New Athens mayor wants to rebuild the city
When Kostas Bakoyannis, M.P.A. ’04, was elected mayor of Greece’s capital city with a hefty 65 percent of the vote last May, he went to the people — appropriately enough, in the birthplace of democracy — to ask about local concerns. And what he heard was clear. “They wanted a city that was safe and secure, a city that’s clean, a city that’s well-lit, a city that they could be proud of,” he said. Emerging from the devastating financial crisis of the previous 13 years, Bakoyannis said, Athenians wanted “a city that would grow in self-confidence and be optimistic again.” Presenting ideas on “Reinventing Athens” to a capacity crowd at Adolphus Busch Hall on Tuesday, Bakoyannis told Elaine Papoulias, executive director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, that, “People gave a lot of credence to what we call back to basics.” As a candidate, he and his team had...