December 5, 2023 • 60 mins
Hold tight: This episode of Cities Reimagined is PACKED with condensed knowledge on cities and urbanism in (post-war) Ukraine . In a 60 minute conversation with Oleksandr Anisimov, we upack:
🇺🇦 … why the ignorance of NOT knowing about Ukraine(ian urbanism) has to stop
🏙️ … reforming land-use rules and governance modes are essential for rebuilding Ukrainian cities
🧰 … why rebuilding “social cities” after the destruction is essential for attracting people back after the war
⏳ … why it feels like the Russian Federation is stealing time from Ukrainians
⛔ … why the overcoming the ‘post-socialist’ label is crucial for reimagining cities
🌱 … how the war and land destruction increases pressures on the land in the Western parts of Ukraine
💲 … why neoliberalism and defunding local administrations creates a crises of imagination of what Ukrainian cities could be
In February 2022, what many from outside of Ukraine thought of as unthinkable happened: a large scale military attack and occupation of Ukrainian land by the Russian Federation. Now, in December 2023, an end of the war in Ukraine is not in sight. Thousands of civilian Ukrainians were killed. Entire cities put to rubble, 1.4 millions homes destroyed or damaged, infrastructures and historic monuments are destroyed each day. I had many questions on where Ukrainian cities and urbanism goes from here, Oleksandr Anisimov helped me to understand and place current events into a larger context.
Get in touch with Oleksandr Anisimov on LinkedIn.
Books mentioned in the episode:
- Anna Reid - Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine - Click here for more.
- Timothy Snyder - The Road to Unfreedom - Click here for more.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What is the most important thing about Ukraine?
(00:10):
Knowing about Ukraine is crucial. It's a part of a basic understanding,
at least in the realm of European studies. You have to be very well aware of how Ukraine functions
as a society. And if you're an urbanist, you have to know at least some of the understanding,
have some understanding about how Ukraine and its cities are growing and are changing.
(00:33):
That's right. And we will try to contribute to this understanding in today's episode.
Hi, welcome back to the Cities Rematch podcast. I'm your host, Johannes Riegel,
and this is episode seven, reimagining urbanism in post-war Ukraine.
(00:57):
I hope you're all doing well. It is the end of the year. And to me, it seems like the late summer
here in Austria just disappeared into a very harsh winter with minus 11 degrees this morning
in Vienna today. I hope you can look back at the meaningful year, whatever that means for you.
I certainly can. I could work and talk to so many people pushing the envelope on urbanism
(01:21):
on the show and offline. I also had the opportunity to travel a lot and get to know so many places
and people who are doing really cool things and connect to those people around the planet.
And also to, not least, I could spend some really good time with my loved ones and connect to
friends and colleagues in a meaningful way. And not least, I could experiment with this new project
(01:47):
called Cities Rematch. Cities Rematch will take a short break from here over the holiday season
and we'll be back in January with the remaining episodes of season one. There has been also so
much knowledge collected already in the episode so far that I would love to use it also outside
(02:13):
of the pure podcast audio, if you will. And I'm eyeing with the option of a publication summarizing
each episode in written form and drawing some conclusions and key messages. But since at the
moment, Cities Rematch is running my free time on my personal budget, I'm a bit limited on how to
(02:36):
go about that idea. And if you have some ideas on how to finance it and how to spend time on it,
please get in touch. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. In the meantime, I luckily
found a way to transcribe each episode for very affordable costs. I will also publish this
(02:57):
transcript in one way or the other, maybe a medium account or something else. But the first
non-podcast publication will be featured in a publication by Driving Urban Transitions on
regenerative neighborhoods. And I will be editing a conversation I had with Gaffrid Ambrusch on
urban wildlife habitats, which will be featured in this booklet. If you are enjoying the content of
(03:29):
Cities Rematch and smash the like button, rate and review the show or leave a comment
on the like on LinkedIn or other social media channels to help others find it. But enough on
the monologue this week. Let's get to it. Let's get to the topic of today. And that is reimagining
(03:52):
urbanism in post-war Ukraine. Over the years, I had the chances of working with colleagues in
and from Ukraine, join and talk at a number of UNESCO workshops dedicated on sustainable development
(04:17):
practices for urban heritage, which was organized partly by Ukrainian ministries,
but took place mainly online because of COVID. And I became very interested in the history and the
current political affairs of Ukraine and started reading into it. So mainly I read the work of
(04:39):
Anna Reed and Timothy Snyder, which are two authors I would highly recommend to you. I leave
the links to their works in the show notes. So you have it ready if you want to read further into that.
I also had the chance to go to Kyiv in early January 2019, just days before Orthodox Christmas
(05:02):
celebrations. It was very cold in the city and it was snowing and there was a lot of snow, a layer
of snow over the city that Nidmur River, which flows through the heart of Kyiv, had patches of
ice forming on the surface. The city had a very quiet feel to it as the snow muffled all the sounds
(05:26):
of the traffic, created a certain sense of stillness. And at the same time, you could realize
or recognize that you arrived in a capital where parts of the land of the country are occupied
by an aggressor, by the Russian Federation. There were posters of fallen soldiers and others who
lost their lives in the east of the country and during the events of the Maidan Square in the year
(05:54):
2014. And these posters reminded that things are not that calm in the country. In the public spaces
there were signs and communications that expressed a deep-seated desire for change and a brighter
future of Ukraine. And walking the streets, searching for a restaurant actually, I found
(06:15):
myself in an inner courtyard in which Ukrainian soldiers had their standby position. So I left Kyiv
after the weekend with an impression of a beautiful and cold city which brings together
the historic Orthodox cathedrals, the Soviet era structures and modern skyscrapers, but foremost
(06:36):
that this country is in a military conflict, which was mainly not perceived as such at that time
in the west than parts of Europe. In February 2022, what for many from outside of Ukraine
thought as unthinkable happened, a large-scale military attack and occupation of Ukrainian land
(07:00):
by the Russian Federation. And now in November 2024 and and to this war in Ukraine is not yet
inside. Thousands of civilian Ukrainians were killed, entire cities were put to rubble and
1.4 million homes were destroyed or damaged. The infrastructure and the historic monuments
(07:21):
are destroyed each day. But there's also increased debate and talks about rebuilding those Ukrainian
cities and I had a number of questions on that, on rebuilding Ukrainian cities. And over the last
months I came across the work of Alexander Anisimov on rebuilding Ukrainian cities numerous times.
(07:43):
He's a spatial planner and territorial governance researcher and consultant with a focus on science
policy interface with a rich experience actually in the NGO sector in Ukraine as well. He published
really interesting stuff on matters on rebuilding Ukrainian cities including affordable housing and
(08:04):
sustainable land use that I had to invite him on the show and he luckily agreed to have a
conversation with me. So here is my conversation with Alexander Anisimov on reimagining urbanism
in post-war Ukraine. Hi Alexander, it's so nice to have you on Cities Reimagined. How are you doing?
(08:30):
Well, it's maybe already late autumn in Ukraine but seems fine. Thank you. You're now in,
where are you based at the moment? Are you in Helsinki? I'm moving but most of the time I'm
based in Lviv, that's Western Ukraine, a historic city in the core of Western Ukraine. Is that the
(08:52):
town you grew up in? No, I moved here when I tried to get a new job. Well, I got the new job but
it was a bit of an experiment because I've never thought of moving anywhere from Kiev before.
Although, well, it was nothing like I was completely attached to the city but it was not
(09:17):
like what would you do in Ukraine not being in Kiev in a sense was also kind of a question for me.
They moved here to work in a municipality as a specialist in urban infrastructure.
So I stayed here then the war broke out so I worked there further for a few months but then
(09:38):
I thought well there are urgent issues we have to tackle so I moved a little bit to the NGO sector
and started working on research and housing and land use. All right, so you're moving between,
so you're now in Ukraine at this moment? Yes, at the moment, yes. I have to say people will not
see that but I see it. It's very confusing because you have a background of Aalto University near
(10:04):
Helsinki, right? So I had in mind that you're sitting in Finland right now. Yeah, this is
specifically designed to be confusing. Very good. But how did you become interested in urbanism
or urban planning or urban studies in the first place? You grew up in Kiev. How was it growing
(10:26):
up there and what triggered your interest in this messy stuff called cities? Well, I think Kiev was
a more or less well-organized city in mid-2000s and so it inherited some of the good and bad
Soviet planning solutions but also pre-Soviet grid networks so the center of the city is pretty
(10:48):
walkable and there is a lot of infrastructure for cultural activities and heritage so it was not felt
like there was a specific difference between Kiev and other cities across central Europe. I think it
was pretty much similar in a way also better. It had a lot of greenery compared to many cities.
(11:10):
Then when I studied political science as my bachelor's degree, I started to focus on public
space. I think it was just a fancy thing to do at the moment so people started to look something
urban and I thought about, I read André Lefebvre and I thought about well how do we work on
(11:31):
politics of public space? How does that public space is created? How the public space is created
actually? Who are the actors? Who are the political forces behind the curtains or what are the other
institutions basically involved in this creation of public space and who does it serve? From then
on, I somehow started working on several urban design projects of smaller scale and I started
(12:00):
projects of smaller scale with an NGO called Agents of Change. It's a Kiev based NGO and we were
trying to utilize some of the European analytical frameworks for public space analysis, for analysis
of quality of life, something that people well know about this methodology of Jan Gale and his team.
