Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated numerous inherent challenges and created new ones.
The scale of the housing stock destruction in Ukraine after February 24, 2022, has exceeded the total amount of all new housing delivered in the last seven years. A large proportion of Ukrainians have been forced to abandon their homes in search of safety – a situation leading to an uneven distribution of the population on the territory of Ukraine. As a result, cities in Western Ukraine are overpopulated, while cities in Eastern Ukraine are half-empty, and such demography contributes to a dramatic rise in prices on the housing market in the western regions and a corresponding drop in the eastern ones.
The war has revealed the problems with housing affordability and real estate market regulation, logistics, access to local resources, and the vulnerability of critical infrastructure and civil defence. Further consequences in the areas of economy, demography and the environment will determine future reconstruction strategies. At the same time, the threats posed by climate change are becoming more immediate and the issue of urban preparedness for torrential rains, droughts, extreme temperatures and reduced crops and available drinking water is becoming more acute.
We are already facing the great challenge of limited labour and intellectual resources; therefore technological development and reconstruction of the Soviet heritage and new construction are of paramount importance. We are also aware that the instruments of speculative construction are not working now and will no longer work after the war the way they used to. Thus, it is vital to think and talk about new formats of non-profit housing and about the ways to meet other growing housing needs in Ukraine.
We see housing as an important tool for social change and for shaping a new urban environment. We must view the challenge of housing construction and reconstruction as the challenge of rebooting our cities and developing a new urban paradigm.
The research New living environment: housing typologies for a changing Ukraine prepare by our team and partners in 2023 offers a perspective on reconstruction, which takes into account and analyses these challenges in order to propose new approaches and principles for the transformation of the living environment. The practical application of these principles is exemplified with a pilot project of a residential quarter.
The research and proposals are aimed at municipalities, international and state institutions, as well as other stakeholders seeking to improve the living environment in Ukraine.
All statistical data in the book are quoted as of winter 2023.
