Urban Planning Expertise and Public Good after 2022

Under full-scale Russian aggression, which began on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian cities are experiencing massive destruction. Constant artillery shelling, thousands of missiles, and bombs are destroying human lives, as well as housing, social infrastructure, and communal networks. The discussions about post-war recovery, which started almost immediately after the invasion, raised multiple questions about the principles and values that should guide the process and made visible the problem of exclusion. The issue of public participation and controversies around urban planning reform with the growing role of developers forced professionals to rethink the sources of their expertise and the community they are implicitly referring to in their practice. With this project, I will focus on how professionals assemble their relations with different stakeholders and groups of interest and how the “public good” is framed in their arguments. I will extend my research on the transformation of urban planning expertise in Lviv since developed socialism that was conducted within the frame of the “Legacies of communism” international network and contribute to the “Problem of Legitimacy” versus the “Problem of Extension” (Collins, Evans 2007) discussion.

Natalia Otrishchenko is a research fellow at the Center for Urban History in Lviv. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology with a focus on "methodology and methods of sociological research" from the Institute of Sociology at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2015). She was involved in the "Region, Nation and Beyond" (2012-15, University of St. Gallen), "Memories of Vanished Populations" (2012-14, Lund University), and "Historical Cultures in Transition" (2017-2019, Collegium Civitas) international projects. She was a tutor and coordinator of the Urban Summer Schools "Visions and Experiences" (2015-18). In 2021 Natalia was selected as an outstanding young sociologist in Ukraine at the Panina Memorial Competition; in 2022-23, she was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the department of sociology, Columbia University.

During her stay at ZZF Potsdam Natalia Otrishchenko researches in Dep. I: Communism and Society.