovery. Therefore, we sought to comprehensively investigate the impact of civil protection on economic growth and the development of the urban economy, focusing on a small-sized Greek city, Kozani, as a case study. We utilized data from 160 residents of Kozani. The study findings confirmed that the key focus areas of civil protection, namely, the national early warning system, crisis preparedness measures and economy rescue operations, significantly affect economic growth and development. Furthermore, the key strategies essential for improved civil protection, such as government support, positively affect economic growth.

Assessing the Impacts of Crowdshipping Using Public Transport: A Case Study in a Middle-Sized Greek City

Crowdsourced deliveries or crowdshipping is identified in recent literature as an emerging urban freight transport solution, aiming at reducing delivery costs, congestion, and environmental impacts. By leveraging the pervasive use of mobile technology, crowdshipping is an emerging solution of the sharing economy in the transport domain, as parcels are delivered by commuters rather than corporations. The objective of this research is to evaluate the impacts of crowdshipping through alternative scenarios that consider various levels of demand and adoption by public transport users who act as crowdshippers, based on a case study example in the city of Volos, Greece. This is achieved through the establishment of a tailored evaluation framework and a city-scale urban freight traffic microsimulation model. Results show that crowdshipping has the potential to mitigate last-mile delivery impacts and effectively contribute to improving the system’s performance.

Policies for Smart and Sustainable Renovation of Urban Blocks

The objective of this chapter is to recognize the fundamental issues for the low levels of efficiency of the strategies for the energy renovation of the building stock in Greece. The regulatory framework for the energy efficiency and energy renovation is analysed, and the main policies that have been adopted for upgrading the building stock are summarized. Strategies for the energy renovation of buildings have often led to the further deterioration of the built environment as the Greek city is still characterized by the low quality of life and the low energy efficiency of buildings. A tool for assessing the overall benefits of renovation strategies at the urban block scale is presented as a means for the optimization of the efforts and profits. A smart strategy of renovation including thermal insulation, passive design, and green roofs should be context based considering urban form, urban geometry, and climate.

Playing with Peace: Solomon as the Man of Peace and Rest, and the Temple as the House of Rest

It is well-known that the notions of peace, rest and order belonged to the royal Achaemenid ideology, particularly from the time of Darius I onwards. This can be witnessed in Achaemenid architecture, iconography and royal inscriptions. However, although the relations between the Persian Empire and the Greek city-states were never completely peaceful, the diplomatic relations between Persia and particularly Sparta emphasised the value and importance of peace for international politics. How did this international discourse influence the literature formation in Yehud at the same time? In addition, can one read the Chronicler’s portrayal of King Solomon of old as playful (and undermining) irony and polemic against the imperial masters? In this article, I revisit an earlier study in which I have started investigating the rhetorical locus of the Chronicler’s portrayal of this king.

Geophysical mapping of a classical Greek road network: A case study from the city of Elis, Peloponnese

Many ancient Greek cities are characterised by a regular orthogonal road network. These roads are ideal targets for geophysical investigation mainly due to their extensive geographic extent that makes them challenging to define by excavation. Geophysical mapping of these features will contribute to understanding ancient cities as it can provide considerable information about their geographic extent, spatial arrangement and urban dynamics. Large scale multisensor magnetic and electromagnetic induction methods have been used to map the ancient Greek city of Elis in the Peloponnese (Greece). This work complements other investigations that have been undertaken, employing other methods that include the interpretation of high-resolution satellite imagery (Donati and Sarris forthcoming).

Sustainable Mobility Issues of Physically Active University Students: The Case of Serres, Greece

The mobility practices of students are largely dictated by their respective educational obligations. Students of physical education are an ostensibly physically active population, whose active lifestyle may include active travel. University student mobility research calls for behavioral approaches to ground relevant interventions. This work investigated the sustainability practices in the student community of the Physical Education Department in Serres, a medium-sized Greek city. Moreover, this paper aimed to shed light on the gender differences in the physical activity levels of 259 students, as well as their respective differences in mobility practices. A novel questionnaire, based on Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior and Godin–Shephard’s approach to physical activity, was used. The results confirmed higher levels of physical activity in male students, although their attitude toward physical activity was less positive than that of their female classmates. Further positive attitudes in women were recorded toward sustainable mobility choices, although the evidence demonstrated a similar gap between the answers of the two genders. Car possession was higher in men, whereas car purchase intention was slightly lower in women, who had a lower income in general. Moreover, income impacted gender mobility preferences. Recommendations can be guided by students’ sports preferences and can be gender-sensitive, taking income into account.

Empire, nationalism and christianity

This paper studies in parallel the history of empire and the development of universals. It uses as its preliminary orientation the work of Eric Voegelin who argued that universals develop in history alongside and through universalising empires. We find this basic contention highly credible as it is empires that force us to develop cognitive approaches that encompass both colonised and coloniser in any subsequent social structure. So conceived, the paper then argues that empires are synonymous with human history as such and that even those entities (such a Greek city states) which are eulogised for escaping this logic are on examination no less imperial than the empires they oppose. The paper then argues that the development of universals is not a byproduct of empire but rather that it drives imperial expansion in the first place. It seeks to argue that ideation is the casual factor in human history, social structures and behaviour. It argues contra thinkers like Francis Fukuyama, there is no biological foundation for the qualitative distinctions of civilisation, rather the paper contends that the origin of civilisation lies in human conceptuality not human biology, locality or indeed any other material force impinging on life. So configured, the paper then concludes that the primary political question lies in bringing together the question of the good with empire – a process most advanced in human history by Christianity.

Citizen opinions on the organization of a smart city for housing, urban structures, and quality of life: The case of Kos Island, Greece

The growing urban population worldwide and the consequent need to improve urban dwellers’ living conditions have increased the research interest in issues related to urban development and their ability to manage emerging challenges. In this context, it is observed that the concept of the smart city includes perspectives that may help modern cities face their problems, especially as cities are being shaped and intensified, for example, due to the current situation of the COVID pandemic crisis. This paper attempts to highlight the characteristics of the smart city with an emphasis on the following triptych: housing, urban environment structures, and quality of life. To achieve its goal, the paper, through pilot research in a representative small-sized Greek city (study area, island of Kos), evaluates whether the smart city characteristics have been met successfully and then it investigates the perceptions of Kos inhabitants regarding the quality-of-life benefits resulting from the model of a smart city. To achieve this, it collects quantitative data through questionnaires in the study area. The results of the analysis can be used as a basis to help a city to become a smart city.