A Bright Idea to Revive a Neighborhood

When people talk about the financial crisis having brought dark times to Athens, sometimes they mean it literally. One of the side effects of the 2008 crisis, with which the Greek capital is still grappling, is a general dimming of night-time light. Certainly street lights still function across the city—and the illuminated rock of the Acropolis continues to shine bright over the rooftops like some floating, masonry moon. It’s at street level, at eye-level, where things are somewhat dingier, as lamps in the doorways and hallways of private buildings in less wealthy areas have been turned off. These have often been extinguished by economy-seeking residents, leaving urban sidewalks not pitch black, but dingier and less welcoming by night.

In the Kypseli neighborhood of inner Athens, locals have been trying to turn the situation around. Founded in 2015 via a Facebook page, the volunteer-run Light in Kypseli group (Foteini Kypseli in Greek), has been encouraging local residents and businesses to rekindle their lamps—with considerable success. Advocating the replacement of blown-out higher consumption lamps with new ultra-low consumption LED bulbs, the group has developed relationships with lighting companies to ensure that locals get the best, fairest deal. There’s more to the group than lighting doorways alone, however. As the group’s founder, locally born physicist Costas Zambelis, tells CityLab, they are also engaged in trying to revive civic engagement and local pride in a relatively low-income, densely-built area that was once considered one of the most desirable in Athens.