(12:23):
Some of the different aspects of those approaches that became popular I think in 2010s were also
on the rise in Kiev, not very much institutionalized in the conversations with the municipal
authorities but at least beginning to be popular among professionals and people just engaged in
this kind of urban thinking who had some free time or had been engaged in voluntary activities
(12:48):
and then started to professionalize it a little bit. Cool, it seems like public space is a topic
which where many find their first interest in cities or urbanism and how did you, you're now
working more on the spatial planning, governance side of things, right? Do you want to tell us a
(13:08):
little bit more about that? So there are several directions that I unfortunately have to work on
at the same moment but I think I will move towards something one of those and in a sense there are
three directions right now but they are very much attached to the plans of establishing
(13:28):
research center for land and housing studies within the system of Harkiv School of Architecture but
I can, from the perspective of my master studies I started to look at the in-depth understanding of
a planning system but from the governance perspective not from the spatial planning itself so
(13:49):
not from the regulations or from some kind of effects of spatial planning as such but more of
the level of governance and land use planning and institutional change which was which also
a thing that fascinates me and it's very hard to explain in the conditions where institutions are
so weakened, it's hard to define and say as in Ukraine they are but so I combined my previous
(14:17):
understanding from political science of things related to political theory, theory of understanding
well basically how societies function and societies function on the level of
political society so if it's a community how does it organize itself, how does it decide for what
are the best better rules of governance or what are the ideas it wants to follow or how the things
(14:43):
are then you know made into action so put on paper and then create it as an institution of enforcement
and those things from my background they allowed me maybe to get a different angle on the
spatial planning because as such I'm also concerned about some kind of political issues but I'm really
(15:04):
interested in the space as a concept or in space as a concept and space as a realm I'd say so yes
this is my focus so the governance part focused with or combined with the governance part and
combined with the land use understanding I think this is one of the most powerful tools of
(15:26):
on the one hand understanding how cities develop on the other hand influencing the future development
of those cities because their issues of how do you define those rules for land use and how you make
those rules work are for me you know completely crucial so that the underlying system of the all
of the other systems that is built upon it. Yes and this this topic is also how I got aware of
(15:53):
your work because I saw on LinkedIn that you wrote some articles and posts on regulation governance
behind what is needed in that regard behind rebuilding Ukrainian cities so I'm very happy
that we have this have a chance for this conversation here today. For me it's very
difficult honestly personally to draft a question on how somebody must feel with yeah living in
(16:20):
Ukraine and having having the war in front of the doorstep how are you holding up and how is this
how is this personally how can you can you describe that? I'd say it felt like a fall of the world
in the first day or two so it in a sense felt that reality does not exist anymore because the
(16:44):
material things were no longer well they could it seemed they couldn't hold like all of the physical
things couldn't be destroyed any seconds so they were on the one hand existing like this computer
or the mouse or the table but on the other hand they were possible that they would be taken from
(17:04):
you or destroyed by rockets or whatever so in since it was a bit of a completely redefined
feeling of the physical world around me but also a lot of stress that was mobilizing so it was a
huge desire to do something it also felt like a physical need to be engaged in things although
(17:28):
I don't have military training and I couldn't be very helpful apart from the humanitarian side of
the things so yeah we everybody tried to be as much of useful they could so it was a huge
mobilization of the society itself it still continues but there was also a lot of fear
(17:53):
and it's a human fear of death or injury or pain and I think people were super stressed about it
and one of the thoughts that I had in these first days was that you know Russia is in a sense taking
time from us because when people are so stressed when people cannot plan people cannot think ahead
(18:17):
they become obsessed with their you know immediate security and they're basically
cut off from thinking so they're cut off from imagining they're cut off from discussing
you know this all of the issues about deliberation future they're non-relevant and basically you
cannot build a society on the society that just you know keeps itself secure you have to imagine
(18:40):
something you have to plan and that feeling about Russia taking time from us was a very real one so
it was a frozen time of fear and stress and mobilization but that's still a frozen one you
could not kind of progress in any direction we're just doing things that had to be done
yeah and you you in your work I know that you uh you're advocating for yeah still in this time
(19:09):
where um how to put it in time of survival or on this in these times of war you're advocating for
changing the paradigms of how Ukrainian cities are built and uh hopefully rebuilt um what are
the problems and challenges in that regard how would you how do they differ from other post-Soviet
(19:31):
cities what would you say well I think none of the cities are any longer post-Soviet in a sense so
just to work on this field of defining the problem itself or the frame itself
um five years ago my distant colleague published a paper three metals
(19:55):
um something I just don't recall the whole name but um
um Michael Gentiles he's a Swedish researcher working in Norwegian University
um he basically launched a counter-attack on the concept of post-socialist
post-socialist uh explanatory framework or post-socialist word as concept term so he
(20:21):
he fought it back in a very good way a very strong argumentation um he brought together
several examples of cities that are still considered by some of the researchers or in
some literature for Soviet and he just tried to link them somehow and didn't work so he couldn't
find a single characteristic that could link those cities together and uh there was a very good
(20:46):
framing that he um counter-attacked this this idea about post-socialism is that it confines the
production of knowledge about post-socialism to this constant peripheral condition because you
can now never overcome the reproducibility the relevance of the knowledge you produce about
(21:06):
post-socialism beyond the post-socialist cities themselves so in a sense whatever you talk uh
whatever you tell about the socialist cities means something only in the framework of other
post-socialist condition cities and something you can never argue anything about you know global
south east west north and so on so just you're stuck there and I think we have to go beyond that
(21:29):
it just helps to kind of bring something of an identifier but what's behind it really very hard
to define is it a is it a matter of the term post-socialist or is it yes yes I think I think
it's just it's just exhausted itself and uh it doesn't it it answers the wrong question I'd say
so if we want to learn something we should ask different questions we should we should ask
(21:51):
questions about you know the region or the country or the history or or a building or a city or a
community we shouldn't ask a question about post-socialism excellent very good um do you and
for for changing the paradigms in in ukraine what is what is needed now for let's say rebuilding
(22:11):
the cities or then I would say the concern um is twofold so one concern is how do we deliver the
promises of deliberative democracy and inclusion in the level of the community of what's in ukraine
(22:32):
is also municipality is called the community so it's a literal translation so you if you live in
a municipality you automatically live in a community and in a sense how do cities that don't have funds
they don't have capacity that are you know people who work in municipality they don't have proper
(22:53):
funding they don't have proper salaries how those municipalities being confined for so many years
even after some decentralization efforts have been done in ukraine which is a strong
reform that's been happening the last five seven years um how does this municipality actually
deliver those promises because people are I guess over expecting um and you know international
(23:14):
communities are expecting and everybody's thinking well we have now this perspective of european
accession being in accession now we have to deliver we have to be you know at least as good as
some other countries are and um I cannot say that we have the foundations for that transition
(23:35):
so on an institutional level you know the way the country was ran is way too chaotic in the
regional perspective and municipalities are very different with their capacities and they're very
different with their ability to think forward or to mobilize any kind of resources and they're
very dependent on I would say local trajectories of how things developed and those trajectories
(24:00):
were in most cases not very positive um not very forward looking so the one question is about the
uh capacity of the local level itself you know to build uh build forward to to create and then the
the needed kind of engage in the needed reforms on the local level and then the other side is in a
(24:21):
sense what is the professional and the state paradigm of how do we do things uh from the
planning perspective right how do we think about the quality of life in those communities in the
country and I think there is also a crisis of ideas on that on that behalf so although I'm very much
of institutionalist perspective thinker I in this case I engage in more of a dispersive problem
(24:46):
because I think we have a crisis of imagination on that on that side and this is a point where
comparison is maybe not the best solution but a very interesting one because looking at the
destruction that was brought by the second world war in a lot of european states um it was hard to
say it was hard to see any of the countries building back worse so in a sense every of those
(25:11):
countries engaged in a huge mobilization of you know societal resources institutions political
engagement they redefined um social contracts they created so much of a new institution that still
hold we can name you name it nhs in britain social pensions in netherlands movement and workers
(25:35):
rights in germany housing in sweden there are so many institutions built from second world war
designed on the basis of new social imagination of politicians and their well expert groups that
that supported those politicians to to think forward and this is not there in ukraine so
(25:57):
I very well understand that we are in a sense of uh you know this post-priced condition so neoliberalism
has fallen but what's kind of next so what do we propose for the society and for the you know global
economy um and in our case we cannot you know just continue the trajectory we we will slide into one
or the other conditions by definition something that we're going to have because so many things
(26:21):
were destroyed and they will be rebuilt on one conditions or other conditions and um one of the
perspectives i'm arguing for on this kind of a level of political imagination about cities about
communities um is that we actually have to get back to social state so the state that provides
(26:42):
for its citizens and the idea of deliberative social democracy i think um well in maybe in the
words of tomas piquetti it's a bit of different conditions but it's a kind of a system that works
for the people who invest in that system and um there is a strong counter movement on the political
(27:03):
side so we still have to kind of keep the taxes low we have to keep the um private entrepreneurs
and private businesses um kind of running the economy running the running it forward moving it
to some kind of a new innovative thinking blah blah blah however um coming back to well and how
(27:25):
do we keep people in ukraine then you know um obviously two five percent of people who engage
in this nice uh jobs related to it related to some kind of marketing business they will stay
might might today but and then what we're talking about the other 95 slash 8 90 percent of people
(27:45):
how do we deliver for those um teachers for those policemen for those building workers how do we
create a system that really values their input and this is something behind you know questions
of what the cities we're going to do and very much related to the idea of social housing and
(28:05):
you know housing for all and is excellent and this is um you've referred i would like to stick for a
second with uh with this crisis of imagination which you um put forward so strongly um you also
