Where the Square Still Is. Care, Security, and Infrastructure in Exarchia, Athens

This article examines Exarchia Square in Athens as a dense urban space of encounter, visibility, and political expression, where everyday sociability and collective life have long taken shape. Focusing on the conflicts surrounding the construction of Line 4 of the Athens metro and the decision to locate a station in the square, the article approaches infrastructure not as a neutral improvement of mobility, but as a material intervention that reconfigures how the square is accessed, inhabited, and politically contested. Drawing on ethnographic observation of the enclosure and partial dismantling of the square, the article traces how Exarchia Square has been progressively articulated as a secured construction site, while continuing to persist as an affective and relational space. Attention to specific material and symbolic interventions — such as the installation of metal fencing (lamarines, in Greek) and the removal of the Erotes (literally “putti” or “cherubs”, referring to the anthropomorphic form of the lamppost that had long adorned the center of the square) a long-standing affective landmark — shows how infrastructures reshapes memory, visibility, and the conditions of political encounter in the square, even in their making. The analysis brings into view a divergence between institutional and inhabited understandings of security. For authorities, security operates as a technical requirement aimed at protecting the construction process. For inhabitants, insecurity emerges both as exposure to physical risk and as the erosion of relational infrastructures of care: the interdependent practices through which safety, continuity, and everyday coordination are sustained. Rather than pacifying the square, infrastructure intensifies conflict, transforming it into a space where practices of commoning and collective presence are repeatedly enacted, disrupted, and renegotiated. Exarchia Square thus appears not as a stabilised commons, but as a political form continually reopened through struggle, where the governance of urban space becomes visible in the frictions between care, security, and infrastructure.