From June 11 to 15, our Ukrainian colleague Yurii took a part in the Healthy and Future-Proof Neighborhoods workshop that was held in Rotterdam. This is one of the workshops within the framework of the Panorama Ukraine project, dedicated to the reconstruction of Ukraine. Panorama Ukraine is a community of Ukrainian and Dutch architects and spatial professionals in Netherlands.

Over the course of four days, experts, together with young specialists and students, developed urban planning and social strategies for the reconstruction of Ukraine. As a result of the joint work, proposals for the development of five cities from different regions of Ukraine were formed.

On the first day, Francesco Veenstra opened the workshop with his speech. Then, all participants were divided into five teams, each of which had to work on one of the selected cities in Ukraine during three days. My team was tasked with formulating a development direction for the city of Voznesensk, located in the Mykolaiv region.

*IABR 2024 Panorama Ukraine ErasmusUniversity SabienvanderVooren*

The city has a population of about 35,000 residents and is growing rapidly due to the growing number of IDPs (Internally Displaced Person). The urban structure of the city is based on a monocentric principle, which is very typical for cities in the post-Soviet environment. The residential development of the city is too monotonous and does not have a variety of public spaces in between, which in turn hinders the social interaction of residents.

These and a number of other data indicated that the city is faced with two main problems: a lack of living space and public amenities. In this regard, we decided to focus on finding a balanced method, which included the creation of new living areas and ensuring a qualitative gradation between public and private spaces. The city fabric mostly consists of two urban typologies: Soviet residential areas with panel houses and rural areas with single houses along the perimeter and oblong plots in the center. Both typologies have uneven building and settlement densities.

The idea of combining these two systems with improving the diversity of public spaces within formed the basis of our method. Dividing the city grid into blocks of co-scaled neighborhoods, as well as filling empty spaces with residential and public functions, can provide a favorable environment for the integration of newly arrived residents and return social life to the city streets.

This idea and other results of the workshop were presented on the fourth day and all teams could discuss the developed projects. This format of work allowed me and other participants to exchange points of view and come to some fruitful conclusions that will be considered in further research.

Healthy and Future-Proof Neighborhoods workshop Ukraine

Lezing 4 was een succes!

De stad in loods 6: Lezing 4