mentioned that after the second world war in europe there was a lot of let's say social
(28:26):
achievements and a lot of uh things all of a sudden were possible which didn't maybe didn't
seem possible before but there might also been have been a lot of experimentation right
an opening an open mind potentially to improve the social conditions of of people right and i'm just
(28:48):
experimenting with it and going along with that do you think that this crisis of imagination is
is uh in in ukraine is that uh historically is it politically is it are there other reasons for that
culturally or do you think it's just this um this bigger economic model we are in you you mentioned
(29:13):
the neoliberalism that's there that knew that this notion of neoliberalism um in a way prevents
people or institutions to have bolder ideas wishes about the future um yeah what i will i will try to
(29:35):
answer in two parts so one part is about the imagination itself and i think it's very much
related to um uh some of the concept that mariano matzocato put forward regards to um how do we
define the value that the state can provide for the society so and thinking about that value is
very much um predefined in ukraine because the state for so long has been defunding itself so it
(29:58):
has been consistently shrinking um well maybe not consistently but unconsciously shrinking uh
and then it doesn't have its internal um ambition or capacity to to think about bigger change to
believe that the value and the progress that it can deliver can actually mean something or can be
(30:25):
as big as it has to be or as counter uh intuitive maybe to some people but still providing a lot of
social value a lot of public value for the society and that consistent shrinking of public institutions
um obviously lent market the hand to think for those institutions so
(30:47):
and taking one sector um and then the one that i've been working with for some time although
i'm not really an expert in housing um in housing sphere um the state as a well public entities
they rely on private data they rely on private advice because they have not built any uh research
(31:12):
capacities and um well research institutional capacities themselves so they they systematically
rely on what private entities provide for them and then they do not have any other arguments and they
don't have any other things on their horizon other than those who are put forward by the private
sector and that's the only thing that is there in the discourse is only things put forward by the
(31:34):
private sector meaning that you cannot actually engage with public institutions because they are
in a sense captured uh or kind of controlled not physically not even financially but by the ideas
that they cannot themselves think about they were just you know fed these ideas by the private sector
and this this correlation exists in several ukrainian several sectors of ukrainian economy
(31:55):
when we think about you know social perspectives they just step back and well wait for somebody
else to answer these questions or maybe just put them aside or under the rug or somewhere is the
reason for that the the financial resources or what is the reason for that so thinking about
we have this defined this the defined private uh defined public entities that um stop thinking
(32:19):
forward and just rely on this day-to-day work or day-to-day provision of answers or services to
you know politicians or the parliament or the cabinet ministers they don't come up with the
ideas because they don't feel themselves secure and being able to put forward these ideas and
why is that i think it depends on different levels um well i cannot say i have an answer but this is
(32:41):
something that i've been facing that you're engaged with people who have very low ambitions
and expectations about the future and it's very hard um when you have such a huge problem of
destruction and displacement um because you have to think big otherwise it just doesn't work together
at all right what's your your personal hope for the recovery of ukrainian cities
(33:09):
well paradoxically i think one of the things that happened is is indeed decolonization of
consciousness um in a lot of ways because um maybe on it doesn't have immediate effects on
physical reality of how people care about the city or how they engage in you know local politics
but um they are definitely no longer captured by some kind of um idea that there will be some
(33:36):
public entity providing something and things will be just automatically better i think there is a
lot of a lot of things that people started to think about before the war but also
are now in tried in this voluntary activity on all fronts where people just do things themselves so
there are some expectations on behalf of the local authorities but people actually engage so people
(34:01):
do things that nobody asked them to do and they won't stop i mean they won't stop if the
municipal authority says well you shouldn't maybe they will say shut up we are providing services
we're doing the right thing so on so on so in a lot of places it's no longer i mean the authorities
are just sitting and listening to civil society because civil society has much better capacity
(34:22):
and understanding of what has to be done and it's kind of civil society is jumping over the
municipal authorities and talking with donors or talking with um state entities or or something
so i think this is a quite an interesting condition that we haven't seen you know in europe i don't
know what kind of society had this mobilization of resources in the last decades and more related to
(34:48):
kind of spatial planning issues is my concern that we have a huge trouble translating um quality
standards of living into things that matter in spatial planning and this is yeah this is this is
this is a complicated task in in every seat and what the research says um in very simple words is
(35:09):
that well you need to have a very strong hold of governmental capacity to hold um you know
you know those land consumption back and if you do land consumption is much lower and the density
of construction is much higher and thus we could correlate that with the quality of public service
(35:31):
provision transport and so on and i think this thinking is not yet in ukraine at all right now
there has to be a lot of effort done on behalf of different european also institutions
to promote the agenda that we actually need to think from the perspective of ecological um
system you know within within the within the country how do we keep land open how do we keep
(35:57):
it natural how we don't consume much more land because in ukraine it's very easy to compare
data before the war and after the war what has happened also on on the geographical level
level i think something like uh the whole territory of belgium in ukraine is now mined
so uh it's either mine and shelved or shelved and mined or has some other hazards and mined
(36:26):
and uh it's basically unusable um so imagine you just cut off belgium out of european
map it's a bit too much i think to handle for just one jump and it happened in ukraine in a year
so we lost uh huge territories it's 27 to 30 percent of land that is mined and it has to be
(36:47):
cleared somehow and they are they clean it but it's very slow process and also there are sometimes
you cannot really clean it because the quality of soil just is not after even after you clean it up
it's not really usable it's it's degraded too much or it's it's just you know filled with metal or
scrap or some kind of fumes from the shells and other things or oil from tanks so it's it's
(37:12):
basically a barren wasteland and uh ukraine was a this kind of a breadbasket feeding 400 million
people in the world but then the pressure for agriculture does not just you know go away it's
it just moves its need for land resources to the western parts of ukraine where there were no
facilities and now the pressure for land use is even accelerating and we're not even touching
(37:35):
on the points such as you know wind farms uh solar energy uh production and so on and so on
so the land consumption perspective in ukraine is huge it can just you know every day it can just be
growing exponentially from where we are now it's because the economic activity is low right now and
there are a lot of issues about how you invest but as soon as investment is there and we don't have
(37:57):
real controls in place um you know market always finds a way how to go around some of the more or
less lousy legislation that is there so this is a crucial problem for the recovery about how we
think about ukraine as an ecosystem and the land use in the country and this is why i'm skeptical
about this kind of a um localized approach because on the local level you don't see this
(38:21):
number setting up you see small you know kind of a um just a small glimpse on the bigger picture
which where the public authorities national level and regional level really have to think about
thing i would i would like to pick up on your your first point on the self-organization of
(38:43):
people of communities in cities and the resilience they show during during the
uh um times of war i find it very fascinating that you described that
people living in cities or organizations i think are they organized somehow is it an
are they NGOs or is it just people who come together for for a shared purpose it's very
(39:07):
easy to start up an NGO in ukraine um and somehow NGOs cover 70 to 80 percent of all local activities
so it's somehow mediated by an NGO because as soon as you have a legal structure then you can
send out official letters you can receive those official letters you can participate on behalf of
your NGO so it it kind of levels up your status you know maybe not that much but still you you
(39:33):
have a much more many more opportunities to engage in local politics and you also which is i think
crucially important then you kind of negotiate with international partners on behalf of the so
called organization or institution even there are five people there uh they will never know never
know in a sense but they know that they're engaging with a legal entity you know and that
(39:55):
that proves a lot of things that are possible now and you know i mean NGOs are well i don't know
about the financial flows overall but i think uh the capacity of NGOs to receive and spend money
is is getting better and better and this capacity is assisting local municipalities into providing
(40:15):
other services or thinking even that they don't themselves are not able to provide do you think
that this is something that uh these NGOs or these local let's say purposefully formed groups of
people will have a bigger role to play after the war and in in the governance system after the war
(40:37):
well that's a good question because um it's really hard to predict
um and also i don't have enough data to understand or maybe to compare the pre-war conditions and
their post-war conditions there is some research done on the appreciation of local NGOs and trust
the local NGOs and i think it's kept much higher than trust to the local authorities so people
(41:03):
trust those NGOs even though they don't elect them they don't kind of uh they are unable to
make them accountable really they really trust those NGOs so to me to me it sounds like you
you mobilize uh or your your full forced um society or the ukrainian society has to show
(41:23):
a certain resilience in these in these times right and then you uh they come together and
bring these resources mobilize their ideas and um and also yeah resources financial or other
other resources together it would be you know very interesting to see how you can use that after the
(41:44):
war and also to to exactly what you mentioned before to to um build upon upon this this
this mobilization for reimagining cities well here i might a bit uh divert from from your
line of thinking because i think for proper um well cities are as we know are getting more and
(42:09):
more complex uh day by day because of the involvement of different stakeholders you know
you know complicated networks of infrastructure digital institutions of whatever public private
authorities so the things are just getting more complicated and i think NGOs have their own limit
of how far they can so i believe the the de-professionalization um of the idea of
(42:36):
city management is a good and a bad thing so it is good because it opens up people to more thinking
about how do we want to live together on this you know small world we have uh but it also depreciate
depreciates the quality of professional education because you can no longer represent to have any
credible condition of knowledge or information or uh just basically experience from your work that
(43:02):
other people have to rely on well because they haven't done that they don't know that they just
you know jump up with their ideas learn from somebody across the street or in the internet
and then they say well we should do that whether that's a good use of public money whether that's
a long-term investment well i think i think it might be it might not be that you that you hand
(43:24):
out the decision to somebody who's not an expert but it's it's about valuing the the knowledge
and it becomes a conflict i would say that you're you're you're correct and that's that's a good
point but i'm always afraid i just meant i just meant bringing in these voices and this uh um this
this mobility or this perspective into um co-creating approaches for uh city making really
