Fast-Tracking Urban Recovery in Ukraine
Most readers will recall that Russian forces advanced on four main fronts during their February 24, 2022 continued invasion of Ukraine. (I consider the 2022 incursion not as a new war but rather a continuation of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbas eight years before.) Key cities were primary objectives. The invader pushed toward Kyiv from Belarus in the north as did other forces from the northeast. Kharkiv was the target for incursions from the Donbas in the east. Kherson, Odessa, and Mariupol drew the attention of Russia’s Southern Front forces.
Kyiv was particularly symbolic. Ukraine’s capital city, Russia envisioned its capture would mark the collapse of resistance and return of Ukraine to Russian control. The enemy took several suburbs; Kyiv itself never fell. Kharkiv too escaped occupation. Again some suburbs were less fortunate. Counterattacks would soon see these outlying smaller cities and towns returning to their rightful fold. Not so for the city of Kherson. Occupied by the invader, it would be November of 2022 before its recapture. Mariupol continues to suffer Russian rule today.
Occupied or not, these and other cities lost residents killed and neighborhoods damaged. Citizen and official have not waited for hostilities’ end to begin recovery. Kyiv is in fact taking a more effective approach than did the United States in some times now past. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt disliked “making detailed plans for a country we do not yet occupy” while World War II continued, stating “I cannot agree at this moment as to what kind of Germany we want in every detail.” The resulting delays created confusion when Europe’s war ceased in May 1945. Nearly sixty years later, similar procrastination in 2003 Iraq proved more damaging yet, spawning years of misery. Iraq’s and broader regional stability continues to suffer the after effects today.
Ukrainians have wisely chosen not to make the same mistake. Kyiv (and, critically, its international partners) have, carpe diem-like, seized the moment. The public and private international and international recovery initiatives addressing beyond-war Ukraine are myriad in number and impressive in scope. Nor is Ukraine committed only to repairing war’s damage. The country and its cities are melding reconstruction with a “build back better” approach that integrates the needs of tomorrow today. It is an approach at once commendable and rife with tensions. As seems inevitably the case when individuals take on post-disaster planning, physical infrastructure has usurped the bulk of attention. Officials find that agreements on even this narrow focus are hard to come by no less in the 21st century than was the case during that last. Some want simply to return to what existed immediately prewar. Others look further back in time, favoring the architecture of some perceived “golden age.” Yet members of a third party cast their vision firmly on a future little tied to generations before. Tokyo after World War II is typical of the seemingly inevitable sequence of events common to eventual recovery: creation of grandiose plans paying little attention to cost, individual residents impatiently rebuilding with little concern for slow-to-come official guidance or construction standards, recognition that funds fall short of those needed to bring about planners’ plans, and an eventual outcome marked by compromise that leaves few perfectly happy. Adding to this debate between the “Way We Were,” “Golden Age,” and “Way We’ll Be” parties are over-the-horizon demands that cannot be ignored. Post-WWII it was the need to compensate for an ever-increasing infatuation with the automobile. Future-ish factors in today’s Ukrainian cities include a need to contemplate greener living conditions, the pending increase in driverless vehicles (and corresponding reduction in need for parking spaces), and continued threat of incursions by the world’s worst neighbor.
Ukraine, cities with which its cities have twinned, and other partners worldwide are setting a commendable example for future counties’ confronting the need to fast-track recovery with the conduct of war. Kyiv’s ongoing accomplishments in this regard are too little recognized. Rare in the recent past has a nation so well met the requirements of both competing on the battlefield and doing more than treading water toward recovering from war’s punishment. Fast-tracking recovery before fighting ends is wise, logical, and commendable. It is also difficult for reasons beyond the above-noted tensions. Ukraine remains a country shedding the chrysalis of Soviet bureaucratic incompetence residual of the Cold War era. The transportation arena is a notable sector in need of further evolution while also being one over which national-level responsibility is poorly defined. Control therefore falls largely on cities. It is a positive in the sense projects can more effectively address local needs. Less beneficially: Urban governing capacity and financing are often not up to the challenge of what is among an urban area’s most costly enterprises. The challenge is representative of that for Kyiv and Ukrainian cities’ across virtually all sectors: How to balance the essential centralization key to ensuring maintenance of national standards with the decentralization that permits meeting local conditions.
Next time: Funding challenges and evolving solutions for recovery in Ukraine.
