No abstract

The article approaches different concepts of Large Urban Developments (LUDs) as products of the notion of a “spatial fix” (Harvey, 2001), which explains why built or natural environments can be deployed in the process of creating opportunities for new investments. Greece and Cyprus are two countries in the south of the European Union that underwent delayed urbanisation and significant land fragmentation in the form of small size private ownerships and with limited experience in comprehensive development. Greece has adopted a well-structured but complex spatial planning system, bureaucratic with limited effectiveness, adaptability or flexibility of delivery processes. On the other hand, Cyprus has a flexible but centralized system, effective in processing change but problematic in regulating quality in the built environment. Both countries recently experienced major financial crises. In the early 2010s, both governments promoted, as part of an economic recovery policy, extensive real estate development on public or privately-owned land with emphasis on LUDs as ways of addressing economic shortfalls. Inappropriately, LUDs have been primarily “conceived” as opportunities to attract foreign investments rather than a means of tackling crucial current deficiencies. New spatial planning frameworks merely add greater “flexibility” to the system in order to accelerate large private real estate investment. The article attempts to reveal, through case studies’ reviews, the impact of LUDs in countries with no infrastructure or experience in accommodating large-scale investment. It explores how the experience in Greece and Cyprus differs in terms of the relevant legislation adopted, the effectiveness in fulfilling its primary objective in attracting investment, and what are the possible social and environmental consequences on the planning acquis.

This paper uses the concept of ‘cultural capital’ from the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and it aims on the one hand to investigate the similarities and differences between the institutionalized and objectified cultural capital of native and immigrant parents of state primary school students in Greece and on the other hand to correlate these two forms of cultural capital with their expectations for the educational future of their children. The research was conducted during the spring semester of 2014 with the use of semi-structured interviews, in which 20 parents (10 native and 10 immigrant) of children in the 6th grade of primary schools in the city of Patras participated. The results of this study showed that there were more differences than similarities between these two categories of parents and they are mainly focused on cultural goods which exist in their house as well as on cultural activities of family members during their spare time. The educational expectations of the sum total of parents of students regardless of national origin and educational level seem to be very high. It also emerged that educational level and occupation of parents is correlated to their specific expectations for the educational future of their children.

This paper, which uses the concepts of ‘cultural capital’ and ‘practice’ from Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, presents the family cultural activities that Day High School students in Greece adopt in their everyday life and which contribute to shaping their cultural capital. Moreover, an attempt is also made to investigate the role played by the family cultural activities that students adopt, in shaping their expectations concerning their educational future. The research sample consists of 1430 2nd grade Day High School students, who attended High School during the school year 2017-2018, and the research data were collected using a questionnaire. The research results showed that the students in the sample tend to accumulate and integrate into the system of their predispositions a smaller or larger volume of cultural capital, which is a function of the range of family cultural activities they adopt in their everyday lives. In addition, the students’ everyday family cultural activities tend to ‘organize’ the system of their expectations, defining their future educational careers, and orienting them to different educational outlets

The social and cultural origins of students' families contribute to the formation of the students' own culture through the accumulation and engraving of a system of predispositions that influence their educational success. The purpose of this study, which focuses on a review of recent sociological literature, is to explore and highlight the factors that define the choices of individuals from different social backgrounds regarding their educational future. The analysis of the research findings of the relevant scientific papers highlights the impact of socio-economic and cultural factors on the shaping of the educational choices of individuals of different social origin, bringing at the same time to the fore issues of social and educational inequalities. In particular, the social class of origin of young people, which produces its own class dispositions, the family habitus, the volume of cultural, social and economic capital that the student's family possesses, as well as the way in which teachers, who also have their own system of predispositions within the educational institutions where they work, approach young people of different social origin tend to make a significant contribution to the choices that define the educational paths of young people.