(43:49):
you know it's it's like at the end of the day you you you need to have a leadership which takes the
decisions and you need to have a decision laid out by experts but also by maybe not
not uh disciplinary experts but everyday life experts right so it's bringing these voices
together to maybe reimagine a future for cities this is an interesting question again thank you
(44:15):
for it because what i also felt from my studies and engaging with discussions about municipal
management in other capitals or in other cities in europe a lot of this process were happening
in different european cities in different speeds but thinking about the ukrainian context it is
(44:35):
quite different in a sense that while those things have been brought on the table
you also have a decrease or maybe you didn't have any increase of quality or the capacity of
local municipality so municipality now is unable neither to handle properly the
well engagement and co-creation nor their basic institutional work that they have to do and they're
(45:00):
now a turn between those two ideas because they have to respond to all of the ideas of deliberative
democracy and everyday engagement and to do this complex technocratic stuff they have to do and
they're not really competent in neither of those and this brings to me the table what is the
priority or how do you invest in the capacity on the local level for those people to be able to plan
(45:24):
forward and to be open i found this a conflict talking with a lot of european professionals they
they highly express the need to have more public engagement have to take on the initiative that
already exists there and just enhance them not to push anything but then it is a good it is a good
plan but for different conditions i think and those conditions have to be taken into account
(45:47):
when thinking about the longer term goals how do you balance then you know this kind of a technical
and conceptual needs of the city with this new paradigms of management of you know local
management of things and how do you engage people in that alexander with with so much destruction and
uh in in ukraine and you described how much land has been destroyed and is is polluted also for the
(46:13):
war from the war how and we discussed a lot of uh yeah details regulations governance issues around
that wouldn't you say that the priority should be to build housing and infrastructure on a very rapid
pace to focus on that instead of uh let's say the nice to haves around that well that's that's a very
(46:40):
good question um because what it leads to a dichotomy which i think is a bit of unproductive and i would
rather a bit of reframe the question about how do we learn by doing things how do we
um from the start how do we not delay uh the process but how do we start the process the way
(47:01):
that it brings builds um and system of knowledge or builds this kind of a learning capacity from
from within the project by project thinking towards a planning perspective or towards the
perspective of how do we kind of organize things together on a level of municipal plan or general
plan or you know regional plan um myself i'm for planning you know there there is some there is some
(47:27):
uh argument you know theory saves all i think plan saves all um so plan do save a lot of things
um but with the given conditions it is more about um how do we make those plans work and at the
given moment i don't think we know um how to make those plans work so we had a lot of plans in
the country uh we're huge plan producing countries since the soviet union most of those plans were
(47:53):
never realized to any significant extent and how do we how do we learn maybe without a plan
how do we systematize those projects how do we systematize that thinking towards the plan we
need and i think this is this is this is maybe a better kind of way of trying to push things
together um integrated urban development so to say which is uh well majority of the projects
(48:15):
so to say which is uh well a german term but i think it it has a chance of revival in these
conditions by becoming more informal but becoming a way of doing not a way of planning and then
feeding up to those people who actually you know sit in the plane and then they see well this is
the way things work and we should plan as things work and not the plan for the things that we would
(48:39):
like them to work and for rebuilding ukrainian cities if you if you if we go in that in that
line of thinking what would be the next practical steps to rebuild um cities from your perspective
from your from your work but also feel free to be very personal i think well i say it's kind of a
(49:00):
vision for the social city this is also on the level of country but related to our podcast i
think it's more interesting to think about what is the social city that provides for people who live
there and it's it's about all of those conditions so it's about how do we at the same moment as
planners as people who think further take into account health care how do we take into account
(49:23):
everyday use of space how do we take into account mobility how do we take into account access to
decent housing how do we take into account greenery um how do we take into account new
jobs and our work areas and access to those work areas so in a sense from this fragmentation that
(49:43):
we were facing earlier you know designing solutions for a very small kind of you know planned areas
whatever the way it was there you know just just putting buildings together it is about a bit of
going back and understanding that what's behind you know physical plans or legal plans is there
internal understanding of how do we think these cities should look like and it's especially
(50:06):
relevant for cities that have been heavily damaged such as Kharkiv or Mikulayev
because they have to prove something to the world after the war is over that their place is worse
living right because i don't think you can rebuild a city that it just works for the few
it won't help anybody to get back there and it will be a dysfunctional economy you know constantly
(50:27):
shrinking system that relies on defunct soviet infrastructure maybe with a few pedestrian central
streets so it's a it's about actually not this investment you know as an extra investment for
social facilities but as investment into people who would love to work and live there and this
(50:50):
thinking is is what i haven't seen in ukraine that much and i believe this is the kind of
financial thinking that was burdened by constant lack of funds but with the opportunity of a very
clever use of the recovery funds that we think are going to come we should actually put this kind of
a social before every other word so if we are talking about infrastructure it has to have its
(51:14):
social component there it has to have housing has to have its called social social component there
and to be competitive it's not about being economically competitive it's about funding
economically competitive it's about first being socially competitive and then economy
can repay for itself and it's what happened in a lot of cities in in the world and how would you
say how would you say i think in the beginning you you mentioned how to put it but it was uh it was
(51:38):
like uh the perspective of uh european researchers and policymakers on europe on ukrainian cities
should shift and there should be more knowledge if i interpret you correctly more knowledge build up
in western europe uh about yeah uh urbanism and other things in in ukraine well i can't say you
(52:01):
know you just measure it by the size but kiev is the fifth biggest city in europe um so it has to
have at least some appeal to trying to understand how big cities work and how they impact global
global economy um but what i think we started to discuss before uh this the recording is that
(52:22):
well um coming from i don't know danish scottish spanish background people considered ukraine
well something being out of their scope of interest um maybe automatically because it's not really
belonging to any area of research they've been looking at and i think this leads to a specific
(52:44):
condition where ukraine um well is confined as i as i said to this periphery so although it's the
biggest country by area in europe and it provides the most um well a lot of resources corn we are
talking about wheat we're talking about sunflower oil a lot of products that europe actually imparts
(53:07):
from ukraine and is heavily dependent on some of those things how do we make ukraine visible
productively for international academia because uh trying to launch any international projects
of relevance and value production in science how do you make ukraine relatively interesting
(53:29):
for those points i think it's by making ukraine legible on the map so that people do not start
those conversations with the uh excuses that they don't know anything about ukraine so yeah you can
tell us something but well this is just another interesting point we can learn about but not
really a necessary one i think knowing about ukraine is crucial is a part of a basic
(53:55):
understanding at least in the realm of european studies you have to be very well aware of how
ukraine functions as a society and if you're an urbanist you have to know at least some of the
understanding have to some some understanding about how ukrainian municipalities cities and
well are growing and are changing because that would bring one the one hand much more perspective
(54:18):
to different issues discussed in europe the transfer of policies the thinking about how
those policies land up how do we consume land how do we grow also how do we work with cities that
are experiencing decline there is a lot of areas that ukraine can be part of this research
engagement on international academic level but it is not as people consider it being you know and
(54:40):
a case in itself not really reproducible not really comparable and i think starting to make
ukraine visible on the basic level to be able to engage with people at least that ukraine is
something not out of their scope of thinking but a part of the normal conversations part of their
general agenda of research is very important to me and this is one of the things that i wanted to
(55:07):
to argue here right thank you so much alexander i would since you have so many you have different
hats so i see you wearing different hats you have you're active in an ngo sector you also
you're a research and academic yourself but you also work with municipalities if you would suggest
(55:27):
let's say three things to anybody who wants to reimagining cities or or change anything in their
immediate urban environment what would these three suggestions be
from working in municipality i learned that to actually produce change you have to work very
(55:48):
hard and in a sense this working hard is not a not a joke and not a maybe some kind of a
some kind of a uh head-on idea but this is a reality so if you want to see things changing
in a local level you have to be ready for a marathon or for a very long run because there
(56:12):
are a lot of institutions a lot of people with different backgrounds engaged in this decision
making and you can change things but you have to be sure that you're committed to this and that
you're ready to face difficulties and ready to go on with some things being unchanged for years
i imagine from being an NGO i learned that NGOs are very fancy for thinking about cities are very
(56:42):
interesting for young researchers or people who are engaged in the society on different levels
but their influence is very limited and if you are looking towards making things different
well on a bigger scale it might be better that you think about how do i convert my knowledge
(57:03):
from an NGO to be relevant for policymakers and maybe to become a policymaker yourself and
and these things combined i imagine are both relevant for people who work in the municipality
and who start often to be over pressed with their everyday work and they don't see you know an
(57:27):
ending of this but they can make a change and i've seen it happening but they have to be they have to
keep the fire going and people who don't see the change happening in NGOs and the society is still
being the same or the city is functioning the same way they did previously they have to realize that
you know path dependencies are very strong and you have to leverage in a very specific area to
(57:51):
produce a change and it's not an easy thing to do and but it's still possible alexander thank
you so much for your time thank you for giving me and us really an insight into ukrainian urbanism
um before and during and after the war i would love to to meet you at some point ideally in ukraine
(58:12):
after the war yeah all the best to you to your family and your colleagues and i hope we stay in
touch thank you so much for your time thank you so much johannes was a pleasure
that was all for this week's show if you like the content i would be happy if you subscribe to the
channel or rate the show or send me an email at johannes at andropocene.cities cities reimagine
(58:40):
will take a short break over the christmas holidays and we'll be back in january with new episodes
and we will finish off season one and then decide if we go into a second season and how that should
look like thanks for listening and i hope to catch you soon
(59:23):
so
(01:00:23):
you
What is the most important thing about Ukraine?
