A vision for Mariupol

Basic information

Project Title

Full project title

A vision for Mariupol, the easternmost gateway of Europe

Project Description

The project provides a human-centred plan for Mariupol that values every resident as an integral part of a future city that is multinational, multicultural, European and open to the world. This means it takes its future populations' need for employment into account but also for memorialisation, recreation innovation and above all their collective right to the city.

Geographical Scope

Local

Project Region

Mariupol, Ukraine

Urban or rural issues

Mainly urban

Physical or other transformations

It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)

EU Programme or fund

Description of the project

Summary

A vision for Mariupol with results from over six months of work by a multidisciplinary team of Mariupol residents, Ukrainians from other cities, and experts from other countries. Mariupol became involuntarily worldwide known because of the three-month siege by Russia which destroyed most of the city and because of the brave resistance of the Ukrainian army who maintained a foothold at the Azovstal Steelworks until they had to surrender in May 2022. The since then occupied city became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. Creating a future vision for this city together with former residents and the municipality in exile is therefore much more than any kind of city plan. It provides hope and confidence not just for the citizens of Mariupol but for the whole country. Hence the aim and scope of the project: first of all to provide hope and to inspire, but also to provide an exemplary vision on how planning for a destroyed city can be done in an integral holistic and inclusive way. Making this plan for Mariupol and publishing it in a widely spread book hopefully will widen the outreach of the methods and strategies used beyond the city itself. That means the target group for the project goes far beyond the stakeholders of Mariupol, and are all Ukrainian municipalities, the central government, but also the international community of urbanists and planners, and international donors. The work started with analysing all different aspects of the city: it's history, the economy, the social and urban fabric, mobility, the use of public space, it’s geopolitical position on a national and international level. An important aspect of that was -apart from studying maps and data- interviewing residents of the city and learning from their experiences, opinions and expertise. The result is a vision for a city taking into account the needs of the city’s future population not only for employment, but also for memorialization, recreation, innovation, and their right to the city.

Key objectives for sustainability

The two main objectives with respect to sustainability are providing alternative energy supply systems for the city and reducing pollution. Today, Mariupol has a unique chance to implement a long-term strategy of transformation into an eco-city model with renewable energy sources, clean hydrogen, clean metallurgy, emission-free transport, and full-fledged wastewater treatment.
Accumulations of pollutants have been detected on Azovstal’s territory and in the environmental protection strips adjacent to the plant. In order to fully utilize the site, Azovstal will have to remove at least six meters of soil. The high cost of this makes it necessary to look for alternative functions for these areas and at the same time we propose alternative cleanup processes without full and direct reclamation (like bioremediation).
Further we made all kinds of recommendations to make the city resistant to the impact of climate change through reducing the amount of paving and vehicle surfaces, to use reflective materials and re-use demolition waste, as well as planting of trees with large crowns to name but a few. It is proposed to connect the city with a network of green corridors.
The centralized energy supply sources carries security risks, which was demonstrated during the full-scale invasion. It is recommended to introduce a distributed system of electricity and heat generation, which should include: solar panels installations in the north of the city; wind power turbines; mandatory equipment of roofs with solar panels and passive water heat collectors in new construction and reconstruction of existing buildings. The existing centralized heat distribution system, can be converted into a system using waste heat from Ilyich Iron and Steel Works as a basic source (which allows heating the city without generating new CO2 emissions ) and a network of boiler houses using alternative heat production technologies when the main heat supply source is insufficient.

Key objectives for aesthetics and quality

Although the vision is not intended to give an end view on an architectural design level, there are many quality guarantees in the project that provide for a high level outcome. Throughout the plans there are recommendations to local and national government to change rules or regulations that support that.
For instance it is recommended to have Architectural Design competitions that are now regulated by CMU Resolution No. 2137 of 25.11.1999 harmonized with competition practices with European ones. First of all, to allow jury members to vote by consensus and to regulate the procedure of the «Design and build» investor competition. It is also important to bring public procurement procedures for architectural design services in the Law «On Public Procurement » in line with the requirements of Directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of February 26, 2014 on public procurement and repealing Directive 2004/18/EC. It is necessary that urban planning documents regulating the height and density of buildings, especially zoning, be approved at the local level before architectural competitions are held. Detailed plans of territories should be developed at urban planning competitions, followed by «Design and build» contests for the construction of individual buildings.
All these recommendations help to improve the quality of the built environment. Next to this there is a lot of attention given towards the integration of green zones and nature into the urban fabric. Further there are many references in the project that address the quality of public spaces, the accessibility of greenery, safe street profiles and the creation of a human-scale environment with low and mid-rise developments.

Key objectives for inclusion

The main objective of the project is to create a people oriented and centred city to which people want to return and stay. First of all that concerns the implementation of inclusive government systems. That means at the neighbourhood level, to have participatory procedures for involving residents, informing them and making joint decisions and have them institutionalised. The Neighborhood Development Center is a network of city centers, a place to support community relations, similar to the Ya.Mariupol centers that are deployed across the country but also focused on rebuilding and organizing life in their neighborhood. The centers will host meetings of residents on neighborhood development issues, organize exhibitions and neighborhood festivals, and provide neighborly assistance. Neighborhood development offices will also serve as a base for engaging returning and new residents in organizing architectural and urban planning competitions, where teams of young and experienced, foreign and Ukrainian architects not only look for the best ideas to solve neighborhood problems, but also implement a dialogue between neighborhood residents on their aspirations. within the Ukrainian legislation there is local self-government embedded in the form of bodies of self organisation but these should be deeper institutionalised and given more elective powers. The second aspect of citizens well being is attention to job creation, accessibility of public spaces and public transportation. Further new and affordable housing systems are crucial. By law, the community becomes the owner of all the unclaimed inheritance meaning the city is becoming an operator of a large housing stock, and this opportunity should be used to launch a social housing system similar to European cities — renting apartments under long-term contracts on equal terms for citizens. We propose to look at the most famous successful example which is Vienna, where more than 60% of the residents live in social housing.

