085 - Greece

Agia Paraskevi (Greek: Αγία Παρασκευή, named after Saint Paraskevi), is a suburb of Athens, Greece, in the northeast of Athens, about nine kilometers away from the city. It is linked to Athens by Mesogeion Avenue, a major road in the greater Athens area.

Up until the 1950s, the suburb was sparsely inhabited, with most of its inhabitants practising agriculture. In the 1960s, the rapid economic development that the country was experiencing drove an influx of immigrants to the big cities, and a burst of construction activity. Thus the population of suburban Athens (and Agia Paraskevi) dramatically increased; a process that went on into the 1980s and 1990s (see table below). Today, Agia Paraskevi, like the majority of Athens' suburbs, is densely populated.
In 1993, there was considerable opposition from inhabitants of the suburb to the construction of the Hymettus ring road. The ring road was to form a major highway on the mountainside linked directly to the Attiki Odos, and the construction of both the ring and Attiki Odos were to commence immediately. The realization that this plan would demand the felling of a considerable numbers of trees, as well as spurring an increase in noise pollution, predictably aroused the opposition of the local population, who requested a different solution: a covered road. However, the government would not reverse the decision and, in fact, sent bulldozers to the mountainside. This led to a riot in April, 1993. Thousands of people travelled up the mountainside and faced the bulldozers, forcing the drivers to leave. At length police arrived and managed to force the demonstrators off the site; eventually the construction of the two highways began, and was completed in 2001. The road was covered only at a small section, that running over the Deree College.