(00:10):
Knowing about Ukraine is crucial. It's a part of a basic understanding,
at least in the realm of European studies. You have to be very well aware of how Ukraine functions
as a society. And if you're an urbanist, you have to know at least some of the understanding,
have some understanding about how Ukraine and its cities are growing and are changing.
(00:33):
That's right. And we will try to contribute to this understanding in today's episode.
Hi, welcome back to the Cities Rematch podcast. I'm your host, Johannes Riegel,
and this is episode seven, reimagining urbanism in post-war Ukraine.
(00:57):
I hope you're all doing well. It is the end of the year. And to me, it seems like the late summer
here in Austria just disappeared into a very harsh winter with minus 11 degrees this morning
in Vienna today. I hope you can look back at the meaningful year, whatever that means for you.
I certainly can. I could work and talk to so many people pushing the envelope on urbanism
(01:21):
on the show and offline. I also had the opportunity to travel a lot and get to know so many places
and people who are doing really cool things and connect to those people around the planet.
And also to, not least, I could spend some really good time with my loved ones and connect to
friends and colleagues in a meaningful way. And not least, I could experiment with this new project
(01:47):
called Cities Rematch. Cities Rematch will take a short break from here over the holiday season
and we'll be back in January with the remaining episodes of season one. There has been also so
much knowledge collected already in the episode so far that I would love to use it also outside
(02:13):
of the pure podcast audio, if you will. And I'm eyeing with the option of a publication summarizing
each episode in written form and drawing some conclusions and key messages. But since at the
moment, Cities Rematch is running my free time on my personal budget, I'm a bit limited on how to
(02:36):
go about that idea. And if you have some ideas on how to finance it and how to spend time on it,
please get in touch. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. In the meantime, I luckily
found a way to transcribe each episode for very affordable costs. I will also publish this
(02:57):
transcript in one way or the other, maybe a medium account or something else. But the first
non-podcast publication will be featured in a publication by Driving Urban Transitions on
regenerative neighborhoods. And I will be editing a conversation I had with Gaffrid Ambrusch on
urban wildlife habitats, which will be featured in this booklet. If you are enjoying the content of
(03:29):
Cities Rematch and smash the like button, rate and review the show or leave a comment
on the like on LinkedIn or other social media channels to help others find it. But enough on
the monologue this week. Let's get to it. Let's get to the topic of today. And that is reimagining
(03:52):
urbanism in post-war Ukraine. Over the years, I had the chances of working with colleagues in
and from Ukraine, join and talk at a number of UNESCO workshops dedicated on sustainable development
(04:17):
practices for urban heritage, which was organized partly by Ukrainian ministries,
but took place mainly online because of COVID. And I became very interested in the history and the
current political affairs of Ukraine and started reading into it. So mainly I read the work of
(04:39):
Anna Reed and Timothy Snyder, which are two authors I would highly recommend to you. I leave
the links to their works in the show notes. So you have it ready if you want to read further into that.
I also had the chance to go to Kyiv in early January 2019, just days before Orthodox Christmas
(05:02):
celebrations. It was very cold in the city and it was snowing and there was a lot of snow, a layer
of snow over the city that Nidmur River, which flows through the heart of Kyiv, had patches of
ice forming on the surface. The city had a very quiet feel to it as the snow muffled all the sounds
(05:26):
of the traffic, created a certain sense of stillness. And at the same time, you could realize
or recognize that you arrived in a capital where parts of the land of the country are occupied
by an aggressor, by the Russian Federation. There were posters of fallen soldiers and others who
lost their lives in the east of the country and during the events of the Maidan Square in the year
(05:54):
2014. And these posters reminded that things are not that calm in the country. In the public spaces
there were signs and communications that expressed a deep-seated desire for change and a brighter
future of Ukraine. And walking the streets, searching for a restaurant actually, I found
(06:15):
myself in an inner courtyard in which Ukrainian soldiers had their standby position. So I left Kyiv
after the weekend with an impression of a beautiful and cold city which brings together
the historic Orthodox cathedrals, the Soviet era structures and modern skyscrapers, but foremost
(06:36):
that this country is in a military conflict, which was mainly not perceived as such at that time
in the west than parts of Europe. In February 2022, what for many from outside of Ukraine
thought as unthinkable happened, a large-scale military attack and occupation of Ukrainian land
(07:00):
by the Russian Federation. And now in November 2024 and and to this war in Ukraine is not yet
inside. Thousands of civilian Ukrainians were killed, entire cities were put to rubble and
1.4 million homes were destroyed or damaged. The infrastructure and the historic monuments
(07:21):
are destroyed each day. But there's also increased debate and talks about rebuilding those Ukrainian
cities and I had a number of questions on that, on rebuilding Ukrainian cities. And over the last
months I came across the work of Alexander Anisimov on rebuilding Ukrainian cities numerous times.
(07:43):
He's a spatial planner and territorial governance researcher and consultant with a focus on science
policy interface with a rich experience actually in the NGO sector in Ukraine as well. He published
really interesting stuff on matters on rebuilding Ukrainian cities including affordable housing and
(08:04):
sustainable land use that I had to invite him on the show and he luckily agreed to have a
conversation with me. So here is my conversation with Alexander Anisimov on reimagining urbanism
in post-war Ukraine. Hi Alexander, it's so nice to have you on Cities Reimagined. How are you doing?
(08:30):
Well, it's maybe already late autumn in Ukraine but seems fine. Thank you. You're now in,
where are you based at the moment? Are you in Helsinki? I'm moving but most of the time I'm
based in Lviv, that's Western Ukraine, a historic city in the core of Western Ukraine. Is that the
(08:52):
town you grew up in? No, I moved here when I tried to get a new job. Well, I got the new job but
it was a bit of an experiment because I've never thought of moving anywhere from Kiev before.
Although, well, it was nothing like I was completely attached to the city but it was not
(09:17):
like what would you do in Ukraine not being in Kiev in a sense was also kind of a question for me.
They moved here to work in a municipality as a specialist in urban infrastructure.
So I stayed here then the war broke out so I worked there further for a few months but then
(09:38):
I thought well there are urgent issues we have to tackle so I moved a little bit to the NGO sector
and started working on research and housing and land use. All right, so you're moving between,
so you're now in Ukraine at this moment? Yes, at the moment, yes. I have to say people will not
see that but I see it. It's very confusing because you have a background of Aalto University near
(10:04):
Helsinki, right? So I had in mind that you're sitting in Finland right now. Yeah, this is
specifically designed to be confusing. Very good. But how did you become interested in urbanism
or urban planning or urban studies in the first place? You grew up in Kiev. How was it growing
(10:26):
up there and what triggered your interest in this messy stuff called cities? Well, I think Kiev was
a more or less well-organized city in mid-2000s and so it inherited some of the good and bad
Soviet planning solutions but also pre-Soviet grid networks so the center of the city is pretty
(10:48):
walkable and there is a lot of infrastructure for cultural activities and heritage so it was not felt
like there was a specific difference between Kiev and other cities across central Europe. I think it
was pretty much similar in a way also better. It had a lot of greenery compared to many cities.
(11:10):
Then when I studied political science as my bachelor's degree, I started to focus on public
space. I think it was just a fancy thing to do at the moment so people started to look something
urban and I thought about, I read André Lefebvre and I thought about well how do we work on
(11:31):
politics of public space? How does that public space is created? How the public space is created
actually? Who are the actors? Who are the political forces behind the curtains or what are the other
institutions basically involved in this creation of public space and who does it serve? From then
on, I somehow started working on several urban design projects of smaller scale and I started
(12:00):
projects of smaller scale with an NGO called Agents of Change. It's a Kiev based NGO and we were
trying to utilize some of the European analytical frameworks for public space analysis, for analysis
of quality of life, something that people well know about this methodology of Jan Gale and his team.
