About this lecture:
Global geopolitical confrontations manifest in individual cities and warfare is being urbanised. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine changed the security architecture of Europe and, in fact, the entire planet. At the same time, along with such global scales, this war changed the everyday life of every Ukrainian city.
Urbicide is the deliberate destruction of the built environment. Despite the variety of forms and concepts associated with urbicide, it has some common features such as non-selectiveness, simultaneous destruction of symbolic and mundane, ordinary places, both physical structures and values, is aimed at “killing” the heterogeneous urbanity for its own sake and even being carefully planned causes reconfiguration of urban spaces in unexpected ways.
In this lecture, we will discuss the everyday impacts of urbicide on cities and people. This is framed in two parts. The first covers the changing everyday life during the war and how people understand what has happened to them and their cities through individual experiences, trauma and fears. The second focuses on the post-war expectations and possible ways to provide urban healing through solving the issue of “difficult heritage” and transforming traumatised cities into well-being cities.
About the lecturer:
Kostyantyn Mezentsev is Professor and Head of the Department of Economic and Social Geography at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. His recent research examines the transformation of post-Soviet urban regions and cities, public spaces and new-build gentrification, suburban development, urban geopolitics, and IDPs issues. He is co-editor of the book Urban Ukraine: In the Epicentre of the Spatial Changes(2017) and has recently contributed to T. Kuzio’s, P. D’Anieri’s and S. Zhuk’s Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the Russian-Ukrainian War (E-International Relations, 2021). He is involved into the international multi-disciplinary research project Ukrainian geopolitical fault-line cities: urban identities, geopolitics and urban policy (2018-2023). Kostyantyn Mezentsev is Head of Kyiv Department of the Ukrainian Geographical Society.
This lecture was part of the EUniWell Open Lecture Series. Find the full programme here: www.euniwell.eu/what-we-offer...