It was a weekend morning in Livadi, Greece, and I sat on a park bench next to several statues of war heroes and patriarchs, taking in the atmosphere. Families chatted on their porches, children played, and old men talked, walking in circles.

I explored the village’s crooked streets, lined with brick and concrete dwellings, white and gray. It was quiet. I was on the main street, lined with tavernas and small shops, shaded by a huge tree. Everywhere, in chairs facing the street, at tables in the tavernas, walking alone or in pairs, were old men. There we no young people here.

I thought about this beautiful old town of 2,000, slowly slipping away, lacking the jobs and attractions needed to keep the next generation in place. They’d gone elsewhere, perhaps seeking jobs, entertainment, and others their age.

Here, nestled in the mountainside, overlooking the Olympian Meadows, the village remained, same as it ever was. Its form had outlived its function. The dwellings with their red brick roofs left to slowly decay like the ancient ruins in the valley below.  

Several days—and hundreds of kilometers later—I was at the foot of the Peloponnese, the finger-like peninsulas that stretch out of the south of Greece. We’d landed in Nafplio, a town famous for its layered history, from ancient times to periods of rule by the Byzantines, Venetians, and Turks, to serving as the first capital of modern Greece, physical remainders of these eras everywhere.

We stayed in the aucronaplia, the old town, a steep strip of land overlooking the harbor, a neighborhood not dissimilar to the French Quarter in New Orleans. But, despite the architecture and history, I couldn’t push away the uncanny feeling that this town had lost itself, transformed into a destination for tourist trinkets and subpar food.

The form was wonderful: cobbled streets with hidden passageways, overlooked by historic fortifications and an Ottoman castle. But, save for the shopkeepers, few Greeks seemed to mingle here. It was a neighborhood made for foreigners on holiday.

I felt implicated in supporting this kind of economy, one in which the most prized part of a place is repackaged into something cheap and transient, a shadow of its former self. A far cry from the real life happening on the outskirts: the long flea market with its vendors hawking fresh herbs and produce, the all-night bakery with its locals sitting and smoking and enjoying one another’s company.

The old town had become a necropolis, something no longer alive—a city of the dead.

I finished the trip in Athens, a bustling counterpart to places like Livadi and Nafpoli—a city not yet diminishing, not yet hollow, owing to its capacity for reinvention.

After wandering the tourist cores of Plaka and Monastiraki, I found myself venturing farther out, climbing the terraced steps of Kolonaki to the top of Mount Lycabettus, past the bookstores and publishing houses of Exarcheia, the imported wares of Metaxourgeio. Places where locals met and mingled, worked and worshipped. Going about their days with little care for itinerant travelers such as myself.

In the 50’s, Athens was in crisis, a shadow of what it is today. People were streaming into the city, moving from rural corners to the rapidly urbanizing center. Government funding for housing was scarce, and so a fascinating arrangement occurred: landowners traded their parcels to developers in exchange for a few units, in lieu of a cash transaction.

The style was modernist: Le Corbusier’s Dom-Ino system, a simple concrete frame, sturdy enough for six or seven stories. Many hands remade the shape of Athens, making the many architectural faces radiating across the city. They are similar, and yet not the same.

The polikatoikias stretch across Athens, filling much of the city outside of the historic center. This beloved form, scarcely seventy years old, was the result of a city embracing the need for change. Instead of clinging to the old, inadequate structures, they created something new. It met the needs of the moment, enhancing the city, providing affordable places for people to stay, renewing the city for future generations.

Form isn’t everything. The built environment can easily outlive its usefulness. I’m reminded of the old pioneer village in my hometown, now serving as an attraction off Main Street, an antique for tourists to briefly walk through.

What I take from Greece, from Livadi, and Nafplio, and Athens, are questions about change. When should we—here in costly New England—break free from the past, and look for new ways to build and better serve our communities? What new buildings will we imagine to better house ourselves and our neighbors, boost our local economies, and create more edifying forms?

What will our polikatoikias be?