(12:23):
Some of the different aspects of those approaches that became popular I think in 2010s were also
on the rise in Kiev, not very much institutionalized in the conversations with the municipal
authorities but at least beginning to be popular among professionals and people just engaged in
this kind of urban thinking who had some free time or had been engaged in voluntary activities
(12:48):
and then started to professionalize it a little bit. Cool, it seems like public space is a topic
which where many find their first interest in cities or urbanism and how did you, you're now
working more on the spatial planning, governance side of things, right? Do you want to tell us a
(13:08):
little bit more about that? So there are several directions that I unfortunately have to work on
at the same moment but I think I will move towards something one of those and in a sense there are
three directions right now but they are very much attached to the plans of establishing
(13:28):
research center for land and housing studies within the system of Harkiv School of Architecture but
I can, from the perspective of my master studies I started to look at the in-depth understanding of
a planning system but from the governance perspective not from the spatial planning itself so
(13:49):
not from the regulations or from some kind of effects of spatial planning as such but more of
the level of governance and land use planning and institutional change which was which also
a thing that fascinates me and it's very hard to explain in the conditions where institutions are
so weakened, it's hard to define and say as in Ukraine they are but so I combined my previous
(14:17):
understanding from political science of things related to political theory, theory of understanding
well basically how societies function and societies function on the level of
political society so if it's a community how does it organize itself, how does it decide for what
are the best better rules of governance or what are the ideas it wants to follow or how the things
(14:43):
are then you know made into action so put on paper and then create it as an institution of enforcement
and those things from my background they allowed me maybe to get a different angle on the
spatial planning because as such I'm also concerned about some kind of political issues but I'm really
(15:04):
interested in the space as a concept or in space as a concept and space as a realm I'd say so yes
this is my focus so the governance part focused with or combined with the governance part and
combined with the land use understanding I think this is one of the most powerful tools of
(15:26):
on the one hand understanding how cities develop on the other hand influencing the future development
of those cities because their issues of how do you define those rules for land use and how you make
those rules work are for me you know completely crucial so that the underlying system of the all
of the other systems that is built upon it. Yes and this this topic is also how I got aware of
(15:53):
your work because I saw on LinkedIn that you wrote some articles and posts on regulation governance
behind what is needed in that regard behind rebuilding Ukrainian cities so I'm very happy
that we have this have a chance for this conversation here today. For me it's very
difficult honestly personally to draft a question on how somebody must feel with yeah living in
(16:20):
Ukraine and having having the war in front of the doorstep how are you holding up and how is this
how is this personally how can you can you describe that? I'd say it felt like a fall of the world
in the first day or two so it in a sense felt that reality does not exist anymore because the
(16:44):
material things were no longer well they could it seemed they couldn't hold like all of the physical
things couldn't be destroyed any seconds so they were on the one hand existing like this computer
or the mouse or the table but on the other hand they were possible that they would be taken from
(17:04):
you or destroyed by rockets or whatever so in since it was a bit of a completely redefined
feeling of the physical world around me but also a lot of stress that was mobilizing so it was a
huge desire to do something it also felt like a physical need to be engaged in things although
(17:28):
I don't have military training and I couldn't be very helpful apart from the humanitarian side of
the things so yeah we everybody tried to be as much of useful they could so it was a huge
mobilization of the society itself it still continues but there was also a lot of fear
(17:53):
and it's a human fear of death or injury or pain and I think people were super stressed about it
and one of the thoughts that I had in these first days was that you know Russia is in a sense taking
time from us because when people are so stressed when people cannot plan people cannot think ahead
(18:17):
they become obsessed with their you know immediate security and they're basically
cut off from thinking so they're cut off from imagining they're cut off from discussing
you know this all of the issues about deliberation future they're non-relevant and basically you
cannot build a society on the society that just you know keeps itself secure you have to imagine
(18:40):
something you have to plan and that feeling about Russia taking time from us was a very real one so
it was a frozen time of fear and stress and mobilization but that's still a frozen one you
could not kind of progress in any direction we're just doing things that had to be done
yeah and you you in your work I know that you uh you're advocating for yeah still in this time
(19:09):
where um how to put it in time of survival or on this in these times of war you're advocating for
changing the paradigms of how Ukrainian cities are built and uh hopefully rebuilt um what are
the problems and challenges in that regard how would you how do they differ from other post-Soviet
(19:31):
cities what would you say well I think none of the cities are any longer post-Soviet in a sense so
just to work on this field of defining the problem itself or the frame itself
um five years ago my distant colleague published a paper three metals
(19:55):
um something I just don't recall the whole name but um
um Michael Gentiles he's a Swedish researcher working in Norwegian University
um he basically launched a counter-attack on the concept of post-socialist
post-socialist uh explanatory framework or post-socialist word as concept term so he
(20:21):
he fought it back in a very good way a very strong argumentation um he brought together
several examples of cities that are still considered by some of the researchers or in
some literature for Soviet and he just tried to link them somehow and didn't work so he couldn't
find a single characteristic that could link those cities together and uh there was a very good
(20:46):
framing that he um counter-attacked this this idea about post-socialism is that it confines the
production of knowledge about post-socialism to this constant peripheral condition because you
can now never overcome the reproducibility the relevance of the knowledge you produce about
(21:06):
post-socialism beyond the post-socialist cities themselves so in a sense whatever you talk uh
whatever you tell about the socialist cities means something only in the framework of other
post-socialist condition cities and something you can never argue anything about you know global
south east west north and so on so just you're stuck there and I think we have to go beyond that
(21:29):
it just helps to kind of bring something of an identifier but what's behind it really very hard
to define is it a is it a matter of the term post-socialist or is it yes yes I think I think
it's just it's just exhausted itself and uh it doesn't it it answers the wrong question I'd say
so if we want to learn something we should ask different questions we should we should ask
(21:51):
questions about you know the region or the country or the history or or a building or a city or a
community we shouldn't ask a question about post-socialism excellent very good um do you and
for for changing the paradigms in in ukraine what is what is needed now for let's say rebuilding
(22:11):
the cities or then I would say the concern um is twofold so one concern is how do we deliver the
promises of deliberative democracy and inclusion in the level of the community of what's in ukraine
(22:32):
is also municipality is called the community so it's a literal translation so you if you live in
a municipality you automatically live in a community and in a sense how do cities that don't have funds
they don't have capacity that are you know people who work in municipality they don't have proper
(22:53):
funding they don't have proper salaries how those municipalities being confined for so many years
even after some decentralization efforts have been done in ukraine which is a strong
reform that's been happening the last five seven years um how does this municipality actually
deliver those promises because people are I guess over expecting um and you know international
(23:14):
communities are expecting and everybody's thinking well we have now this perspective of european
accession being in accession now we have to deliver we have to be you know at least as good as
some other countries are and um I cannot say that we have the foundations for that transition
(23:35):
so on an institutional level you know the way the country was ran is way too chaotic in the
regional perspective and municipalities are very different with their capacities and they're very
different with their ability to think forward or to mobilize any kind of resources and they're
very dependent on I would say local trajectories of how things developed and those trajectories
(24:00):
were in most cases not very positive um not very forward looking so the one question is about the
uh capacity of the local level itself you know to build uh build forward to to create and then the
the needed kind of engage in the needed reforms on the local level and then the other side is in a
(24:21):
sense what is the professional and the state paradigm of how do we do things uh from the
planning perspective right how do we think about the quality of life in those communities in the
country and I think there is also a crisis of ideas on that on that behalf so although I'm very much
of institutionalist perspective thinker I in this case I engage in more of a dispersive problem
(24:46):
because I think we have a crisis of imagination on that on that side and this is a point where
comparison is maybe not the best solution but a very interesting one because looking at the
destruction that was brought by the second world war in a lot of european states um it was hard to
say it was hard to see any of the countries building back worse so in a sense every of those
(25:11):
countries engaged in a huge mobilization of you know societal resources institutions political
engagement they redefined um social contracts they created so much of a new institution that still
hold we can name you name it nhs in britain social pensions in netherlands movement and workers
(25:35):
rights in germany housing in sweden there are so many institutions built from second world war
designed on the basis of new social imagination of politicians and their well expert groups that
that supported those politicians to to think forward and this is not there in ukraine so
(25:57):
I very well understand that we are in a sense of uh you know this post-priced condition so neoliberalism
has fallen but what's kind of next so what do we propose for the society and for the you know global
economy um and in our case we cannot you know just continue the trajectory we we will slide into one
or the other conditions by definition something that we're going to have because so many things
(26:21):
were destroyed and they will be rebuilt on one conditions or other conditions and um one of the
perspectives i'm arguing for on this kind of a level of political imagination about cities about
communities um is that we actually have to get back to social state so the state that provides
(26:42):
for its citizens and the idea of deliberative social democracy i think um well in maybe in the
words of tomas piquetti it's a bit of different conditions but it's a kind of a system that works
for the people who invest in that system and um there is a strong counter movement on the political
(27:03):
side so we still have to kind of keep the taxes low we have to keep the um private entrepreneurs
and private businesses um kind of running the economy running the running it forward moving it
to some kind of a new innovative thinking blah blah blah however um coming back to well and how
(27:25):
do we keep people in ukraine then you know um obviously two five percent of people who engage
in this nice uh jobs related to it related to some kind of marketing business they will stay
might might today but and then what we're talking about the other 95 slash 8 90 percent of people
(27:45):
how do we deliver for those um teachers for those policemen for those building workers how do we
create a system that really values their input and this is something behind you know questions
of what the cities we're going to do and very much related to the idea of social housing and
(28:05):
you know housing for all and is excellent and this is um you've referred i would like to stick for a
second with uh with this crisis of imagination which you um put forward so strongly um you also
