Urban sprawl and the ‘olive’ landscape: sustainable land management for ‘crisis’ cities

Abstract

Dispersed urbanization has expanded into rural land worldwide. The present work focused on the Athens’ metropolitan area, the capital of Greece, discussing the potential role of a typical rural Mediterranean landscape dominated by olive groves, in urban containment and peri-urban conservation of biodiversity and local traditions. Having a great cultural, culinary and aesthetic importance, olive groves characterize Mediterranean peri-urban landscapes in a distinctive way. This study identifies processes of urban dispersion and changes in the ‘olive landscape’ in the study area, proposing new ideas for a sustainable land management in metropolitan contexts that have recently undergone processes of territorial transformation toward urban sprawl, under the effect of socioeconomic disturbances, including economic crisis.