The traditional understanding of the city as an historical and institutionally defined core which is surrounded by the suburbs and followed by the open country has now been replaced by the image of a multiple-centric and randomly spread "peripheral metropolis". The continual spread of the metapolis and the following anarchic blending of the land uses turned cities into a group of networks that keeps on spreading. In that way, the attention focuses no more on the forms of the civil land, but on the procedures of citification, which are now formed in the shape of transportation networks. As a result, the substructures and the material flows are now of a greater importance and sense, regarding to their utility as much as the experience they offer, comparing to the previous, stably defined territorial limits.
In the case of Athens, the frequent publication of articles and pictures concerning the Attici Odos is of a great extend, though it’s been in use only for a short period of time now, and consists a proof of how important and valuable quick transportation is to Athens, as much as of the value of the forms produced by the junctions, the ditches and the twisting, junctions as three dimensional forms in space.
Special attention is given to the fact that it connects “directly” the central areas of Athens to the east and west Attica as long as to the International Airport. The quick transportation from different areas of Athens, which consists the main advantage of a road like Attica, is also what makes it aplacethat doesn't offer any special rush. In the drivers' and the passengers' conception, the city and the suburbs are nothing but continual and spread-out spaces which follow each other in seconds, in the form of “exit” signs. The travelers now pass through places without taking in the slightest experience about them, the need or the right of a stop.
The Attica motorway was the generative power of a new geography of commercial character, while, thanks to the car, was produced a spatial diffusion at a new scale. The once commercial and financial centre of Athens possesses now one more pole, not more powerful than the suburban places of commerce and entertainment. Box-buildings, buildings without any special features are seen over and over again throughout the highway, as if they were produced of the same main structure. During the relatively short period it's been in use, Attica ring Road has managed to attract a large number of multinational stores –that respond to different sections of the market such as furniture, house staff, office supplies, electronics, food, clothes, electric devices, car accessories, etc.– which bring in the consumers from the centers of the cities of Attica to a new "over-road market".