Results in relation to category

As said one of the tangible outcomes is a book published by Dom Publishers and Osnovy in both Ukrainian and English. This provides an accessible dissemination tool for the research and recommendations for all who want to use it. The insights and views from the study are a base for the displaced municipality of Mariupol to further develop the plans for the city (in which the Ro3kvit team will play an important role). The project has been presented at multiple conferences, and debates and team members have conducted interviews with several news media. The impact is manyfold. First of all, it creates hope for the displaced Mariupol residents (f.i. via the Ya Mariupol centres). The municipal plans have a solid base to work from. Other Ukrainian city councils and design professionals look at the book to get inspiration or practical solutions. International stakeholders are confronted with a comprehensive plan that shows that indeed planning can already start although the war is ongoing. To conclude there might be a growing interest in strategic planning within Ukrainian municipalities growing from this example.

How Citizens benefit

The centre for displaced Mariupol residents 'Ya Mariupol' (I am Mariupol) played a very important role in the project. The many interviews with the residents, which form an integral part of the book, were highly informative for the team and often were leading in the proposed design decisions. Two of the team members are former citizens of Mariupol and could tell and work from first-hand experience of living, studying and working in the city. Further the conditions are created for expanding the influence of civil society on decision making in the city. Next to that there is special attention given to provide the meeting places, interaction and cooperation within the citizens to re-establish trust in the post-conflict society and build long-term resilience for upcoming challenges and emergency situations (for instance self-help and self-organization in mitigation of the consequences of climate change).

Physical or other transformations

It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)

Innovative character

Although the multidisciplinary approach to creating an urban vision might be a more common practice in some European countries in Ukraine it is quite innovative. But the uniqueness lies probably in the combination of having this 'modern' global approach, but at the same time embedding a local context at every level, including cultural sensitivities and habits. The 'trick' lies mostly in the composition of the team that includes the voices of residents, the view of local professionals and the outsiders view with foreign eyes and new perspectives. The project was informed by other global examples of reconstruction after war and took the lessons learned. One very important one is that there is often a mismatch between the governmental rules and regulations and the ideas and plans of design teams and residents. Therefore there is much attention in the project towards these regulatory frameworks and recommendations to (local) authorities. This is an element that is usually overseen.

Disciplines/knowledge reflected

The direct team involved experts on urbanism, architecture, mobility, trade and economy, project management, graphic design, politics, planning. They were working closely together and had weekly meetings to update each other and discuss further steps. Extra knowledge on ecology, landscaping, safety, heritage, memory, and conflict resolution was provided by other members of the Ro3kvit network on request from the core team. Sometimes by invitation in the regular meetings, sometimes by small working sessions or by providing relevant literature. This way of working proves to be highly successful and is repeated also in multiple other projects of Ro3kvit.

Methodology used

This relates very much to the above. The extreme circumstances under which this project came into being, namely creating a future urban vision for a destroyed city under occupation, created a highly charged and intensive working environment in which all involved were performing at their best. This is of course not a wished for situation to work from but it did result in a high level of sensitivity from the design team towards the future residents.
Other methodologies used were interviewing, participatory meetings, open-source intelligence, discourse analysis, historical research and case study analyses.

How stakeholders are engaged

This project would have been impossible without the municipality of Mariupol in exile, specifically the mayor and the architects and urbanists. They provided maps, data and previous city plans.
Further two of the team members were employers of Mariupol City Council. One, Mykita Biriukov, worked as mobility expert at the Department of Transportation and Communication and the other, Mykola Tryfonov, at the Department of Investment and Project Management. Their knowledge of the local situation, their network and their insights were of course of crucial importance to the project. The mayor of Mariupol has been and still is endorsing the project and is committed to take it to next levels.
Another party involved is the Lviv City Council that created a Mariupol Reborn office and provided the platform for the project presentation on Lviv Urban Forum. The Unia Metropolii Polskich gave valuable feedback and input during the presentation in Warsaw.

Global challenges

Due to the character of the project: creating a future vision for an almost totally destroyed city, almost all global challenges are addressed some way or another. The impact of climate change, the lack of resources, energy shortage, unemployment, solidarity, safety, conflict, housing shortage, environmental threats. Of course not all of these are being addressed in the same depth but they are being discussed here in their mutual dependency and therefor can provide new insights that can be useful in other places. Definitely in other Ukrainian cities but also elsewhere.

Learning transferred to other parties

Many of those have already been described in previous chapters, but probably the two most important ones to highlight here are both related to methodology: firstly the multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary approach and secondly the integrated design and regulatory recommendations. To start with the first: the already described composition of the team with professionals from multiple disciplinary backgrounds of which some are local experts and others with more international experiences, that all have a high sensibility towards the stories and experiences from (displaced) residents is a highly successful model to repeat in almost any other context. Secondly the direct referral to regulatory and systemic changes that are necessary for a successful implementation of design proposals are useful in any postconflict reconstruction process but also in other contexts. For instance, the introduction of new strategies related to flooding due to climate change often are frustrated because of local regulations. The same goes for changes in the housing market or new building materials. The need for design professionals to not shy away from policy proposals is urgent in many instances.

Further there are many practical outcomes. Mariupol represents in its extremes the most challenging issues of Ukrainian cities like lack of affordable housing, post-industrial shift which was not reflected in planning, destructions, displacement, restructuring of the economy, and climate challenges.