This project seeks to trace, understand and analyse the relationship between the ongoing financial crisis and urban public spaces. Although Greece might be an extreme example of an ongoing transnational transformation, the consequences of this global financial and political crisis nevertheless extend beyond the debt-ridden state. The Greek experience exemplifies an emergent mode of governance that is suggestive of a generalised state restructuring across substantial sections of the world: as an example, state cut-backs echoing the Greek experiment were quick to follow in a number of EU countries, whether those suffering 'public debt contagion' (e.g. Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain) or those now suffering a fiscal uncertainty unimaginable even a few years ago (e.g. the UK and the USA). As the financial crisis spreads across various regions of the world, then, and as new paradigms of governance emerge, a formidable effect on the material reality of local populations can be witnessed, with entire districts being turned into zones of public unrest and conflict. Major incidents of social unrest are now occurring in cities that had been relatively orderly in the recent past (e.g. London or New York) while the public spatial dynamics of other places that have encountered such phenomena more frequently are now changing beyond recognition (e.g. Athens). Greece is one of the countries most severely affected by the current financial crisis. Since spring 2010, when the Greek government and IMF/EU/ECB agreed on the largest loan ever received by a single country ($110 billion), Greece has seen sweeping transformations in the character of its polity and state functions. A main element of these transformations is the reconfiguration/privatisation of state assets including infrastructures, utility power and substantial real estate, along with higher education and public health. In this way, the Greek version of the crisis has produced a rupture in the modus operandi of the state in question and in its relationship with its citizenry. The main axis of this rupture is the systemic challenge and reconfiguration of the category 'public' - which of course includes public spaces. For all these reasons, the research will comprise a holistic, cross-disciplinary study of changing notions of the 'public', with public urban spaces as its main research subject. The idea of studying selected public urban spaces in the capital city of the country most severely affected by the crisis appears as an ideal way in which to study the array of challenges to our conceptualisations of what comprises the public, (whether of the 'public good', 'public provision', 'public interest' and so forth) as a consequence of the financial crisis. As the 'Greek crisis' is the exemplar of a wider crisis, the research outcome of the project will, in turn, be relevant and useful to international communities of users, offering a rigorous and comprehensive social, material and spatial reading that can be used to understand parallel and ongoing processes elsewhere.