Discourse today is filled with numbers and answers, but not with values, operational systems, and organizational structures to fill the gap of capacity to recover, both in communities and on the state level. Urban planners, designers, managers, and practitioners in Ukraine largely lack conceptual apparatuses to grasp the politically contested division of responsibility between the state and market in urban development as well as socio-economic relations (e.g., stratification, inequality, access to public goods) in cities. In Ukraine, housing is all too often equated to construction planning is reduced to the production of a masterplan and institutions, operating modes, and social processes are limited to the written law. Instead, what prevails in Ukraine is what I would describe as an overly pragmatic and romantic approach to the urban realm, as well as a critical lack of capacity. This requires well educated and positioned experts that are capable of navigating entangled financial, social, and climate crises. What is needed are sustained and critical discussions on the goals and means of post-war recovery. Towards these ends, a national spatial plan is needed but currently absent, and apart from very loosely defined “recovery regions” little information is available about the Ukrainian government’s plans for reconstruction. But of equal importance are the questions of what gets rebuilt, where, when, and how. Where the funds to rebuild will come from and in what form (loans, investments, grants) are questions of great importance. Around 1.4 million residential units (apartments, single-family houses, and dormitories) have been impacted by the war, with over one-third being destroyed beyond repair. According to the report, housing replacement costs were estimated at $68 billion, with $31.5 billion being needed in the immediate/short term and another $37.1 billion in medium- to long-term.
Estimates made by the World Bank claim that as of February 24, 2023, total damage reached over $135 billion, with housing as the most impacted sector (38% of total damage, or over $50 billion, with about two million affected residents).
The ongoing decimation of Ukrainian cities by russian forces is staggering. Petro Kulikov, Rector of the Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, 2020
That is why we must not participate or be involved in politics in any way. We are a state university, part of the state hierarchy. Forester, American planning theorist, 1982 If planners ignore those in power, they assure their own powerlessness.
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