The central square features many cafés and bars with numerous retail computer shops located mainly on Stournari street, also called the Greek Silicon Valley.

The headquarters of PASOK, a Greek political party that supported austerity measures dictated by the European Union in 2009, are also located in Exarcheia and has been a target of attacks by anarchists.

When borders between Greece and the European Union were closed, many migrants were forced to stay in camps that lacked housing or hygiene infrastructure.

[14] On November 17, 1973, the Greek military raided the student occupation of the Athens Polytechnic University, killing 40 civilians.

The events resulted in public outrage and the passing of the Academic Asylum Law, which designates university campuses as off-limits to police and military personnel.

[15] This law has contributed to the prevalence of protests within Exarcheia, as the Polytechnic functions as a site of insurgent coordination as well as a safe haven from police violence.

[16] On December 6, 2008, a Greek police special guard shot and killed 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos within blocks of the Athens Polytechnic University, leading to the largest protests in Greece since the end of the dictatorship in 1974.

[17] In the aftermath of the riots, collectives and movements in Exarcheia expanded initiatives experimenting with new political formations, especially to provide public spaces organized around an anti-hierarchical and anti-commercial ethos.

For example, the City Plaza squat houses Afghanis, Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, Kurds, Palestinians, and Pakistanis within a single occupied hotel.

These include MAT, (Public Order Restoration Units) a riot police unit implemented after the dictatorship; Operation Virtue, which used blockaded areas and rapid raids of public spaces to capture undocumented migrants in the 1970s and 1980s; and Operation Xenios Zeus, which implemented stop-and-search and document checks for foreigners in 2012.

The New Democracy party was elected to power nationally in July and the new prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged to impose order and to clean up Exarcheia.