mentioned that after the second world war in europe there was a lot of let's say social
(28:26):
achievements and a lot of uh things all of a sudden were possible which didn't maybe didn't
seem possible before but there might also been have been a lot of experimentation right
an opening an open mind potentially to improve the social conditions of of people right and i'm just
(28:48):
experimenting with it and going along with that do you think that this crisis of imagination is
is uh in in ukraine is that uh historically is it politically is it are there other reasons for that
culturally or do you think it's just this um this bigger economic model we are in you you mentioned
(29:13):
the neoliberalism that's there that knew that this notion of neoliberalism um in a way prevents
people or institutions to have bolder ideas wishes about the future um yeah what i will i will try to
(29:35):
answer in two parts so one part is about the imagination itself and i think it's very much
related to um uh some of the concept that mariano matzocato put forward regards to um how do we
define the value that the state can provide for the society so and thinking about that value is
very much um predefined in ukraine because the state for so long has been defunding itself so it
(29:58):
has been consistently shrinking um well maybe not consistently but unconsciously shrinking uh
and then it doesn't have its internal um ambition or capacity to to think about bigger change to
believe that the value and the progress that it can deliver can actually mean something or can be
(30:25):
as big as it has to be or as counter uh intuitive maybe to some people but still providing a lot of
social value a lot of public value for the society and that consistent shrinking of public institutions
um obviously lent market the hand to think for those institutions so
(30:47):
and taking one sector um and then the one that i've been working with for some time although
i'm not really an expert in housing um in housing sphere um the state as a well public entities
they rely on private data they rely on private advice because they have not built any uh research
(31:12):
capacities and um well research institutional capacities themselves so they they systematically
rely on what private entities provide for them and then they do not have any other arguments and they
don't have any other things on their horizon other than those who are put forward by the private
sector and that's the only thing that is there in the discourse is only things put forward by the
(31:34):
private sector meaning that you cannot actually engage with public institutions because they are
in a sense captured uh or kind of controlled not physically not even financially but by the ideas
that they cannot themselves think about they were just you know fed these ideas by the private sector
and this this correlation exists in several ukrainian several sectors of ukrainian economy
(31:55):
when we think about you know social perspectives they just step back and well wait for somebody
else to answer these questions or maybe just put them aside or under the rug or somewhere is the
reason for that the the financial resources or what is the reason for that so thinking about
we have this defined this the defined private uh defined public entities that um stop thinking
(32:19):
forward and just rely on this day-to-day work or day-to-day provision of answers or services to
you know politicians or the parliament or the cabinet ministers they don't come up with the
ideas because they don't feel themselves secure and being able to put forward these ideas and
why is that i think it depends on different levels um well i cannot say i have an answer but this is
(32:41):
something that i've been facing that you're engaged with people who have very low ambitions
and expectations about the future and it's very hard um when you have such a huge problem of
destruction and displacement um because you have to think big otherwise it just doesn't work together
at all right what's your your personal hope for the recovery of ukrainian cities
(33:09):
well paradoxically i think one of the things that happened is is indeed decolonization of
consciousness um in a lot of ways because um maybe on it doesn't have immediate effects on
physical reality of how people care about the city or how they engage in you know local politics
but um they are definitely no longer captured by some kind of um idea that there will be some
(33:36):
public entity providing something and things will be just automatically better i think there is a
lot of a lot of things that people started to think about before the war but also
are now in tried in this voluntary activity on all fronts where people just do things themselves so
there are some expectations on behalf of the local authorities but people actually engage so people
(34:01):
do things that nobody asked them to do and they won't stop i mean they won't stop if the
municipal authority says well you shouldn't maybe they will say shut up we are providing services
we're doing the right thing so on so on so in a lot of places it's no longer i mean the authorities
are just sitting and listening to civil society because civil society has much better capacity
(34:22):
and understanding of what has to be done and it's kind of civil society is jumping over the
municipal authorities and talking with donors or talking with um state entities or or something
so i think this is a quite an interesting condition that we haven't seen you know in europe i don't
know what kind of society had this mobilization of resources in the last decades and more related to
(34:48):
kind of spatial planning issues is my concern that we have a huge trouble translating um quality
standards of living into things that matter in spatial planning and this is yeah this is this is
this is a complicated task in in every seat and what the research says um in very simple words is
(35:09):
that well you need to have a very strong hold of governmental capacity to hold um you know
you know those land consumption back and if you do land consumption is much lower and the density
of construction is much higher and thus we could correlate that with the quality of public service
(35:31):
provision transport and so on and i think this thinking is not yet in ukraine at all right now
there has to be a lot of effort done on behalf of different european also institutions
to promote the agenda that we actually need to think from the perspective of ecological um
system you know within within the within the country how do we keep land open how do we keep
(35:57):
it natural how we don't consume much more land because in ukraine it's very easy to compare
data before the war and after the war what has happened also on on the geographical level
level i think something like uh the whole territory of belgium in ukraine is now mined
so uh it's either mine and shelved or shelved and mined or has some other hazards and mined
(36:26):
and uh it's basically unusable um so imagine you just cut off belgium out of european
map it's a bit too much i think to handle for just one jump and it happened in ukraine in a year
so we lost uh huge territories it's 27 to 30 percent of land that is mined and it has to be
(36:47):
cleared somehow and they are they clean it but it's very slow process and also there are sometimes
you cannot really clean it because the quality of soil just is not after even after you clean it up
it's not really usable it's it's degraded too much or it's it's just you know filled with metal or
scrap or some kind of fumes from the shells and other things or oil from tanks so it's it's
(37:12):
basically a barren wasteland and uh ukraine was a this kind of a breadbasket feeding 400 million
people in the world but then the pressure for agriculture does not just you know go away it's
it just moves its need for land resources to the western parts of ukraine where there were no
facilities and now the pressure for land use is even accelerating and we're not even touching
(37:35):
on the points such as you know wind farms uh solar energy uh production and so on and so on
so the land consumption perspective in ukraine is huge it can just you know every day it can just be
growing exponentially from where we are now it's because the economic activity is low right now and
there are a lot of issues about how you invest but as soon as investment is there and we don't have
(37:57):
real controls in place um you know market always finds a way how to go around some of the more or
less lousy legislation that is there so this is a crucial problem for the recovery about how we
think about ukraine as an ecosystem and the land use in the country and this is why i'm skeptical
about this kind of a um localized approach because on the local level you don't see this
(38:21):
number setting up you see small you know kind of a um just a small glimpse on the bigger picture
which where the public authorities national level and regional level really have to think about
thing i would i would like to pick up on your your first point on the self-organization of
(38:43):
people of communities in cities and the resilience they show during during the
uh um times of war i find it very fascinating that you described that
people living in cities or organizations i think are they organized somehow is it an
are they NGOs or is it just people who come together for for a shared purpose it's very
(39:07):
easy to start up an NGO in ukraine um and somehow NGOs cover 70 to 80 percent of all local activities
so it's somehow mediated by an NGO because as soon as you have a legal structure then you can
send out official letters you can receive those official letters you can participate on behalf of
your NGO so it it kind of levels up your status you know maybe not that much but still you you
(39:33):
have a much more many more opportunities to engage in local politics and you also which is i think
crucially important then you kind of negotiate with international partners on behalf of the so
called organization or institution even there are five people there uh they will never know never
know in a sense but they know that they're engaging with a legal entity you know and that
(39:55):
that proves a lot of things that are possible now and you know i mean NGOs are well i don't know
about the financial flows overall but i think uh the capacity of NGOs to receive and spend money
is is getting better and better and this capacity is assisting local municipalities into providing
(40:15):
other services or thinking even that they don't themselves are not able to provide do you think
that this is something that uh these NGOs or these local let's say purposefully formed groups of
people will have a bigger role to play after the war and in in the governance system after the war
(40:37):
well that's a good question because um it's really hard to predict
um and also i don't have enough data to understand or maybe to compare the pre-war conditions and
their post-war conditions there is some research done on the appreciation of local NGOs and trust
the local NGOs and i think it's kept much higher than trust to the local authorities so people
(41:03):
trust those NGOs even though they don't elect them they don't kind of uh they are unable to
make them accountable really they really trust those NGOs so to me to me it sounds like you
you mobilize uh or your your full forced um society or the ukrainian society has to show
(41:23):
a certain resilience in these in these times right and then you uh they come together and
bring these resources mobilize their ideas and um and also yeah resources financial or other
other resources together it would be you know very interesting to see how you can use that after the
(41:44):
war and also to to exactly what you mentioned before to to um build upon upon this this
this mobilization for reimagining cities well here i might a bit uh divert from from your
line of thinking because i think for proper um well cities are as we know are getting more and
(42:09):
more complex uh day by day because of the involvement of different stakeholders you know
you know complicated networks of infrastructure digital institutions of whatever public private
authorities so the things are just getting more complicated and i think NGOs have their own limit
of how far they can so i believe the the de-professionalization um of the idea of
(42:36):
city management is a good and a bad thing so it is good because it opens up people to more thinking
about how do we want to live together on this you know small world we have uh but it also depreciate
depreciates the quality of professional education because you can no longer represent to have any
credible condition of knowledge or information or uh just basically experience from your work that
(43:02):
other people have to rely on well because they haven't done that they don't know that they just
you know jump up with their ideas learn from somebody across the street or in the internet
and then they say well we should do that whether that's a good use of public money whether that's
a long-term investment well i think i think it might be it might not be that you that you hand
(43:24):
out the decision to somebody who's not an expert but it's it's about valuing the the knowledge
and it becomes a conflict i would say that you're you're you're correct and that's that's a good
point but i'm always afraid i just meant i just meant bringing in these voices and this uh um this
this mobility or this perspective into um co-creating approaches for uh city making really
