1 “Green” and resilient: shaping a new identity for Thessaloniki 1 E. Athanassiou 1* , M. Kapsali 2 , M. Karagianni 3 1 Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54006, Thessaloniki, Greece 2 PhD candidate, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 3 PhD candidate, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, School of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, +306980967495, kapsali.matina@gmail.com *Corresponding author: E-mail: evieath@arch.auth.gr, Tel +30 2310995963 Abstract Environmental protection, urban sustainability and most recently resilience form central objectives of Thessaloniki’s current administration. The paper seeks to present the way the idea of “greenness” is constituted in the rhetoric and praxis of the munici pal administration since 2010. In doing so, first, it engages on a theoretical discussion regarding the way changing concepts of environmental management are successfully incorporated in the dominant dogma of urban competitiveness. It is argued that sustainability and resilience, stripped from their social and political dimensions, are reduced to “greenness”, becoming a technocratic and managerial quest. At the same time, the quest of urban competitiveness is also construed as indisputable, stemming from the need to partake to the global economy. Second, the paper focuses on Thessaloniki and the municipal initiatives pursued in different aspects of urban governance and different scales within the urban environment. Finally, the paper embarks on a critical view of the way the urgent mandates of greenness and competitiveness are combined to materialise the local version of depoliticised managerial agenda for Thessaloniki in the context of crisis. Keywords: urban sustainability, urban resilience, Thessaloniki, 2008 crisis 1. INTRODUCTION The aim of this paper is to critically review the way “greenness” is constituted and promoted as a central axis of urban policy by the municipal administration of Thessaloniki since 2010. It is argued that various, rather disconcerted, aspects of environmental management apart from being a strong core of the local urban policy, acquire a pivotal role in shaping a new identity and a new image of the city for its citizens and the world. Before embarking on the presentation of the different aspects of Thessaloniki’s environmental agenda, it is important to place local urban policies within the framework of dominant conceptualizations of the relationship between city and nature and identify its theoretical affiliations. As austerity politics, dictated by the on-going crisis, create an adverse framework for sustainability, project-specific ‘greenness’ and resilience arise as more pragmatic substitutes, compatible with a neoliberal agenda in a period of uncertainty. Thessaloniki, in the context of crisis, shapes its own response to the inevitable global mandate, and climbs on the “green” bandwagon through specific projects, international bids and memberships and vague agendas. 1 Please cite as: Athanassiou, E., Karagianni, M., Kapsali, S. (2015) “Green and resilient: shaping a new identity for Thessaloniki, Changing Cities, 22-26 June 2015, Porto-Heli (Greece)