Rebuilding Narratives: The Role of Urban Planning in Post-War Ukraine

Reflecting on the first year after the invasion in 2022, this thesis aims to present the challenges and opportunities of the current reconstruction process in Ukraine. The ongoing full-scale war and significant destruction of the built environment challenged planning and rebuilding efforts. However, the post-war reconstruction of Ukrainian cities started almost immediately after the first bombardments and continued to evolve in 2023. By analyzing the current level of planning expertise and access to decision-making, the study maps the rebuilding actors' landscape and suggests actors' typology. The focus on Ukrainian design professionals such as architects, planners, and urban designers is determined by the unique position of emerging local planning practice, which has simultaneously high spatial development knowledge and gained social trust. This thesis argues that democratic, inclusive, and integrated urban planning practice (together with practitioners) should play a vital role in the post-war physical reconstruction of Ukrainian cities, bringing emerging planners to lead the renovation process. The transition from the Soviet top-down and highly centralized city-building doctrine to democratic spatial planning characterized Ukraine's last decade of professional field development. However, Ukraine's design community faces many obstacles to implementing its efforts. Suggested meta-narratives and design community narratives present an evolving competition of values in Ukrainian society and the continuous dialogue about post-war reconstruction priorities. Adopting a mixed methods approach, the primary data for the study was collected through a series of semi-structured in-depth interviews with Ukrainian reconstruction process insiders. The thematic narrative analysis conducted within this thesis highlighted the gaps in Ukraine's current state of reconstruction.