(43:49):
you know it's it's like at the end of the day you you you need to have a leadership which takes the
decisions and you need to have a decision laid out by experts but also by maybe not
not uh disciplinary experts but everyday life experts right so it's bringing these voices
together to maybe reimagine a future for cities this is an interesting question again thank you
(44:15):
for it because what i also felt from my studies and engaging with discussions about municipal
management in other capitals or in other cities in europe a lot of this process were happening
in different european cities in different speeds but thinking about the ukrainian context it is
(44:35):
quite different in a sense that while those things have been brought on the table
you also have a decrease or maybe you didn't have any increase of quality or the capacity of
local municipality so municipality now is unable neither to handle properly the
well engagement and co-creation nor their basic institutional work that they have to do and they're
(45:00):
now a turn between those two ideas because they have to respond to all of the ideas of deliberative
democracy and everyday engagement and to do this complex technocratic stuff they have to do and
they're not really competent in neither of those and this brings to me the table what is the
priority or how do you invest in the capacity on the local level for those people to be able to plan
(45:24):
forward and to be open i found this a conflict talking with a lot of european professionals they
they highly express the need to have more public engagement have to take on the initiative that
already exists there and just enhance them not to push anything but then it is a good it is a good
plan but for different conditions i think and those conditions have to be taken into account
(45:47):
when thinking about the longer term goals how do you balance then you know this kind of a technical
and conceptual needs of the city with this new paradigms of management of you know local
management of things and how do you engage people in that alexander with with so much destruction and
uh in in ukraine and you described how much land has been destroyed and is is polluted also for the
(46:13):
war from the war how and we discussed a lot of uh yeah details regulations governance issues around
that wouldn't you say that the priority should be to build housing and infrastructure on a very rapid
pace to focus on that instead of uh let's say the nice to haves around that well that's that's a very
(46:40):
good question um because what it leads to a dichotomy which i think is a bit of unproductive and i would
rather a bit of reframe the question about how do we learn by doing things how do we
um from the start how do we not delay uh the process but how do we start the process the way
(47:01):
that it brings builds um and system of knowledge or builds this kind of a learning capacity from
from within the project by project thinking towards a planning perspective or towards the
perspective of how do we kind of organize things together on a level of municipal plan or general
plan or you know regional plan um myself i'm for planning you know there there is some there is some
(47:27):
uh argument you know theory saves all i think plan saves all um so plan do save a lot of things
um but with the given conditions it is more about um how do we make those plans work and at the
given moment i don't think we know um how to make those plans work so we had a lot of plans in
the country uh we're huge plan producing countries since the soviet union most of those plans were
(47:53):
never realized to any significant extent and how do we how do we learn maybe without a plan
how do we systematize those projects how do we systematize that thinking towards the plan we
need and i think this is this is this is maybe a better kind of way of trying to push things
together um integrated urban development so to say which is uh well majority of the projects
(48:15):
so to say which is uh well a german term but i think it it has a chance of revival in these
conditions by becoming more informal but becoming a way of doing not a way of planning and then
feeding up to those people who actually you know sit in the plane and then they see well this is
the way things work and we should plan as things work and not the plan for the things that we would
(48:39):
like them to work and for rebuilding ukrainian cities if you if you if we go in that in that
line of thinking what would be the next practical steps to rebuild um cities from your perspective
from your from your work but also feel free to be very personal i think well i say it's kind of a
(49:00):
vision for the social city this is also on the level of country but related to our podcast i
think it's more interesting to think about what is the social city that provides for people who live
there and it's it's about all of those conditions so it's about how do we at the same moment as
planners as people who think further take into account health care how do we take into account
(49:23):
everyday use of space how do we take into account mobility how do we take into account access to
decent housing how do we take into account greenery um how do we take into account new
jobs and our work areas and access to those work areas so in a sense from this fragmentation that
(49:43):
we were facing earlier you know designing solutions for a very small kind of you know planned areas
whatever the way it was there you know just just putting buildings together it is about a bit of
going back and understanding that what's behind you know physical plans or legal plans is there
internal understanding of how do we think these cities should look like and it's especially
(50:06):
relevant for cities that have been heavily damaged such as Kharkiv or Mikulayev
because they have to prove something to the world after the war is over that their place is worse
living right because i don't think you can rebuild a city that it just works for the few
it won't help anybody to get back there and it will be a dysfunctional economy you know constantly
(50:27):
shrinking system that relies on defunct soviet infrastructure maybe with a few pedestrian central
streets so it's a it's about actually not this investment you know as an extra investment for
social facilities but as investment into people who would love to work and live there and this
(50:50):
thinking is is what i haven't seen in ukraine that much and i believe this is the kind of
financial thinking that was burdened by constant lack of funds but with the opportunity of a very
clever use of the recovery funds that we think are going to come we should actually put this kind of
a social before every other word so if we are talking about infrastructure it has to have its
(51:14):
social component there it has to have housing has to have its called social social component there
and to be competitive it's not about being economically competitive it's about funding
economically competitive it's about first being socially competitive and then economy
can repay for itself and it's what happened in a lot of cities in in the world and how would you
say how would you say i think in the beginning you you mentioned how to put it but it was uh it was
(51:38):
like uh the perspective of uh european researchers and policymakers on europe on ukrainian cities
should shift and there should be more knowledge if i interpret you correctly more knowledge build up
in western europe uh about yeah uh urbanism and other things in in ukraine well i can't say you
(52:01):
know you just measure it by the size but kiev is the fifth biggest city in europe um so it has to
have at least some appeal to trying to understand how big cities work and how they impact global
global economy um but what i think we started to discuss before uh this the recording is that
(52:22):
well um coming from i don't know danish scottish spanish background people considered ukraine
well something being out of their scope of interest um maybe automatically because it's not really
belonging to any area of research they've been looking at and i think this leads to a specific
(52:44):
condition where ukraine um well is confined as i as i said to this periphery so although it's the
biggest country by area in europe and it provides the most um well a lot of resources corn we are
talking about wheat we're talking about sunflower oil a lot of products that europe actually imparts
(53:07):
from ukraine and is heavily dependent on some of those things how do we make ukraine visible
productively for international academia because uh trying to launch any international projects
of relevance and value production in science how do you make ukraine relatively interesting
(53:29):
for those points i think it's by making ukraine legible on the map so that people do not start
those conversations with the uh excuses that they don't know anything about ukraine so yeah you can
tell us something but well this is just another interesting point we can learn about but not
really a necessary one i think knowing about ukraine is crucial is a part of a basic
(53:55):
understanding at least in the realm of european studies you have to be very well aware of how
ukraine functions as a society and if you're an urbanist you have to know at least some of the
understanding have to some some understanding about how ukrainian municipalities cities and
well are growing and are changing because that would bring one the one hand much more perspective
(54:18):
to different issues discussed in europe the transfer of policies the thinking about how
those policies land up how do we consume land how do we grow also how do we work with cities that
are experiencing decline there is a lot of areas that ukraine can be part of this research
engagement on international academic level but it is not as people consider it being you know and
(54:40):
a case in itself not really reproducible not really comparable and i think starting to make
ukraine visible on the basic level to be able to engage with people at least that ukraine is
something not out of their scope of thinking but a part of the normal conversations part of their
general agenda of research is very important to me and this is one of the things that i wanted to
(55:07):
to argue here right thank you so much alexander i would since you have so many you have different
hats so i see you wearing different hats you have you're active in an ngo sector you also
you're a research and academic yourself but you also work with municipalities if you would suggest
(55:27):
let's say three things to anybody who wants to reimagining cities or or change anything in their
immediate urban environment what would these three suggestions be
from working in municipality i learned that to actually produce change you have to work very
(55:48):
hard and in a sense this working hard is not a not a joke and not a maybe some kind of a
some kind of a uh head-on idea but this is a reality so if you want to see things changing
in a local level you have to be ready for a marathon or for a very long run because there
(56:12):
are a lot of institutions a lot of people with different backgrounds engaged in this decision
making and you can change things but you have to be sure that you're committed to this and that
you're ready to face difficulties and ready to go on with some things being unchanged for years
i imagine from being an NGO i learned that NGOs are very fancy for thinking about cities are very
(56:42):
interesting for young researchers or people who are engaged in the society on different levels
but their influence is very limited and if you are looking towards making things different
well on a bigger scale it might be better that you think about how do i convert my knowledge
(57:03):
from an NGO to be relevant for policymakers and maybe to become a policymaker yourself and
and these things combined i imagine are both relevant for people who work in the municipality
and who start often to be over pressed with their everyday work and they don't see you know an
(57:27):
ending of this but they can make a change and i've seen it happening but they have to be they have to
keep the fire going and people who don't see the change happening in NGOs and the society is still
being the same or the city is functioning the same way they did previously they have to realize that
you know path dependencies are very strong and you have to leverage in a very specific area to
(57:51):
produce a change and it's not an easy thing to do and but it's still possible alexander thank
you so much for your time thank you for giving me and us really an insight into ukrainian urbanism
um before and during and after the war i would love to to meet you at some point ideally in ukraine
(58:12):
after the war yeah all the best to you to your family and your colleagues and i hope we stay in
touch thank you so much for your time thank you so much johannes was a pleasure
that was all for this week's show if you like the content i would be happy if you subscribe to the
channel or rate the show or send me an email at johannes at andropocene.cities cities reimagine
(58:40):
will take a short break over the christmas holidays and we'll be back in january with new episodes
and we will finish off season one and then decide if we go into a second season and how that should
look like thanks for listening and i hope to catch you soon
(59:23):
so
(01:00:23):
you
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