Antipode 25:3, 1993, pp. 223-239 ISSN 0066 4812 SOCIAL SEGREGATION IN ATHENS Thomas Maloutas* Introduction Social segregation is developing at an intense rate in the large cities of advanced industrial societies. The crisis of traditional industries, the restructuring of the economy and the resulting increase of unemploy- ment, the decline of the welfare state, the intensification of unequal development between regions in a new, explicitly antagonistic context have all fueled social polarization and segregation. Poverty and home- lessness reappear coupled with increased extravagance in upper class consumption.' But segregation does not concern only the extremes of the social ladder. Processes of industrial relocation and urban renovation have deeply affected the whole structure of urban populations and the mor- phology of urban landscapes: income disparities increase in New York and London (Buck, 1990) while job security and living standards are affected differently according to class, race, gender etc. (Fainstein, Gor- don, Harlow, 1992). Social restructuring in Madrid has led to increased social inequality (Tobio, 1989, Leal, 1990).Increased segregation in Paris is coupled with unequal access to collective consumption (Pingon-Char- lot et al., 1986). Increasing social segregation has been propelled by the new structure of corporate organization which enables the geographic dispersion of corporate activities. The horizontal (geographical) differentiatiodhier- archy of activities, which could only be the aggregate result of vertical differentiationshierarchies on a corporate level, can and does now exist on the level of individual corporations. Appropriate locations are chosen for each corporate task, with overall organizational unity guaranteed by networking with the help of information technology. This new pattern, characteristic of post-fordist corporate flexibility, enhances social seg- * National Centre of Social Research, Athens 0 1993 Editorial Board of Antipode. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF UK.