Civil Engineering and Architecture 8(3): 371-378, 2020 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/cea.2020.080322 Conceptualising 'Smart' and 'Green' Public Open Spaces; Investigating Redesign Patterns for Greek Cities Aspa Gospodini * , Stella Manika Department of Planning and Regional Development, University of Thessaly, Pedion Areos, 38334 Volos, Greece Received April 21, 2020; Revised May 27, 2020; Accepted June 23, 2020 Copyright ©2020 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract This paper deals with improving the quality of public open space in densely built and declining inner city areas. It investigates the potentials of ‘smart’ and ‘green’ redesign of public open space for enhancing public realm and the quality of life. Smart redesign of public open space entails the transformation of public open space into an inclusionary intelligent civic arena which allows citizens to have both face-to-face contact and interaction, and virtual communication by means of free community electronic equipment of space and e-services. Green redesign includes the refurbishing of public open space using green technologies and energy saving elements and equipment. The paper explores the amalgamation of ‘smart’ and ‘green’ design approaches and the development of a dynamic ‘smart & green’ public open space and networked communities as catalysts to handle declining inner city neighborhoods. The thinking behind this approach lies in the urgent need for transformation of unused and meaningless private plots into common semi-public open space within urban blocks in shrinking urban units. Accordingly, we argue that this need reflects a potential double gain, a win-win scenario for simultaneously (a) raising awareness of spatial disadvantages in central urban areas, and (b) enhancing quality of life. Thus, in a broader perspective, urban shrinking units will potentially become more attractive and will gain a stronger economic and social identity. The paper investigates redesign patterns for Greek cities and presents a pilot study for cities of Volos and Larissa. Keywords Public Open Space, Smart Growth, Green Redesign, Greek Cities 1. Introduction - Greek Cities; Development Process, Urban Morphology, and Spatial Disadvantages In the second half of the 20th century – in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s – the rapid economic growth of large Greek cities has been fueling extensive internal migration from agrarian districts towards urban areas. Large Greek cities have experienced rapid and under-regulated spatial expansion, often characterized by informal housing in urban periphery. For many decades, the urbanization process, that is, urban design and planning, has been confined to soft state interventions: On the one hand, as far as private land is concerned, urban development has been regulated only through building legislation while master plans were only controlling land uses and densities and determining the basic shape of the street system [1]. Minimal state intervention in conjunction with land divisions into small-sized private properties produced a step-by-step urban development process and not a holistic redesigning. This type of land division– literally a property-by-property urban design—was carried out often without much consideration of neighboring properties or/and structural spatial entities such as the street, the urban square, the urban block, or the larger area. In this context, the landscape in contemporary Greek cities is predominantly characterised by ‘over-fragmented’ and ‘collage-like’ morphology [2], (see Figure 1). On the other hand, as far as public land is concerned, for many decades master plans have been providing Greek cities with minimum standards of public open spaces and public amenities (squares, parks, children playgrounds, and the like). Such a process of urban development can explain many of the spatial disadvantages in contemporary Greek cities: That is, inner city areas, structured by the perimeter