'city' and 'non-city' in interviews with residents/users of the natural spaces of Athens

Within the framework of the project "Use of Natural Spaces in Athens" it was attempted to approach the relationship of the inhabitants of a large city such as Athens with the natural environment of their city by correlating the use of urban public natural spaces with the way of life and aspects of everyday life. For this purpose, a methodology of complementary methods for data collection and analysis was used. One of the research methods used has been a qualitative survey realised on the basis of a limited number of open interviews addressed to selected residents of the city of Athens, of different ages, which are users of its natural spaces. The aim of this qualitative research was to form up a set of basic themes to correlate the use of natural spaces with the 'place (lieu) Athens'. The way of carrying out the interviews in combination with the results of the project quantitative surveys, provided a multithematic body of information on the relationship between the inhabitants of the city of Athens with the natural environment of its wider region. This material is a database for specific study uses,  with the premise that they are given the interpretative meaning they could provide as empirical data. The aim of this working paper is to reproduce the full texts of the open interviews (see the second part of the paper), through the light of the discussion regarding the characteristics  'city' and 'non-city' that are crystalized in the open natural spaces, either urban or peri-urban, (see the first part of the paper and the concluding epilogue). In particular, the issue concerned with the relationship of "nature-society" - "urban place" as well as the issue of the typology based on scale and composition concepts for the study of urban and peri-urban natural spaces are discussed, on the example the city of Athens.