About the project

This project explores urban policy issues in Ukraine’s "geopolitical fault-line cities", focusing on policy areas that are most exposed to the country’s geopolitical and foreign policy choices. There are two main goals, one scientific and the other policy-oriented. Using the examples of five case study cities in southeastern Ukraine – Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odessa, Sloviansk/Kramatorsk, Mariupol and Luhansk (via Starobilsk) – the scientific goal is to advance the concept of the geopolitical fault-line city and to contribute to the knowledge on conflict in divided or polarized cities. The main policy-related goal is to explore the urban social and identity policy challenges confronting southeastern Ukrainian geopolitical fault-line cities. 

         Work packages

The project includes five work packages:

WP1: Soviet legacies in the southeastern Ukrainian urban social landscape, with a focus on housing

WP2: Countering urban disinformation in the traditional and social media

WP3: Accommodating displaced persons from the Donbas and Crimea in Ukrainian cities

WP4: Urban identities, identity politics and social cohesion during/after the Donbas war

WP5: Theorizing geopolitical fault-line cities.

The work packages use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods appropriate to the issues and questions covered by them. The main sources of primary data will include survey materials from Kharkiv, Dnipro and Sloviansk/Kramatorsk and interviews with key persons, officials and residents of the case study cities.
The project relies on a multi-sited interdisciplinary research environment which includes experts from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, from the national universities of Kiev, Odessa and Kharkiv, and from the University of Oslo. It is supported by an international network of leading scholars and NGO representatives.

Objectives

Primary theoretical objective: Building on a detailed analysis of the southeastern Ukrainian urban context, the overarching goal is to theorize the "geopolitical fault-line city".

Primary policy-related objective: To detail the urban social and identity policy challenges, including disinformation, confronting Ukrainian cities in order to support critical related policy decisions.

Secondary (subordinate) objectives:

1. To examine the political and economic forces that have formed the social geography of cities in southeastern Ukraine, and how they influence the (Donbas-related) conflict dynamics today.
2. To examine the urban context of disinformation, and to help identify effective strategies to counter such disinformation.
3. To examine the characteristics and effectiveness of internal displacement policies at the urban level.
4. To examine how urban identities articulate themselves in the built environment and among the residents of Ukraine’s geopolitical fault-line cities.

Financing

The total grant award was for NOK 4 000 000 

The Research Council of Norway