Vertical segregation: Mapping the vertical social stratification of residents in Athenian apartment buildings

This paper is about vertical segregation in Athens and the ways it has evolved up to the early 2010s. Vertical segregation refers to social stratification by floor of residence in the typical apartment building that dominates the city’s housing stock. Unlike its Parisian precedent, vertical segregation in Athens was developed much more recently (third quarter of the 20th Century), its social hierarchy is in the opposite direction (wealthier households occupy the higher rather than the lower floors) and its importance is not marginal, since it affects more than a fifth of the metropolitan population.Mapping vertical segregation is a challenge since the different groups –social or ethnic– are located the one on top of the other. Ordinary segregation mapping depicts the areas of vertical segregation as mixed areas, but provides no indication on whether they are simply mixed or their population is also vertically stratified according to class or ethnicity. The paper introduces a mapping technique to overcome this difficulty.