The plan for the 530-hectare parcel (1 hectare=10,000 sq. meters=2.47 acres) combines indigenous vegetation with housing for up to 20,000 people, plus sporting and leisure facilities and a business center to accommodate 15,000 people. The business center will also domicile the ministry of environment, public works and town planning.

The plan is now open to public consultation, meaning that architects, landscape architects, civil engineers, ministers, etc., can air their opinions before the bulldozers start razing.

“It is a very responsible and forward-thinking landscape strategy of the type we should be looking at for the next century,” offered landscape architect Thomas Doxiadis, quoted in Spero News of Athens.

Chronic water shortages afflict the area. The irony is nature's rivers ran through here from the mountain to the sea before urban planning took over. Guess the city fathers had a problem with rivers cutting across the tarmac! Environmental pluses of the plan include catching and storing runoff for all site irrigation needs and buildings with green roofs and balcony gardens.

The main runway will become a pedestrian walk with nearby access to the sea.

Some feel Elliniko is one of the last opportunities for more green space in Athens, a pointed concern after the burning of Mount Parnitha in the summer of 2007. Local mayors assert the area should be all park (120 hectares were originally planned for construction, but since lowered to half that). The proposed housing, they say, will create a new city of tens of thousands and the resultant energy consumption, more traffic, more sewage and trash.

Others contend the Elliniko's geography, a coastline on one side and a busy thoroughfare on the other, is not a good site for a park, that a residential area here would be among the city's highest real estate areas, part of whose profits could be directed into a green fund for more parks in Athens’ urban areas.

Landscape architect Doxiadis, a member of a 1996 Harvard study of the property, notes that plan called for 40-60 percent construction for the site, and also for using the real estate revenues for 20-30 smaller gardens interspersed about the city.

Mr. Doxiadis told the Athens paper: “There’s a moral question here, which is to what degree should we be creating nature in the city, rather than protecting real nature? If we are punching holes in the city, but at the same time creeping into the countryside, we have to question that."