The 1st international conference on ‘Changing Cities’, which was hosted on Skiathos island, 18-22 June 2013, had started as an idea three years ago. The initial concept was to organise an academic event creative, inspiring, stimulating, and above all, international. There had been a belief that such an academic event may contribute in revitalizing academia and promoting tourism in Greece - hit by the economic crisis of public debt in the Eurozone. Given that during the last years, both societies and cities in Greece have been dramatically changing, shrinking in economic, spatial and demographic terms, we have chosen Changing Cities as the main theme of this series of conferences. Our aspiration is to provide an international forum for transaction of ideas on cities and bring together architects, urban designers, landscape designers, urban planners, urban geographers, urban economists, urban sociologists and demographers, to investigate new challenges. This goal became a reality. The 1st Changing Cities conference had gained strong interest of academics and researchers from many countries and regions around the world; Greece and the Balkans, south Europe and Mediterranean countries, northwest Europe, Middle East and Asia, Far East, North America, Latin America and Africa. A total of about 460 abstracts and 320 papers had been submitted in the
conference - most of them, about 60% from abroad.
The 2nd Changing Cities conference has also attracted the attention of scholars, not only from Greece, the Balkans and Europe, but also from far-away countries like USA and Canada, Brazil, Chile, Colombia in Latin America, and China, Japan and Australia in the far-east. We have received 510 abstracts and more than 350 papers. Among the scholars participating, there are about 192 Greek academics and researchers. This indicates that despite shortage of research funds, salary cuts, and broken morale, university teachers and researchers in Greek state universities try hard to keep a high-level academic status. Besides, the number of
contributions by scholars from abroad (64%) shows the international character of the conference.
The strong interest for this conference allows us to have thoughts about organising the 3rd Changing Cities conference in one or two years’ time, spatially hosted in a different Greek resort area...